Soho Housing Association, which manages 800 homes in central London, has chosen Sovereign Business Integration to advise on the procurement and implementation of an electronic document management (EDM) system.
Soho recognised that EDM would be an efficient way of managing the large number of business-critical documents it needs to store, archive and retrieve. However, as a relatively small housing provider, Soho has no internal IT department so Sovereign was invited to manage the selection and evaluation process for the EDM project. The overall aim of Soho’s EDM project is to reduce costs, improve productivity and increase efficiency.
Sri Murugan, head of finance, Soho Housing Association, explained, “We have a huge number of important documents such as tenancy agreements, contracts and invoices which are all paper-based. The sheer volume of these documents causes a significant problem for us in storing, archiving and retrieving them effectively.
“By implementing an EDM system, we will operate far more efficiently, meaning that we can provide better customer service as our staff will be able to access documents quickly and securely. The new system will also increase productivity as staff will no longer have to spend time on manual filing, freeing them up to manage for other tasks.”
The new system is also expected to improve business continuity planning and disaster recovery, by protecting the documents and enabling them to be quickly retrieved in the event of an interruption to IT services.
Murugan added, “Sovereign has a good knowledge of our existing systems and are able to advise us on the EDM solution that will best integrate with our current software. I am looking forward to the exciting opportunities that the new EDM system will bring to our organisation.”
