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The R/KYV electronic document management system has
been highly commended by the County Surveyors' Society for Capita
Gwent Consultancy's enterprise-wide installation, at its recent
annual conference.
Capita Gwent Consultancy is a ground-breaking highways
engineering joint venture between four Welsh local authorities and
leading private sector consultant Capita Property Consultancy. As
one of the leading consultancies in Wales it employs over 200 staff
at its state-of-the art headquarters in Cwmbran."
Peter Jones, Capita Gwent Consultancy IT/IS Manager, "The R/KYV
electronic document management system (EDM) has been introduced
across the consultancy. The system has been developed to hold incoming
and outgoing mail, emails, faxes and all internally generated documents.
Staff now access the vast majority of information electronically
from the desktop. Mobile workers and clients can access all information
from their laptops.
"Further business benefits have been derived from the workflow
routines that have been developed within the application to automate
the consultancy's major business processes. An example is financial
payments, where there has been a considerable reduction in paper,
and a significant increase in the efficient handling of information.
Authorisation of expenditure has been streamlined with the introduction
of electronic signatures ."
Gwent's initial objective was to increase the amount of information
held electronically within the consultancy. The aim was in line
with the Government white paper that looked for a 25% increase in
information held electronically by 2002. The system was released
in March 2000 following an initial pilot and it is estimated that
the Gwent now
stores 90% of its total information, electronically. The general
system now holds around 60,000 documents.
Another key objective was to use the EDM system to automate many
of the more important business processes, principally purchase ordering
and invoice payments and expenses. The Consultancy had already developed
a purchase ordering system that has brought considerable benefits
to the organisation. The EDM system has been
linked to both the Microsoft Access 'Purchase Orders & Suppliers'
databases and the email system. It is now easy to track purchase
orders and invoices. It is also possible for the consultancy to
generate orders, deliver them to
suppliers, and store the invoices electronically. The system currently
holds 53,500 invoices.The introduction of this system with the automation
of the business processes has boosted productivity and made lost
documents a thing of the past.
Clients benefit as information can be provided at the desktop at
the press of a button. Access to information can be provided to
clients through remote access servers, which could give them instant
access to all project related
information. When clients phone, staff can access information quickly
without searching through filing cabinets. Gwent has set itself
'key performance indicators' (KPI's) to provide an effective and
efficient service to clients. A simple task like logging incoming
mail and responding within an agreed timeframe has been automated.
This means that no mail can now be mislaid when it arrives in the
consultancy, and inbuilt tracking
facilities ensure that mail is responded to on time. The reduction
in paper also clearly demonstrates an awareness of environmental
issues.
Gwent's development partner Valid Information Systems has helped
provide routines to integrate the product in to other in-house systems,
for example Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Exchange. VALID has
also been able to provide plug in modules where limitations have
been discovered within the underlying application. The Invoice Payment
Application has been recognized as being of use to other organisations
and could be sold independently. There has been a huge cultural
change for staff within the Consultancy. Staff no longer receive
their correspondence on paper and most of the essential services
have been automated. There has been a considerable effort required
to promote the use of EDM within the office. However, there has
been willingness by the majority of staff to embrace the new technology.
Wherever possible Gwent has tried to tailor the application to reflect
the needs of the organization, but at the same time introduce a
system that at the outset would not involve users with more work.
Peter Jones, "My vision for the future of this project is that
we hold all information in the EDM system within the next three
years. This would allow even greater efficiencies in the storage
and retrieval of information. It would also allow staff to access
all information remotely from a central source, from the comfort
of their home, encouraging the development of mobile workers. It
would lead to a further reduction in physical storage and associated
office space, which is becoming increasingly more expensive."
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