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How big was the challenge to go paperless ?
Huge ! We had over 15 years of records to digitise . In the past , when considering office space , there has always been an emphasis on having ample storage for the voluminous number of boxes and lever arches of evidence , not to mention medical records . This is in addition to having costly administration processes to sort and log all the evidence , which then required posting via courier or Royal Mail to our experts who work remotely .
What impacted your decision to go for it ?
As a team , we regularly review our operational practice to ensure that we are doing the task efficiently , and in a costeffective manner . We are always mindful of keeping our costs to a minimum , both for ourselves and , of course , our clients . The decision to go paperless was initially part of an IT project undertaken by the Support Services Team , who advised us that with a change of mindset and additional training for experts , the benefits of a paperless system would be significant .
The process started with identifying a suitable platform , which turned out to be easy and very cost effective . We had in the past attempted to go paperless , but the cost of a bespoke management package was hard to justify . We are successfully using Microsoft SharePoint , which means our documents are secure on a cloud-based system .
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Can you share with us the benefits to the business ?
We have had very positive feedback from all of our experts and the following benefits have been easy to identify :
• Significant savings on storage , printing and postage .
• Administrative time has reduced significantly . However , not all of our clients send documents in easy access folders , so there can still be quite a lot of tidying up , but we are working collaboratively with them and we are positive that we will all benefit from time saving in due course .
• Documents are easily accessible and logged in a way that makes it straight forward for experts and support services to find them .
• The documents are more secure than in hard copy and much less likely to get misplaced .
• The system helps us to meet our corporate environmental responsibility , along with other initiatives .
As a team , we are proud of our achievements and would encourage others to go forth !
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Has going paperless inspired any more green initiatives in the business ?
Lockdown definitely forced us to make changes which have digitally transformed the way we work . In the past , we carried out the majority of our care assessments face-to-face . During lockdown there were meetings and assessments that still needed to happen and in common with many within the medico-legal arena , we embraced video calls to keep us in operation and to continue to assist in meeting Court timetables where possible . We are pleased that this has been a success . Whilst it is not a solution in every case , as some claimants still need to be seen in their home environment , it has cut down our travelling time which has provided us with the option to take on additional work , as well as reducing our carbon footprint .
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“ We are proud of our achievements and would encourage others to go forth !” |
01249 456360 |
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For more info : www . janejamesandassociates . co . uk |
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THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2020 17 |