St Regis
A document and content management solution provides improved customer satisfaction and reduction of costs
Company Profile
St. Regis Paper Company Limited has seven paper and board mills throughout the UK with a combined output of nearly 1 million tonnes per annum making it the UK's leading manufacturer of recycled paper. Part of David S Smith Plc, around 80% of sales are accounted for by corrugated case materials with the company clearly established as the leader in this market sector. In addition to the core business St. Regis also manufactures a wide range of specialist papers and boards for both industry and consumers.
Customer's Business Issues
The Credit Management department within St. Regis at Taplow, are the main users of a Document Management solution. The reasons for acquiring this solution were lack of space and security. Overflowing filing cabinets were a potential fire risk, and in addition the documents they contained could not be considered secure or recoverable.
St. Regis staff found it difficult to acquire all of the relevant documentation in a simple, single format, and wasted a large amount of time pulling together all of the relevant information before being able to deal with customer requests. The operation at Taplow had limited on-site IT resources; so they needed a solution that was easy to use but also very reliable.
Customers Business Objectives
In order to resolve these business issues, St Regis identified several objectives that would help them achieve their goals for customer service and recovery.
- Single screen in financial ledger for all documents – Single Customer View
- Security of documentation
- Remove the paper from the office environment, reducing storage costs
- Re-use the liberated office space
- Hold information electronically
Initial Customer Set up
Using the services of an IBM Business Partner, the Document Management system was installed and working from June 1998. Initially, documents such as customer account opening forms, customer credit history and cash payment sheets were scanned and processed. Although daily volumes are not high, St. Regis wanted to be in a position to link everything together by using the Customer Account Number as their main reference index.
The IBM OnDemand software was used to archive Sales Invoices and Credit Notes with these being retrieved at a later date on the Invoice Number and/or Customer Account Number.
The Logicalis Computing Solution
According to St Regis, "Logicalis Computing Solutions made us aware that we could be using the software we had already got, in a much more integrated manner and gain substantial benefits". Karen Tuffs-Broadhead.
By implementing Logicalis Computing Solutions's MaxImage TM software, St. Regis began to integrate the IBM Content Manager software into their legacy AS/400 financial applications provided by Infinium.
"I can now look at any Infinium screen and, by pressing one button, I can see all documents relating to that customer or, for example, just one specific sales invoice that I request." says Karen Tuffs-Broadhead.
Since then, Logicalis Computing Solutions has helped St. Regis in using the IBM software to archive and retrieve emails and Word documents, ensuring that all documents are stored in one central place. In addition, over 30 different financial reports are now automatically archived overnight.
The solution has proved a success and St. Regis now have over 24 million pages of information stored in their system. The long-term strategy is that other mills within the group can benefit from a similar infrastructure in the future, enabling wider integration.
The end-to-end solution from Logicalis Computing Solutions involved a combination of Services, Software, Hardware and ongoing support.
Services
- Design of solution
- Implementation of solution
- Project Management
Software
- IBM Content Manager for iSeries
- IBM Content Manager OnDemand
- IBM 3995 Optical Library
- Logicalis Computing Solutions MaxImage TM
Hardware
- IBM iSeries
- IBM C40 3995 Optical Library
Ongoing Support
- Logicalis Computing Solutions provides business hours
- based contracted helpdesk support
Customer Benefits
- St Regis have realised many key benefits from implementing this solution.
- Multiple users have access to stored documents at the same time
- Reduction in the cost of storing documents - no longer using microfilm
- Improved recoverability of data by archiving in a digital format for long term
- Secure archive - documents are stored in a write once, read many (WORM) optical system
- Physical space savings by removing paper
- Improved customer satisfaction - by retrieving documents while dealing with a customer enquiry
- Improved Operational Efficiencies from reducing administration time and focussing on value added activities
- Reduction of costs by archiving internally generated documents from legacy systems, less printing takes place, reducing paper and printer consumables.
Why Logicalis Computing Solutions?
"Logicalis Computing Solutions were able to develop the solution because they understood the business issues that needed resolving in our organisation and helped us develop a vision of what we could be doing to improve." Karen Tuffs-Broadhead, Credit Manager.
"By working within our existing infrastructure, they allowed us to focus the resources we had on high value elements that affect our overall business, such as working on improving customer service, and reduce the amount of time we spent administering and filing documentation."
Customer Business Issues
- Reduce costs of storing, filing and retrieving paper documents
- Single view of all customer documentation
- Improve customer service
- Increase the number of documents available to users
The Logicalis Computing Solution
- Integrating Document Management solution with business application
- Creating single view of all customer documents from inside business application
- Developing long term electronic archiving and retrieval system for document storage
- Document store now contains more than 24 million documents
Benefits
- Single view of all data allowing fast resolution of customer enquiries
- Cost reductions from eliminating physical storage filing, admin and document searching
- Secure, central access to all documentation for staff
- Improved operational efficiencies from IT resources
Partnerships
- IBM Premier Software Partner
- IBM DB2 Content Manager Software
- IBM iSeries Premier Partner