Kodak Alaris partner Go Systems counts many local councils across New South Wales amongst its client base. In partnership with Kodak Alaris it has designed a technology roadmap for one of the state’s largest councils utilising its capture hardware and software solutions.

The council’s Electronic Document Management (EDM) department is staffed by three full-time people. The team is supported by other employees who are on rehabilitation from various injuries who help out with the most time-consuming element of digitization - data prep.

The EDM team is charged with digitising all paper-based documents created across all departments – from financial records, development applications, childcare centre files, to HR files, staff timesheets and rotas, through to planning applications. Volumes continue to increase year on year and the biggest challenge is that there is little sign of this trend abating in the immediate future.

In recent times, there has been a property boom in the region, and this has resulted in a surge in development applications. These files are typically very large, stored separately and sent in their entirety to be digitised once approved. With rooms packed full of boxes to be scanned, keeping on top of the day to day scanning is a challenge, so much so that outsourcing to various bureaus is a pre-requisite.

The department head is consumed by keeping on top of daily workflow and as such relies on ongoing consultative support from Go Systems to ensure the operation continues to leverage best-in-class technology to stay ahead of the game.

The council has a fleet of eleven networked Kodak Scanners. This includes two i2600 and i3200 Scanners, three i3400 and i4200 models, as well as one i1440 Scanner, running with Alaris Capture Pro Software Network Edition. In addition to the scanners installed in the EDM, other scanners are also located in off-site locations where they are utilised for specific tasks such as within the accounts payable function.

Capture is shifting from scan to archive, to scan to process, in support of this, the council recently migrated to the TechnologyOne Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform. Go Systems worked with the council, to automate and streamline workflows, enabling information to be scanned directly into pre-defined folders, stored in line of business (LoB) applications, used and managed from any device, anywhere and anytime.

With a small team and an ever-increasing workload, ensuring maximum efficiency and productivity within the EDM is essential in order to ensure successful digital transformation. An annual support agreement, which includes up to two pre-emptive site visits by a qualified engineer, ensures maximum uptime.

The EDM department handles documents of different sizes and formats from onion paper, carbonised delivery documents and everything in between to A0. Image quality is a high priority, a requirement that led the team to migrate from a multi-vendor fleet to one that now only comprises Kodak Alaris scanners. There is so much paper to process that it also uses bureaus, however as consistency of quality is key, it only outsources to bureaus that operate Kodak Alaris fleets.

Prior to switching to a fleet of Kodak Alaris scanners, the council was frustrated, having to deal with paper handling issues, legacy models not capable of dealing with the desired throughput, ease of managing the scanned documents and inadequate quality of images captured.

Using the Kodak Alaris scanners, once paper has been prepared, scanning into business applications is very fast and effective. Thanks to unparalleled image quality, the scanners have significantly cut the number of documents that require rescans and manual operator interventions, which costs both time and money. The ability to feed mixed batches, without worrying about lower throughput speeds or consistent, high quality output, is also saving time spent manually pre-sorting documents.

Engineered to work seamlessly with any Kodak Alaris scanner, Alaris Capture Pro Software, provides intelligent capabilities that increase productivity and improve efficiency.

Thanks to best-in-class capture technology and the ability to process and route information across various systems quickly and accurately, the council has been able to lower the cost of the scanning process as well as endto- end processing times.

• Capture Pro Software which enables batches of paper to be quickly converted into high quality images, makes image clean up a breeze. It offers robust data extraction and seamless delivery to business applications too.
• Ongoing consultative support and advice from Go Systems ensures the council’s solution is scalable and that it achieves best value out of every new technology investment.