As the largest employer in East Lothian with more than 4,800 staff, the council manages a geographical area of over 262 square miles and a population of over 105,000. So it comes as no surprise that they generate a lot of paperwork.
This is why, as their digital imaging service provider, we created a council-wide document management service hosting over 270 gigabytes of data. That's more than four million documents.
Like many organisations, the pandemic forced the council to implement remote working in a hurry. Their goal was to ensure that they could still provide essential services for their constituents. All while maintaining staff safety during an unprecedented health crisis.
So, it was up to Datatron to adapt and ensure our scanning service supported their changing requirements.
A New Way of Working
Pre-pandemic, Datatron provided a regular collection and scanning service for paper invoices. We archived them in our hosted document management solution, Therefore, where staff could easily access them.
As the council moved to remote working to ensure employee safety, they realised they also needed the option to upload documents directly from any location.
This presented a challenge. We had to adapt our existing service to provide an easy-to-use portal where staff could upload and workflow their own documents. All while maintaining our same efficient document scanning process.
A Seamless Hybrid Service
In response to this challenge, we adapted our existing Therefore solution into a Hybrid one. We needed to provide a familiar point of access with an easy-to-use portal for uploading documents. So we simply added another tile to the login page Therefore Append.
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New Dynamic WebView
Therefore's new Dynamic WebView allowed us to design a custom portal. This simple point of access enables council staff to deposit new documents quickly while maintaining strict naming conventions.
The Dynamic WebView provides users with a personal portal which makes indexing and saving invoices quick and easy. To archive invoices, they simply drag and drop them into the portal. Once saved, they can then enter a workflow to provide an endless amount of process automation options. These range from approval to payment.
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The Benefits of Remote Document Management
With our help, East Lothian Council could maintain their existing Document Management System. What's more, our expert development skills provided an enhanced system, letting them adapt to the new normal of flexible working.
This work benefitted East Lothian Council in several ways:
- Simple document uploads
- Secure access controls
- Simplified hybrid 'scan and add' service for quick processing
- Endless workflow options
As a result, they have a future-proof system that can meet the demands of fast-changing, remote, flexible working.
