Case Study - Friendship & Care Housing Association

Cave Tab Takes Care of Housing

02/09/2008 10:00

In 2005, the Friendship and Care Housing Association attended a Records Management Conference, looking for ideas to solve the problems they were experiencing. It was at this conference where they met records management specialists, Cave Tab. Cave Tab specialise in all aspects of records management from basic files and labels through to a hi-tech scanning bureau for digital document storage.

A Successful Application

In February 2006, a meeting between Friendship and Cave Tab was arranged to discuss all aspects of Records Management within the Housing Association. It was clear from this discussion that Friendship were experiencing various different problems in a number of departments. Expressing a long term wish to digitise all records, they acknowledged that there were many steps to take before they could realise that aim. Applications could be seen for FileTrail, Scanning, High-Density Colour Coded Filing, Archiving and File Services so they were invited to Cave Tab’s offices where they could see all of these products and systems in operation.

Having made the decision to implement some of these changes, the first part of the process was to scan the supplier invoices for the Accounts Department. Cave Tab collected the files from Friendship and delivered them back to their secure scanning bureau; once scanned, the paper documents were securely stored and available for physical retrieval, if required, before being securely destroyed after an agreed period of time.

Relocation, Location, Location

In October 2007, both the Accounts and HR departments were looking to move to smaller premises and needed to condense their filing systems. Cave Tab sent in a File Services team to convert the files in both departments into colour-coded systems; this would help them to eliminate misfiling and speed up retrieval times. Then, by utilising space efficient methods for storage with Twinfile Cabinets, both departments were able to move to the new location. Further space was saved with the ongoing scanning of archived financial records.

In March 2008, the next phase began. The Friendship offices in Birmingham and Loughborough were relocating; Cave Tab installed storage systems in the new offices and the File Services team followed that up by relocating the housing files from both locations in to their new premises, converting them in to colour-indexed systems along the way.

Tracking Down the Future

The next step of this project is for the archive area to be re-organised into a more space efficient system that utilises FileTrail tracking software. The archive will be emptied and the files stored at Cave Tab’s secure warehouse. A new, more space efficient storage system will be put in place before the files are returned to the Friendship archive. As the files will be using the colour indexing system, they will all have a barcode, this will enable Friendship to utilise the FileTrail tracking software.
 

News category: About Cave Tab, Physical Records Management, Specialist Sectors


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