Managing a ‘Paper Mountain’

Case Study: Breeze & Wyles Solicitors

Copyzone Archiving were asked to convert all completed Client Files and make them accessible from a PC using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques to enable any file to be accessed from a personal computer.  The project started in March 2002.  Currently about 70,000 pages are being scanned each month.

Breeze & Wyles Solicitors is a busy practice with five offices in East Hertfordshire.  The firm wanted to improve the way in which they archived client matters to enable secure storage and ease of retrieval.  As with many similar firms of solicitors, they had previously used large amounts of space to store massive amounts of paper.  Not only was this expensive but it meant that obtaining information about past casework was slow and inefficient.

The Practice Manager, Martyn Bateman, said "We were looking for an effective means of storing closed client files that was confidential but also easily accessible for the Partners.  The keyword search facility offered by CZA's software enables files to be found quickly.  Once located, we can scroll through the electronic files and print some or all pages as required.  This solution has made our document retrieval quicker and cheaper and has revolutionised our archiving facilities.  As an added bonus, the skill, care and professionalism of CZA’s staff has helped the transition from paper to digital storage go very well.  The new system has worked so well at our Bishop’s Stortford office that we have now introduced it to three other branches"