Freight Transport Association
OnBase from Avanquest drives FTAs integrated document management
The Freight Transport Association (FTA), is one of the largest trade associations in the UK, representing the transport interests of over 11000 companies that move goods by road, rail, sea and air. Members of the FTA operate over 200000 goods vehicles, which is nearly half the UK fleet. In addition, they consign over 90 per cent of the freight moved by rail and over 70 per cent of sea and air freight.
One of the key factors in the FTA’s ongoing success and penetration throughout the UK, is the depth and breadth of its expertise in freight transport, and the access members have to its information and advisory services on technical, legal and operational questions. Information needs to be accessed quickly and effectively to ensure FTA members meet compliance requirements today and have advance warnings and support for planning for compliance in the future.
So much information and documentation presented Nigel Smart, Head of IT at the FTA, with a significant challenge; to ensure information was readily available and that the FTA maintained a high level of service to their members. He comments “We originally looked towards imaging solutions as a replacement for microfiche archiving. We needed to scan, index and store documents as digital images. We were introduced to OnBase via our supplier Xclusive Solutions, a Avanquest Partner. On reviewing the solution, it soon became evident that there were far greater gains to be made from workflow, document management and archiving. We dealt with the account teams from Xclusive and Avanquest, the distributor. Their approach proved to always be responsive.”
OnBase can lower the total cost of ownership while offering a solution that will provide the most dependable, mission-critical technology for information and service needs. It provides integrated document management, which manages virtually every kind of document image, host generated reports, application files, HTML forms, emails and video clips. It also covers every stage of the document lifecycle creation/input, storage, retrieval, revision and distribution. The OnBase solution they installed is built upon a highly evolved web-enabled, client/server architecture that leverages the openness and scalability of databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, to deliver high performance solutions for the department, division or enterprise.
Nigel continues, “OnBase has made a significant difference to the Credit Control department. Very early gains were realised in this department who are using OnBase to archive copy invoices from our accounts system for use in payment chasing. The main benefit has come from the ability for credit staff to archive, view and forward copy invoices, saving time, paper and reducing human error. We are now also using OnBase to act as a central library for storing and distributing our policy documents internally and to FTA members. We have at least 5000 stored. We don’t believe we have realised the full benefit of this yet and there is still much untapped potential in the system we have.”
OnBase offers users the flexibility of accessing the system through several types of thin (browser-based) clients, a traditional thick client, Windows Explorer or even other enterprise applications. The FTA has five key users with full client access. However, the web tool enables the remaining staff and potentially members, to access the FTA OnBase library. This provides fast, consistent and secure access to all documents stored in the OnBase system.
