| CASE STUDIES | September 2006 |
‘Search and destroy’ at the Insolvency Service
Graphic Data’s retrieval, management and destruction of archive case files saves government organisation time and costs
EVERY economy has its winners and losers. While there are over half-a-million new business start-ups each year in the UK, around 10 percent of that figure close when companies or individuals can no longer manage their debts.
It is at this point that the Insolvency Service, an executive agency within the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), becomes involved. (The DTI has its own arrangements for storage and are separate to those of The Insolvency Service) Operating under a statutory framework, the Service operates through a network of 38 Official Receiver (OR) offices throughout England and Wales, with headquarter departments in London and Birmingham.
The Service’s wide range of services include administering and investigating the affairs of bankrupts, acting as liquidator where no private sector insolvency practitioner is appointed, and advising ministers and other government departments on insolvency and related issues.
Enough paper to fill 93,000 boxes
Of course, each insolvency case creates paperwork. “Insolvency case files contain all the relevant legal documents, records and accounts which have to be stored and retrieved by our staff at offices across the UK,” explained Dino Georgiou, Business and IT liaison manager at The Insolvency Service. “The combination of a credit economy and recent legisIation has led to a 35-40% increase in the number of bankruptcy cases we deal with. That has increased our paper storage requirements and costs.”
The Insolvency Service’s case files currently fill in excess of 93,000 boxes. Needless to say, the Service does not store this paper mountain in its own offices, but has outsourced the storage, management and retrieval of its case files to Graphic Data, a leading managed services company that enables large organisations to streamline their document processes to achieve regulatory compliance, cost savings and increased efficiency.
Graphic Data provides services for the live file management of paper files, boxes, magnetic media, as well as electronic formats. The company currently manages approximately 25 million ‘live’ records and stores around 3 billion documents on behalf of its clients.
Indexing and retrieval
The Insolvency Service essentially has two types of case files:
- Investigation Where there may be misconduct involved which requires further investigation and may lead to disqualification or prosecution. These case files may be retained for up to 15 years and, in some cases, up to 30 years.
- Non-investigation -Where there has been no misconduct. These files are retained for seven years, although accounting records can be destroyed after one year.
Two key services from Graphic Data enable the Insolvency Service to manage both archived and ‘live’ files: indexing and retrieval.
“On the Indexing side, we have two ways of identifying case files,” added Georgiou. “By a court number - say, 123, 2006 - and by barcode. Last year Graphic Data carried out an audit of all the files and boxes we store. It was a massive one-off exercise, ensuring that all case details were entered correctly and that each file was barcoded in the right way. We knew this would really benefit us in terms of retrieval.”
FARIO for retrieval
With Graphic Data’s ability to index down to file level, its dedicated customer service team can react to a retrieval request, find a physical file and deliver it anywhere, rapidly. Key to this process is its Web-based platform, FARIO (Find and Retrieve Information Online), which enables the management of live files as well as archives, and enables routing, analysing, tracking and retrieval of information.
“Barcodes from existing and new files are entered into FARIO and into our LOIS (local office information) system for cross-referencing,” explained Georgiou. “To retrieve a file, an OR office can check FARIO or LOIS, send an instruction to Graphic Data to retrieve it and it will be delivered to that office usually within 48 hours, or on the next agreed delivery date.”
All 38 OR offices receive this support from Graphic Data, including headquarter offices in London. A three-tier delivery service operates, depending on the urgency. “In total, the Service retrieves around 1,000 files a month through Graphic Data,” said Georgiou.
Managed destruction service
One of the other benefits provided by FARIO relates to the destruction of old files. “Obviously we don’t want to incur needless storage costs,” said Georgiou, “so we asked Graphic Data to carry out a large-scale, secure destruction of old files and also help us review our file destruction processes. Using FARIO we can enter a review/destruction date on each file when it is sent for storage. Graphic Data then produces monthly lists, based on legislation and our internal archiving rules, of what is due to be destroyed. The lists are sent to our offices asking, ‘Do you wish to proceed with destruction of these files?’ If the answer is ‘yes’, Graphic Data takes care of secure destruction.
“We can now manage our destruction policy much more robustly. Files that are stored longer than they should be incur additional costs - having monthly reviews from Graphic Data has helped our offices to keep down those costs and plan their budgets for the year.”
Benefits
Georgiou cited other key benefits of working with Graphic Data. “Having one point of contact for the storage and management of our case files is a real bonus. The files may be in different physical locations, but that is completely transparent to us. Graphic Data provides one helpdesk, so we don’t need to go to different people to resolve any queries.
“Being able to retrieve files through FARIO has helped to cut down on staff time, and knowing when files will be delivered helps our staff to plan their workloads much more much efficiently.”
Management reporting is also a benefit, “Graphic Data provides all the key information I need to manage the service, such as reports on retrieval, delivery and collection, as well as destruction lists. This gives me a good overview on how well we are managing the archival and retrieval processes. We are happy with Graphic Data’s service, which has saved us hundreds of thousands of pounds annually."
Graphic Data plc. www.graphicdata.co.uk
Insolvency Service. www.insolvency.gov.uk/
