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LEX
VEHICLE LEASING DRIVES TO DM SUCCESS WITH TOKOPEN
One Storage and management of documents relating to their
fleet of over 120,000 vehicles is now being handled for Lex
Vehicle Leasing, the UK's leading company car and van specialists
- www.lvl.co.uk - by Tokairo's TokOpen document management
and workflow system.
For each vehicle, Lex have to maintain an extensive file of
documents, including ownership forms, contracts and a variety
of other material. This includes documents regarding accidents
to vehicles owned by the company, such as letters from repair
garages, solicitors' letters and invoices for work that has
been completed.
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The
documents have to be stored securely yet also be easily
accessible to various departments - at three locations:
Manchester, the firm's main operating office, as well
as Marlow in Buckinghamshire, and Stirling in Scotland.
Under a former, mainly manual paper system, there were
often delays in tracking down relevant documents and
getting them to staff who required access. Documents
could often be misfiled or lost.
Now,
using TokOpen, Lex is scanning all these documents directly
into their system from which they are instantly available
to authorised personnel anywhere in the company over
Lex's network and using TokOpen Web - via any Web browser.
Original documents are stored safely and because in
most cases mere copies are sufficient for working use,
the originals are safe from loss or misfiling.
The
result is a streamlined business process that provides
rapid, reliable and secure access to all documents,
enabling Lex staff to respond more quickly and professionally
to queries from customers and suppliers, and provide
a better service. And because the original documents
- once scanned - are stored securely, the system helps
Lex better meet its regulatory obligations. The system
was sold and installed by Northampton-based Tokairo
channel partner Datatrade - www.datatrade.co.uk - who
also provide ongoing consultancy.
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1999, Headquartered in Manchester, Lex Vehicle Leasing are the
country's largest company car and van specialists. A joint venture
company owned by Halifax Bank of Scotland and the RAC, it serves
around 20,000 UK businesses including two thirds of the FTSE
top 100 firms. Its rapid and sustained growth has set it firmly
on course to become the leading full-service leasing company
in Europe.
Highly
customer-focused and sales-driven, Lex has an established
reputation for quality, with many awards, including the 2003
"Fleet Excellence" award for Best Contract Hire
Company. It has also achieved quality management certificate
ISO90001/02 for high standards of business processes and systems,
as well as environmental certificate ISO14001. The company
employs over 600 staff at three sites - Manchester, Marlow
in Buckinghamshire, and Stirling in Scotland.
"The
leasing business generates a large number of documents for
each vehicle," says Lex Service Delivery Manager Debbie
Morgan. These include, for example, V5 ownership forms, as
well as contracts, and correspondence from clients, solicitors
and repair firms regarding individual vehicle accidents and
repairs. These have to be available to a variety of departments
throughout the vehicle's life, and our former paper-based
filing system meant that sometimes there were delays in getting
the right documents to the right people - and there was always
the risk of mis-filing or just losing them".
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As
Lex's business grew, the company recognised the need
for a professional document management solution to speed
up the process and maintain its high standard of service
to customers. A mature and experienced user of IT, the
company's main applications run on Sun Solaris with
an Oracle database.
"Because
our business is all about service, we wanted a system
that was rugged enough to handle a very demanding application,
reliable, easy to use and fitted in with our existing
applications without too much tailoring," says
Morgan.
"Tokairo's
TokOpen system met all these requirements and also offered
the ability to provide Web access via our own network
to users - currently over 40 but expected soon to double,
with several users per machine". The system was
installed by Tokairo's reseller Datatrade who also provide
on-going consultancy and support. The implementation
was trouble-free and the system didn't require customisation
- we used it pretty much out of the box".
The
three main initial areas of use are storage and management
of documents relating to accidents, with the volume
of scanned letters ranging from 60 to 150 a day, storage
of V5 vehicle registration documents, and contracts.
"The system allows individual users to scan incoming
post and other relevant documents and assign them to
the relevant departments," says Morgan. "Key
index fields are retrieved via ODBC queries".
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The storage of the V5 registration documents - the log books
- presented a particularly challenging task. "With over
100,000 vehicles on our books, that's 100,000 V5s and new
ones coming in at the rate of 150 a day," says Morgan,
"and they have to be kept and accessible for as long
as we own the car. "For example, they need to be referred
to if there is a police, insurance or accident query or if
a customer needs to replace a broken number plate or lost
ignition key".
The solution was TokOpen's Sorting Office module that is
set up to enable users to scan in documents and use a combination
of DokuStar OCR and ODBC query for the index fields. Because
in most queries relating to a V5, only a copy is required,
so once scanned, the original document can be securely removed
to the master file, which removes the possibility of losing
or mis-filing them. Now being rolled out across the whole
company, the system is to be extended to cover congestion
charge notices and other relevant documentation.
The same process has also now been adopted to store and manage
individual contracts, with originals, again, kept in the master
file. So far around 80 per cent of historical contracts have
already been scanned in, with scanning of the remainder due
to be completed shortly. New contracts signed are scanned
in straight away. Altogether, Lex purchased three TokOpen
Sorting Office licenses and one TokOpen Web license.
"The result is a significant improvement in efficiency
and staff productivity." Says Morgan, "most importantly
a better service to customers and suppliers. We don't lose
anything and staff have virtually immediate access to any
required document from any web browser. It has made a real
difference".
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Tokairo Ltd
20 Linford Forum, Rockingham Drive, Linford Wood,
Milton Keynes, MK14 6LY, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1908 695 569 | Fax:
+44 (0) 1908 696 961 | E-mail:
info@tokairo.com
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© Copyright 2004 Tokairo
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