Cost Savings & Improved Customer Service were Important to Regional Phone Company

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Forty-four thousand plus subscribers: that’s good news for one Regional Phone Company based in Pennsylvania.

But it’s also 44,000 bills sent to customers every month...528,000 per year. Plus, regulations state that 3,696,000 bills must be kept on file for seven years.

The Regional Phone Company formerly used microfiche for these records, according to the company’s Manager of Revenue Accounting. Eleven drawers full of them!

Now, The Phone Company is using the emerging technology of optical disk storage, paired with personal computers and powered by DocFinity® COLD-ERM, the Computer Output to Laser Disk-Enterprise Report Management product by Optical Image Technology, Inc. (OIT).

cold-erm answered cost reduction needs

"We were spending about $900 a month just to have our billing file reproduced on microfiche," The Manager of Revenue Accounting recalls. "That doesn’t count the hours we put into checking the fiche when it comes in, filing it and then searching on those 20 to 30 occasions each month when we need to find a past record."

Since 1911, The Phone Company has been servicing areas of three counties, a countryside of Pennsylvania Dutch farms and rolling hills. The privately owned concern provides the local dial tone as well as the connection to long distance service. Through a subsidiary, the company sells telephone systems to businesses and a variety of telephones to households.

The Phone Company has three mainframe computers on which billing and other records are being generated. It has a Local Area Network (LAN) of 125 PCs that are used to check information, process records, edit financial statements, do word processing and work with spreadsheets.

The most recent two months of customer bills were kept on the mainframe’s magnetic disk storage. After that the files were transferred to tape to be sent out to a microfiche vendor. A week later, 30 pages of microfiche were delivered that had to be checked and filed.

"DocFinity COLD-ERM provides the best of both worlds," says an executive of a Lancaster based Systems Integrator. The Systems Integrator, along with Optical Image Technology, Inc., provided the integration for the conversion to DocFinity COLD-ERM, installed the software and trained the Phone Company staff.

"Storing records on a mainframe disk drive provides quick and easy access. But magnetic disk storage is very expensive," the Systems Integrator explains.

quick and easy retrieval

Says The Integrator, "Microfiche is less expensive, but storage and retrieval can be complicated. DocFinity COLD-ERM provides a solution that is both less expensive and still provides quick and easy retrieval."

The Phone Company generates a special report that is copied on to the optical disk. Then, each time billing information is needed, it can be easily reviewed or printed.

OIT’s DocFinity COLD-ERM is designed for both large and small companies that generate documents from mainframes, minicomputers or servers and then storing and retrieving them with printed reports and microfiche.

Scott Buchart, President of OIT, observes that company managers like DocFinity COLD-ERM because it reduces costs and improves service. Workers like it because it makes their jobs easier.

"DocFinity COLD-ERM provides the highest level of data compression in the industry," Buchart points out. "It allows the equivalent of more than 2 million pages of green bar computer paper to be stored on a single 5.25 inch optical disk!"

The Phone Company acquired two optical disk drives and expects to be able to store ten months of billing information on a single 5.25 inch optical disk.

"Installation of a DocFinity COLD-ERM system can be accomplished within several days," Buchart says. "Of course, it depends on the complexity of the system and the degree of customization that each new user requires."

storage is permanent

Since optical storage is permanent, it cannot be overwritten, altered or erased. This helps fulfill The Phone Company’s record retention requirements. Records are on-line, which means the days of pouring through drawers of microfiche are over.

DocFinity COLD-ERM is designed to optimize operator productivity. It supports Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, and OS/2. Records can be catalogued under multiple categories for easy retrieval. An operator can view several records simultaneously on the computer screen and then print or fax them directly to the customer.

"Both cost savings and the quality of customer service were important to us in moving to DocFinity COLD-ERM," the Phone Company’s Manager of Revenue Accounting says. "We can respond to customer requests much more quickly. Since a new bill is printed by a laser printer, it looks much better than the copies that come from microfiche."

The return on investment will be seen within two years.

"Our investment in DocFinity COLD-ERM totaled around $20,000," explains The Manager of Revenue Accounting. "With the money we’ll be saving on paper, microfiche and time, we will recapture our investment quickly."

"Besides the billing department, our customer service department is also using the DocFinity COLD-ERM system," she relates. "The next step for us will be to utilize the potential DocFinity COLD-ERM has for gathering information from its database to compile summary reports and analyses."

"We chose DocFinity COLD-ERM because it would run on our current PCs, it provided a high quality of printed copies, and, of course, the cost savings," says the Phone Company’s Revenue Accounting Manager. "We were intrigued with this new technology and were tired of the cost and inefficiency of our former records retention methods."