 Robin Prior, MD The Business Problem The EIM Solution Feedback About Advanced Data ServicesMD, Robin Prior established Advanced Data Services Limited in 1999. He did so to take advantage of a definable gap in the UK market for high quality, professional data capture services. The business has now grown to become one of the UK's largest Total Information Capture companies, currently employing over 80 full and part time staff and operating 24 hours a day. Originally offering only scanning services, the company now also provides the full range of data capture and document management solutions. As a quality committed supplier ADS has ISO 900-2000 and Investor In People (IIP) accreditation. Winning a number of awards on the way, ADS now has offices in Glasgow, London Chicago and Adelaide, Australia. The company’s new purpose-built headquarters in Glasgow were opened by MSP Frank McAveety, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport in the Scottish Parliament.
Collecting, validating and storing information is a huge task for organisations, particularly if they don’t have the necessary tools to easily achieve this. ADS has invested in the deployment of a number of high tech solutions to the business problems of capture, storage and retrieval of information. This investment means that ADS clients don’t require their own capital expenditure as the company’s services are built on robust processes and innovative technology, in order to maximise the advantages to their clients.
The Business Problem Data capture
- Internal customer contact, correspondence and documentation are not centrally managed, which creates the opportunity for duplication, inefficiency and human error.
- A number of capture contracts provide not only the required data back to the client but also provide the source images on a searchable CD. Producing this is a labour intensive process, which is extraneous to the capture process and is also labour intensive for the customer upon receipt.
- Having opened operations in London, Chicago and Adelaide, greater flexibility of labour and most economical provision of services counts.
- Operating a 24 x 7 operation at the Glasgow head office allows the provision of services to Chicago overnight allowing a key differentiator in the North American market.
- Greater flexibility required
The Easy Information Management Solution ADS agreed to a pilot project using the Easy Information Management Solution. Operations manager Neil Fowler has been impressed with its ease of integration and use and can see great potential benefits for the future.
- EIM has been seamlessly integrated with Captiva’s FormWare, which ADS uses to capture data from a variety of forms. The information collected can be machine print handwritten, tick boxes, barcodes, marks etc.
- Using EIM allows ADS to associate the original image with captured data much more easily and quickly than before.
- There is very little impact on clients’ IT systems as the system is browser based. With no client software installation or maintenance, this can create significant savings for ADS customers. They just need to maintain an Internet connection.
- There are no storage issues for clients as all the data is stored at ADS headquarters in Glasgow – another saving for customers.
- There are no expensive systems to purchase and maintain, or system specialists to employee. Administration of the archive is handled by industry experts.
- Instead of the relatively slow process of transferring images onto CD, EIM allows almost instant upload of images onto the web, for subsequent retrieval by clients around the world.
- Incredibly easy-to-use web page style interface while security access is username and password protected.
- The system is scaleable to hold millions of images
Feedback “I see great potential with this system. Its ease of use can’t be over-stated and it offers comprehensive reporting, without the interface usually required of a DMS.
Although only at the pilot stage, I can easily see how EIM can reduce our costs by cutting resources in time and storage space.
It will also be a real asset to us when operating in our international offices in America and Australia.” Robin Prior, Managing Director, ADS Ltd
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