WA governments targeted for Meridio EDRM push
WA governments targeted for Meridio EDRM push
Meridio set up offices in Sydney six weeks ago and almost immediately signed a deal with a Western Australian government to implement its EDRM package, which it expects to be one of many to follow in this side of the country.
Meridio has already achieved successes in the U.K. and the U.S. with a number of high profile organisations and the company has now set up an office in Australia with the intention of wooing Western Australia before sweeping across to the East Coast.
The company's strength lies in its solid alliance with Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu. Meridio offers companies an electronic records management solution that integrates transparently with Microsoft Office.
It extends Office/SharePoint to allow organisations to comply with regulatory legislation dictated by DoD 5015.2, PRO 2002, Freedom Of Information, Sarbanes Oxley, SEX, HIPPA, Basel 2.
Built on .Net, it supports collaborative working with documents and records management functionality using the Microsoft Office look and feel.
Some of the biggest clients in the U.K. include the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, Lloyds bank and TNT.
Malcolm Halliwell, the managing director for the Asia/Pacific, who has worked for Objective Corporation, Tower Technology over the years, talked about the challenges and successes he foresees for the company in Australia.
"We are lucky to have partnerships with Microsoft already. They are very keen for our EDRM solution to be implemented were Office is widely used in big organisations around Australia. The beauty of it is that our offering is so easy to add-on to people's computers. We don't have to worry about the problem of change management or re-training people because it slots in seamlessly and is invisible.
"This means that Microsoft Office users only notice the extra benefits of having a new EDRM solution available once it is implemented."
For instance, in the UK, the Chief and Assistant Chief Fire Officers' Association (CACFOA) implemented Meridio's package. The Meridio solution now stores all documents in their native format. The software acts as a buffer between the document and the viewer and document conversion only takes place if a user wants to view a document as a web page over the Internet.
CACFOA members may access all documents in Meridio from Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.
CACFOA EDMS now stores over 30,000 documents, each secured against accidental deletion and the system provides a clear audit trial of document use.
Halliwell said that he expects that the future will be very bright: "After initially getting here, I thought it would be hard to hit the ground running, but we were inundated with enquiries from day one. Now we have had a chance to let the dust settle, and begin our long-term strategy.
"Our first deal with Western Australia will start next month, and then after that, we have maybe about 80 other government possibilities in WA, as well as two commercial deals due to happen elsewhere in Australian and in New Zealand. We have a lot of people to meet, but the reaction from organisations so far has been overwhelmingly positive."
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