Financial Services: The Issue - Indexing Problems

This company has six offices in the North West of England and had outsourced the document storage services to a company based nearby. The service required is a daily delivery and collection from these offices.

Unfortunately, the incumbent provider had not been capturing the indexing information detailed on the exterior of the boxes correctly and service levels were deteriorating. Boxes were going missing, deliveries were not being processed on time and items requested were not always delivered.

The situation became increasingly frustrating, as the relationship with the incumbent provider was failing; something needed to be done. The company invited potential new providers to tender for the service.

The Solution

Crown’s proposal responded to the actual requirements of the tender, but a number of additional, value added services were also presented, to enhance and automate the existing processes. The customer was particularly attracted by these services and following further presentation, assessment and implementation planning, Crown was awarded the contract.

Project meetings took place between Crown, the customer and their now ex-provider to negotiate and agree on the best method to transition the account. From the first day, Crown took on all responsibilities of the ex-provider as well as all the management of all service requests. The transfer of the boxes was undertaken on a daily basis with specific regulations established, to make certain each party was aware of their responsibilities.

The account structure implemented by Crown was a multilevel configuration, whereby individual Costs Centers and Departments were allocated their own Account, encompassed by the main account. This not only allowed for individual Cost Center and Departmental billing, but also made provision for a detailed reporting function and, most importantly, different indexing and service rules for each Cost Center and Department.

During the uplift, some specific Departments required detailed audits of their documents. Crown was able to undertake these audits in a controlled and methodical fashion, due to the way in which the account was structured.

The Service

All service requests and new item creation (including all data entry) is fully automated and, on a daily basis, all information is electronically transferred to Crown, which allows for the accurate and efficient processing and preparation of all services.

The service provided for the individual needs of the various Departments, with services ranging from box management, whereby we simply manage the box in its entirety, through to actual management of individual documents. Individual sheets of paper are faxed back to the client (we offered scanning services, but the client preferred to phone line) and a full audit of this activity is achieved through Crown’s IT systems. This individual document management is becoming increasingly popular, with many documents now being sent in this fashion on a daily basis.

Seminar training to the customer’s end users was implemented to ensure complete awareness of the services available, how to use them and ‘Records Management Best Practices’.

Real Benefits

The service is now well established and our relationship very strong. Crown acts as the invisible partner providing the link between the end users within the Bank and their documents. All of the customer’s staff can therefore concentrate on their core activities, leaving the Records Management Services to the Records Management experts – Crown.