Metrofile, the document management business, has consolidated lines of business at its Durban and Cape Town facilities.
The two-year consolidation project has delivered a more efficient service to customers, through tightly binding the business`s scanning and microfilm bureaus with the records centre.
"We can offer more competitive pricing now through lower operating overheads and removal of duplicate processes," says Paul Mullon, marketing director at Metrofile, "as well as offering faster turnaround times and the flexibility to meet specific customer demands."
The new centres, each with an offsite storage facility, are now fully fledged processing centres with two components: conversion and storage. Combining both components under one roof has allowed the company to reduce overheads and pass this on to customers through improved service and competitive pricing.
"Having conversion bureau and storage services combined onto one premise has provided Metrofile with a `cradle-to-grave` capability where documents are passed through a single process, and then routed for indexing, conversion or storage," says Mullon.
Although document conversion and document storage processes are different disciplines, combining them under one roof has allowed Metrofile to share many common skills and resources.
The result is a multi-skilled staff with the ability to move from one requirement to the next, following peaks in both businesses.
"The result is less overtime, fewer temporary employees and less work-related stress. All these have combined to provide a better standard of turnaround times, quality and cost control, which directly benefit customers," says Mullon.
Better operating efficiencies have been achieved as the business grows its document management digital conversion line of business. The space required to store a box of 4 000 individual sheets of paper, which can take 10 minutes to properly search for a specific item, is 1 200 square centimetres. The same box uses 200MB of digital storage capacity, equating to 2 000 digitally converted boxes fitting into the same shelf space.
In addition, the ability to offer complete document management means customers are no longer involved in the legislated, storage grudge purchase, but instead they gain speedier, more efficient digital retrieval of documents.
"The flexibility that the combined centres gives the business means that we can meet almost any customer document management need, giving customers exactly what they are looking for, when they want it," says Mullon.
The demand for this service, already staggering, is growing:
* IDC reports that digital information is growing at 95% a year;
* The University of California at Berkeley says more information will be generated in the next two years than in the prior history of mankind;
* E-mail storage requirements are projected to grow 205% over the next two years;
* E-statement growth is set to be more than 500% by 2004; and
* The management of information storage is reported to cost between eight and 10 times more than the cost of the storage equipment itself.
"Our vision is to help corporate clients regain control - and in many cases gain control for the first time - of their vital business records. Corporate governance, shareholder demands, the drive for competitive advantage and customer service - to mention a few - are all impacted by an organisation`s ability to gain control of all its information, and that is what we are aiming to deliver," says Mullon.
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Metrofile, a broad-based empowerment company, is the South African market leader in the management of business documents, and is committed to help customers reduce costs and improve productivity in processes that are centred on documents and corporate records.
All companies have a combination of paper and electronic documents, and are forced by law and customer requirements to secure the availability of the documents for the duration of their lifecycle. For most organisations, the volume of documents is growing at an exponential rate, and is becoming increasingly difficult to manage.
Metrofile is uniquely positioned to provide consulting and implementation of full lifecycle paper and electronic records management solutions from storage and conversion through to destruction.
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