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• ENOVIA MatrixOne

Case Study: Municipal Government, Social Services

View and markup for ECM, DM and PLM

A universal view-markup tool provides a single access point for all of the information and documents stored in an enterprise PLM, ECM or DM system.

The Challenge

The Social Services Department at the City of Eindhoven, the fifth largest city in the Netherlands, handles documents relating to disabilities, welfare, and other social assistance needs.

Applications and supporting documents created and sorted by the department's 450 employees were maintained in paper folders in a large warehouse archive. When requested, dossiers were physically tracked down and transported through the City's internal post service to the designated case worker. Only one worker at a time could handle a dossier, while the documents themselves were highly susceptible to loss and damage.

With over 250 new cases and over 6000 incoming, internal, and outbound paper documents per week, the department faced an increasingly cumbersome and steadily growing mountain of paper.

Plans to move to a new building made the paper system even more daunting. The new office would not have permanent desks for every employee. Each day, an employee would find the first available desk and work there. Because of this, retrieving paper dossiers from storage and sending them to case workers would be difficult.

All of these factors led to the need for a flexible solution where workers could access files from any part of the building and at the same time as other employees. Clearly, the City needed an electronic document management system.

The Solution

Spicer's Dutch partner OIS delivered DossierWeergave, or "FolderView", a folder-based document management system which uses Spicer ViewCafé as a document viewing and markup tool. All documents are now digitized and stored in a central online repository. Case workers complete original applications on paper after which they are automatically placed into the system as TIFF files and referenced to the appropriate case folder.

All documents relating to a particular case are linked together and case workers can find required folders at a moment's notice through electronic search. No more waiting for the internal post office to deliver; case workers simply click on a link in the FolderView system to open the document in Spicer's ViewCafé. With Spicer ViewCafé taking care of documents view and markup, digital files cannot be lost or damaged, so the life span of the document is controlled by the needs of the case worker and not by human wear and tear.

Since fully deploying FolderView in 2003, the City has seen a 20% decrease in the number of workers required to handle the documents and dossiers. In addition to the benefits of improved service to the people of Eindhoven, meaning faster responses to client inquiries, employees face less all-round frustration while searching, and all documents are securely stored and easily accessible to multiple workers.

Spicer Solutions

Spicer ViewCafé, a Web-based viewer for exploring, collaboratively reviewing, and printing documents, eliminates communication bottlenecks and improves document workflows through seamless integration with document management systems.

Business Benefits:

• Improve document management system ROI through quicker, streamlined decision making; all users see the same version, the same data, and the same markups, and can access this information instantly and continuously.
• Accelerate decision making with instant and continuous access to information.
• Increase competitive advantage with faster response times, elimination of re-keying errors and reduced maintenance of multiple disparate systems.
• Save money on training and maintenance with one easy to install, easy to use application.