36
CASESTUDY
CO-OP TRANSFORMS BUSINESS
WITH DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
Document and work¾ ow management technology increases
ef½ ciency and reduces cost for the Co-op’s HR, pensions,
property and risk and insurance group divisions.
T
he Co-operative Group is the UK’s largest mutual to ½ nd information; work that is very time consuming,
retailer. It is the ½ fth largest food retailer, the third unful½ lling and error prone.” This motivation was set
largest retail pharmacy chain, the number one against a background of further business acquisitions by
The electronic
provider of funeral services and the largest independent the Co-op, which Allen explained meant more human
environment
travel business. It also has strong market positions in resource (HR) ½ les, more pensions paperwork and more
makes a huge
banking and insurance. property documentation.
As the group continues to grow, acquiring businesses, A massive scan and retrieval operation took place to
difference
properties and growing its employee base, it was faced cleanse, scan and index the documents. Each had to be
to staff
with an inevitable increase in an already unmanageable meticulously handled, with staples removed and a cover
productivity
mountain of paper documents across its corporate sheet applied with a barcode to save input time. The human
divisions. The group realised that it had to take hold of resources (HR) document management implementation
and ef½ ciency.
the growing paper mountain and consider investing in a required EASY to integrate with the Oracle HR system to
HR staff have
company wide document management (DM) system. enable automatic linking between documents in the DM
information at
EASY SOFTWARE was selected over a number of solution and records in the HR system.
suppliers and work began to implement the necessary Months of document scanning involving an external
the touch of a
hardware and software to support the ½ rst document document scanning bureau, graphic data, saw the paper
button without
management implementation in the group risk and documents converted to electronic ½ les enabling HR
having to
insurance division (GRID). staff to access over 1 million pieces of paper in seconds
“We have invested extensively in EASY’s Document without having to leave their desk.
wade through
Management over the past 18 months and we are “The electronic environment makes a huge difference
½ les of paper
very proud of some of the ef½ ciency savings and cost to staff productivity and ef½ ciency,” added Allen. “HR
documents.
reductions that have been realised across some of our staff have information at the touch of a button without
very large and high pro½ le departments,” said Matthew having to wade through ½ les of paper documents. So time
Allen, The Co-operative Group ef½ ciency, cost and utilisation has improved enormously. Also we have taken
compliance business manager. a retrieval process that used to take hours and reduced it
“Our document management strategy was to seconds. From a corporate compliance point of view
underpinned by three key drivers, namely to improve the HR documents now contain full audit trails, they can’t
ef½ ciency, reduce costs and to help the Group ensure be deleted and they can’t be mislaid and this is a critical
Compliance across its document handling, retention, position for documents with such high legal value.”
storage and retrieval,” explained Allen. The EASY system now operates an internal post-
“At a user level we aimed to reduce the time it took room where the dedicated scanning team cleanses, scans
to wade through ½ ling cabinets and boxes full of paper and indexes an average of 1,000 HR documents each day.
He added: “There is little doubt here at the Co-op that
document management has transformed our business.
Paper is time consuming to ½ nd and ½ le and retrieve but
it is also open to loss and damage from ½ re or ¾ ood. We
simply can’t take the risk of losing valuable documents to
any of these dangers. But it is the ef½ ciency in working and
reduced time searching for documents that is the most
obvious bene½ t and although that is dif½ cult to quantify
it is a very visible, daily bene½ t in our risk & insurance,
HR, pensions and property departments thanks to the
introduction of EASY’s document management system.”
The Co-op’s document management plans are
continuing apace with plans to electronically enable
Group Membership, which handles all the store cards,
health and safety and the legal department.
RETAIL TECHNOLOGY MARCH 2009
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