MSC - HR Department - Electronic Document Management Case Study

MSC is the second largest container shipping company services in the world and have grown dramatically over the last 7 years.

With staff levels in excess of 500 in the UK,  MSC are now located in 2 high quality linked buildings, so the challenges for the HR department were in the storage and access to files, for the department's staff and for relevant MSC Managers.

MSC’s HR & Payroll Manager said: ‘With a small team to service the growing needs of the business I realised that we needed to make use of the latest storage and retrieval systems to work as effectively and efficiently as we could. We wanted to avoid the problem of having to manage increasing paper based files- instead we wanted an electronic document management system that would take physical filing out of the equation and provide us with other functionality that would help manage our information flow’

IPC were already working for MSC,  providing an outsourced Bureau Scanning service for the Imports and  Exports departments which the QA Manager had been impressed with. ‘I had no hesitation in recommending IPC to the HR Manager, as we knew that their quality of systems and services meet with the standards MSC look for’

IPC supplied the Version 2 of M.Store in 2007, with cabinet and document structures to meet the business needs, and then provided an upgrade to Version 3 with increased functionality in 2008. The new version allows all electronically received and created documents to be stored in their native format direct into the system.
However the nature of HR & Payroll means that information is still received and created on paper, so the system also has a scanning module linked to a departmental EDM scanner, also provided by IPC.

The person responsible for the system operation on a day to day basis, and commented ‘I joined the department in 2007 just as M.Store was introduced, and was initially responsible for scanning our backlog of paper based files. Now with the new functionality including tasks workflow to allow us to manage time lines on jobs and document retention to meet data protection regulations, M.Store has become a core part of our method of working’

The system sits on a secure server and access is fully controllable by the HR Department ensuing confidential information is much better controlled than paper based files. The Document Retention module means that HR can allocate periods that each document type is retained for and these can then be automatically deleted or reviewed for action, taking away the need for manual ‘weeding’ of files.

MSC’s HR & Payroll Manager said ‘As a department we are always working at a high capacity, so we needed a system that would not only meet our needs, but be implemented with the minimum of fuss, in budget, and then work consistently without problems!'

I have to say M.Store and IPC have met all those criteria; their approach to project management and post installation support has been of the highest level I’ve experienced’

Pam Roberts (IPC) says ‘ We have worked with a number of HR departments over the years, from Government to Industry, and it’s always satisfying when existing clients such as MSC appreciate the quality of what we do and invite us to expand our offerings with products to meet their increasing business needs’