A ProcessFlows solution Gives Peace of Mind against Flood Damage at Goole Town Council
The Customer:
The town of Goole is conveniently located in the East Riding region of Yorkshire, adjacent to the M62. It covers an area of approximately 2,192 acres and has a population of approximately 18,500.
Goole Town Council was formed in 1982 ‘to work for the benefit of the community.’ This philosophy continues amongst members of the principal council operating in Goole – the East Riding of Yorkshire Council.
The town council provides local services and events for residents. Services include the upkeep and maintenance of public parks, gardens and cemetery, plus the provision of sports facilities and staging events like the annual horticultural show and a bonfire night firework display. The council also operates the Gate Theatre, the Market, a community centre and community arts projects, along with providing a Christmas Lighting display and CCTV within the town.
The council employs a total of 27 staff. Ten of these are permanently based at offices in the town centre and others, such as ground maintenance workers, play area wardens and market employees work at different locations in the town.
The council is a Best Value Authority and is therefore regularly seeking to improve its performance and make best use of its resources.
The Challenges:
In 2004 Goole Council identified a business problem after Pat Buttle, their Finance Officer saw a demonstration of OpenText Alchemy by supplier and ProcessFlows partner, Gemtec Limited. Gemtec is a Hull based company that specialises in selling photocopiers and print related hardware/software. The demonstration showed the simplicity of using a colour photocopier as a scanner to convert all documents into electronic format. This made Pat think seriously about the risks they were taking at Goole by continuing to store paper documents.
She worried about potential fire or flood damage (Goole is classed as a zone 2 flood risk area by the Environment Agency) and the repercussions that losing key paper documents would have on the town’s service provision. Some paper based files were the only record they had.
The Solution:
Goole Town Council purchased an Alchemy content management server with Alchemy Premium/Alchemy Administrator Module software from ProcessFlows.
Alchemy manages all documents. It acts as an electronic filing cabinet, safely and securely filing and finding every document within the Alchemy server whatever its original source.
Alchemy is integrated with Goole’s Multi Function Devices (MFDs). Paper documents are captured using a colour photocopier as a scanner. Documents are automatically routed and indexed into a single, searchable repository on the Alchemy server. The administrator module means that databases and Metadata (Index) fields can easily be created to facilitate the easy management of documents – any size and form.
“Alchemy has huge potential” said Pat Buttle.
The minutes need to be referred to frequently. Items regularly come up for discussion that have previously been debated and looking through old minutes to find one particular topic and what the outcome was is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It can take hours.
The Benefits:
“It is early days for us” says Pat Buttle, who admits that they do not have the majority of documents on the system yet, but the time saving element of finding a particular document is already proving to be a major benefit. “The worry about a fire or flood destroying documents has been reduced now that some of our critical documents are electronically stored.” As Alchemy is expanded into other areas, Goole say they will reap the benefits of not having to find the space for the physical storage of documents in the future. This will prove a major advantage when the council relocates to a new Arts and Civic Centre in 2009, where office space will be limited.
Because Alchemy is a scaleable – allowing multiple workstations to capture data – an expanding user base is not a problem. Goole have a lot of word and excel documents saved on the main server which will be moved across to Alchemy. Plans also include the future storage of all maps and documentation to allotments and cemeteries. Alchemy will be used to manage and store planning applications and by the finance department to improve the processing of all income and expenditure invoices.
Pat Buttle comments that “Although Alchemy is very simple to use, I am the only person who knows how to use the system at the moment! The training I received from ProcessFlows was very good. I have surprised myself with how much I learnt. I plan to pass on this knowledge to my colleagues, so as a team we will be able to save more time and appreciate these benefits in other departments.”
This fits in well with the council’s status as an Investor in People organisation.
“At the moment we are storing the signed council minutes on the system. These are important documents as they are proof of authorising what the council does.”
“We chose this product as it was more cost effective and scalable than any other system around at the time and I had seen how it worked through the demonstration session” said Pat Buttle.
More information
For information on any of our solutions or products, please call us on 01962 835053 or email sales@processflows.co.uk.
