Initially, the system was implemented for the university's Academic Office, which is responsible for student records, involving tens of thousands of documents including student registration forms, many of which needed to be copied for distribution to other departments.

Now the use of the system has been extended to the university's Finance Department and the personal files of employees kept by Personnel Services. "We had the same kind of need for document management as the Academic Office," says one of the university's systems accountants, Chris Palmer. "There was the obvious risk management driver of full back-up, but other factors included speeding up access to documents, and freeing the space occupied by physical documents."

"Having identified the need and the kind of functionality required, we looked at a number of prospective suppliers - in all nine, and eventually selected TokOpen who were able to demonstrate that their solution was what we wanted. One significant aspect was that some of the alternative suppliers were proposing solutions that would have involved changing our business processes, which we didn't want to do. Also, with the Academic Office already a user, we'd been able to see the software performing over a period," says Palmer".

"We wanted a one-stop shop solution avoiding the hassle of dealing with different suppliers for software and hardware, and as Capital Capture had supplied the initial system it was a fairly natural choice to go to them. Cost was also crucial, the department has over 100 users and the Tokairo licensing structure was attractive. We also liked the security functionality which enables us to control who has access to which documents".

"Why did we choose TokOpen? It had already proved itself in its Small Business Edition;
which wee could scale up to Enterprise Edition, migrating the data. Per user costs level off in the Enterprise Edition, making it worthwhile to add infrequent users. The Intuitive Drawer/Folder/Document structure reduces training requirements and again helps infrequent users. The windows standard interface makes it possible to train users quickly in what they need to do without the user feeling they are having to "learn a system".

"There is a high level of security, allowing the user's access to documents to be highly tailored, but easily administered. Other reasons included glowing references, a trusted reseller (Capital Capture) who would not re-engineer our processes unnecessarily and could provide complete support. This included hardware selection, all implementation, bureau scanning, ongoing maintenance, and very competitive pricing".

"SQL Server technology provided a known platform and web-enablement avoids client installation for many users. It also provides us with the ability to integrate Document Recognition, such as Teleform applications. We can also integrate with other systems via the API (Application Programming Interface)".

"When we compared it to other products we found that either the product and/or the resellers were looking to implement either fundamental business process change or global solutions such as content management that did not meet our need for the core archive benefits of a DMS. We felt we could accommodate the implementation without distracting effort from what we see as our critical activities".

"The system is easy to use and simple with a small learning/training curve," says Palmer. "It has freed up a significant amount of physical space, files are backed up, staff now have instant access to any document they are authorised to view and any number of users can view the same document at the same time".

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