The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is Scotland’s environmental regulator. They protect the environment and human health through the work of 1,300 employees who cover a range of specialist areas including chemistry, ecology, environmental regulation, hydrology, engineering, quality control, planning, communications, business support and management functions. SEPA has 22 offices that enable them to work across the whole of Scotland from the Highlands and Islands to the Borders. For the 2012- 2013 year their planned capital expenditure was £3.2 million.
SEPA is required to store tens of millions of documents covering a wide range of environmental activities across the country. These files – currently stored in a hard copy library system – are primarily for internal business process requirements and may also be the subject of freedom of information requests.
One of SEPA’s business goals is to reduce the amount of paper used while still maintaining data confidentiality, and freedom of information. SEPA decided Electronic Document Management (EDM) software would be the best solution to manage their document and business process needs. Not only was operating solely with hard-copies expensive, it was also time consuming.
To solve this business need SEPA selected Laserfiche as its EDM solution.
What is Laserfiche?
“The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure, including standards, security and auditing, while still offering business units the flexibility to react quickly to changing conditions.”
Laserfiche was presented by Capital Document Solutions as an option to help streamline SEPA’s business processes and reduce the volume of paper being produced and moved around the organisation.
EDM Solutions Manager, Ian Howe, comments “this helps SEPA’s officers make decisions more efficiently and ensures the organisation is compliant under both freedom of information and data protection legislation. Furthermore, the scan capture and subsequent recycling of some five million pages further enhances the organisation’s profile for harnessing technology to improve environmental outcomes.
“Laserfiche will reduce the future need to store paper documents; reduce document retrieval time by around 80%; improve document filing time by around 20%; eliminate misfiled and missing documents, and ensure transparency of all document/paper trails.”
The service is initially based on providing a paperless electronic document management solution to 350 users at SEPA. By choosing Laserfiche, SEPA has made the investment to reduce its paper usage as part of the organisation’s continuing drive to minimise its impact on the environment. The Laserfiche EDM solution will phase-in different departments over the next few years and double the current number of users to 700.
Tom Flockhart, founder and managing director of Capital Document Solutions, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen to provide our Laserfiche EDM and support services to staff at SEPA. We have a strong track record of providing first-class services to a wide – and ever growing – range of private and public sector clients. We will look to continue setting the standards in our partnership with SEPA.”
Posted in Control Costs, Laserfiche, Public Sector
