DM1907

Dm CASE STUDY: SOUTHALL SCHOOL
Look and learn
Visionary school saves time and space with Fujitsu scanning solution
Southall Special school, based in
Telford, is a leader in the use of
best digital practices to offer a
more complete learning and working
experience. Part of the school's remit is
keeping hundreds of files worth of
accurate and up to date student
records. An additional requirement is
that pupils with special education
needs (SEN) have school records which
need to be safely and securely stored
for 25 years. This was proving a
problem for the school in several
different ways, lack of storage space,
access and retrieval issues as well as
GDPR compliance. Fujitsu scanners in
conjunction with software from
partner Filestar have solved all of these
problems.
The filing cabinets at Southall School
were filling up with pupil records,
taking up valuable space, making
document retrieval difficult and time
consuming, whilst being at risk from
theft, fire and flooding. Jonathan
Barrett, IT Manager and part of the
school's senior management team,
knew there had to be a better solution,
and thought that digital scanning may
hold the answer.
Barrett contacted Steve Hill at Filestar
to get their expert help and advice.
Filestar offers a cloud-based document
management software solution which
has comprehensive auditing facilities
and flexible retention policies. This
sounded like a great fit for the
school's paper document problems.
Filestar recommended the Fujitsu fi-
7300NX scanner as the ideal
companion to their software, for
scanning the pupil records.
ONE-BUTTON SOLUTION
The stand-alone scanner can cope with
a wide variety of documents that can
then be seamlessly processed to a
range of destinations and systems via
the in-built touchscreen and intuitive
software.
With the scanning part of the
problem solved, Jonathan and Steve
worked together to customise the
Filestar software to precisely meet the
needs of the school. Filestar works like
a virtual filing cabinet, and with just
one button press on the Fujitsu
scanner, the pupil records are scanned,
the typed text is converted into digital,
searchable text, and the document is
automatically filed in the correct folder
in the cloud.
Having the documents kept securely
in the cloud offers many advantages.
Firstly, the school no longer needs to
hold a paper copy, saving filing space
and eliminating the risk of damage
and theft. Secondly, the documents
can only be accessed by the correct
personnel with the right permissions,
and every time the documents are
accessed, there is a full audit trail of
who has read what, and what they've
done with the document. Finally,
searching and retrieval of documents
can be done instantly, enabling
compliance with GDPR and saving time
and administration resources.
Jonathan Barrett and the school have
been thrilled with the solution, and
said that the scanners are 'absolutely
amazing.' The scanner is very portable,
and has moved around the school as
the pupil records have been scanned
and indexed. This has given the school
staff some much needed extra room in
the offices and ensured a safe and
secure procedure for storing the
records for many years to come.
More info: emea.fujitsu.com/scanners
22
@DMMagAndAwards
July/August 2019
www.document-manager.com