NSW’s Upper Hunter Shire Council has deployed an EzeScan scanning solution to bring efficiency to its digital mailroom.

The Shire Council employs HP TRIM   6.2.5 for record-keeping, and wanted to minimise the manual entry of metadata associated with scanned items. Civica is used for property / asset management.

IT administrator Margaret Casey said, “We implemented EzeScan because we wanted to eliminate the time taken in entering data over and over again.”

All of  Upper Hunter Shire Council’s  incoming mail is electronically scanned  and stored, making it immediately available to offices located across the Shire. Mail is scanned on a pair of Canon scanners, an A4 DR3080 and the A3 DR6050.

Before the arrival of EzeScan, scan operators would need to enter information such as the title and author of a letter or form as well as who it was addressed to in Council. Once this data was entered and the document placed in TRIM, an automated workflow would assign a task and put actions on that. Metadata is linked to the document image which appears in TRIM.

“Now all we need to do is put in the applicant’s name and address of the property and EzeScan files it, and assigns it to a council officer. It shortens the input process,” said Casey.

“EzeScan automates things that we receive over and over again, for instance applications for zoning information, or outstanding rates and water charges.

The software solution has also helped with internal administration tasks, for example with annual salary reviews.

“We have 200 staff so there are 200 documents to file. With EzeScan all we need to do is put in payroll number and it queries the TRIM database and finds appropriate file, brings back the name and automatically saves it to TRIM. By entering one piece of information everything else is done.”

Use of the EzeScan software may expand in the future to include  Accounts Payable processing, barcode automation and tighter integration with TRIM and Civica.

“It’s a fantastic product, a great time saver and very easy to setup,” said Casey. “The  whole experience with EzeScan has been very good.”