May 2000 The South African Mint has enhanced its secure document management facility by implementing a data archiving solution designed specifically for SAP R/3. "SA Mint has a document storage area which is reaching capacity, and owing to the importance and sensitivity of these documents they need to remain in a secure area," says Marc van Gool, SA Mint`s executive IT manager.
SA Mint acquired IXOS Archive last year from infrastructure optimisation company Supported Software, part of Datacentrix Holdings. "We have to keep copies of transactions for around seven years. Our rapidly growing database was leading to loss of expensive disk space in our servers and decreased performance," says Van Gool.
"IXOS Archive has solved these problems. We have reclaimed space on our servers which has led to less hardware expenditure, increased performance productivity of the database and a managed growth rate overall.
"Also we will resolve SA Mint`s document storage space problems with IXOSs document archiving solution in the near future."
SA Mint is a wholly owned South African Reserve Bank company. Its facility in Centurion makes the company one of the most advanced manufacturers in the world of circulated coins, numismatic products and medallions. In addition to minting all South Africa`s coins, the company supplies coins and coin blanks to countries throughout the world, resulting in thousands of transactions.
SA Mint runs SAP R/3 as the backbone of the company`s processes and workflow. "Supported Software and its IXOS Archive solution was the closest link in with SAP and the price was right. Supported Software completed a standard installation according to SA Mint`s current version of SAP R/3. Pilot testing proved successful."
After installation of IXOS, SA Mint did an analysis of its business processes to determine what information was no longer required in a true on-line state. IXOS then archived transaction data and print lists to optical disk. Data was physically deleted out of the database after it was archived.
"This keeps the database at a constant, predictable size, reduces growth of the disk farm, maintains performance, and over time can lead to a reduction in total cost of ownership. The optical media satisfies legal requirements, and the data is still centrally accessible, although not directly online," Van Gool explains.
The archiving of print lists, he says, resulted in two benefits for SA Mint.
"We no longer need to print multiple copies of the same report, and secondly, because most of the reports consist of many pages, an archived report can be `searched` through the `Full Text Search` capabilities of IXOS. This increases productivity through rapid information feedback. Future plans, says Van Gool, include imaging as a project. Documents, such as invoices linked to purchase documents, and technical drawings, can be scanned from other sources.
"IXOS Imaging will enable SA Mint to scan in these documents, index them against the relevant and non relevant SAP R/3 transactions. The most significant benefit is that all the documents will be available when needed in the right order. We will be able to immediately link to technical drawings, for example." " After scanning and indexing documents, staff will be more productive and have a greater trust of our SAP R/3 system during queries and general work related procedures."
Share