Fuji Xerox New Zealand has supplied Ngai Tahu with an End to End solution for the capture, index, processing and upload of hard copy documents into Microsoft CRM and SharePoint.

Ngāi Tahu is a Maori tribe from the South Island of New Zealand.

In 1996  Ngai Tahu were awarded $NZ170 million and the ability to purchase property from the Crown in a major settlement with the NZ Government, redressing land deals that were not honoured in the nineteenth century.

There is now over $NZ600 million of property and funds administered by Ngai Tahu, which has over 250 employees and helps fund scholarships and charitable work on behalf of the tribe.

Establishing membership to the tribal organisation, and hence access to financial and other support, requires that a person validate their genealogy stretching back to a census of the tribe conducted in 1848.

All of the hardcopy records establishing the membership of Ngai Tahu were stored as hard copy documents in a building in Christchurch, and could not be accessed in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 earthquake.

Donald Harman, SharePoint Administrator for Ngai Tahu, said the experience of learning how vulnerable the documents were saw the development of a business case to digitise the documents into SharePoint 2010.

“Once it’s in SharePoint we can protect it and share it back with tribal members.”

A business case was developed to digitise the genealogical records, known as the Whakapapa, as well as all of the Ngai Tahu’s legal documents and contracts. There are over 12,000 records in the “Whakapapa” genealogical database, which are now being scanned on two ApeosPort 6500 multi-function devices (MFDs) by two staff who can input up to 300 a day each.

The scanning workflow is now applied to all applications for enrolment onto Ngai Tahu register of descendants.

Fuji Xerox New Zealand supplied a capture solution based on Fuji Xerox ApeosPort MFDs and a Solution Builder software platform that integrates between the MFDs, Microsoft CRM and SharePoint 2010.

Once they are scanned, individual records can be viewed from within the CRM. The scanned PDFs are contained in the SharePoint 2010 document repository and are searchable.

Metadata is automatically applied to each document upon scanning.

The solution was designed to require minimal manual input of metadata when scanning at the MFD.

The list of documents related to each individual is extensive and typically includes the Whakapapa registration form, Birth Certificate, Marriage Certificate, Whai Rawa and Tax Certificate.

Paul Proctor – Consultant, Document Management and Business Process Engineering with Fuji Xerox New Zealand, said “The solution provides tight, seamless integration between the MFDs and CRM/SharePoint.

“It is an intuitive, flexible system which increases user adoption.”

Once the genealogical records and legal contracts have been captured, Ngai Tahu will explore the potential to also utilise the solution for accounts payable and other functions such as HR.

Fuji Xerox NZ and Ngai Tahu presented this Case Study at the 2012 New Zealand SharePoint Conference in Auckland.