Operational Efficiency – How British Waterways saves £9M a year in records management

British Waterways is the public corporation ( in the process of transitioning to charitable trust status ) that cares for the 2,200-mile network of canals and rivers in England, Scotland and Wales.

The business of British Waterways involves a massive volume of paper records – boat licences, renewal forms and related documents – which historically have been stored in over 100 large file cabinets, and the volume of paperwork grows daily. With its available storage space declining due to office rationalisation, the company was looking for a cost-effective solution to archive its large backlog of paper documents and electronically capture, archive and retrieve documents at a moment’s notice.

British Waterways selected Kofax to implement a business process automation solution that would address each of its challenges who, in turn, engaged Deltascheme Limited, a local Kofax Certified Solution Provider, to integrate the solution.

Deltascheme implemented Kofax Capture document capture software and VirtualReScan (VRS) for capture productivity and quality throughout a document’s lifecycle. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server was integrated as the document management repository.

The combined Kofax and Microsoft solution has enabled British Waterways to save more than £9 million annually in document and records management costs and realise vast improvements in its efficiency and productivity. The agency’s documents are now centrally stored, easily retrievable and accurately labelled and the solution has been rolled out to 11 sites across the UK.

Posted by Ian