Independent Lifestyles, which cares for adults with complex needs, has used Document Options to digitise thousands of historical documents, saving time, money and helping improve administration efficiency.
Two hundred staff at Independent Lifestyles are dedicated to ensuring that every person they care for is recognised as an individual, valued as an active citizen, and is given opportunities to participate fully in their local community. Located in Lancing, West Sussex, the organisation supports around 60 adults with complex needs like autism, brain injury, learning disabilities and mental health. Independent Lifestyles aims to create stable, positive support arrangements that promote choice, dignity, independence and long-term quality of life.
Delivering specialist care
The business delivers specialist care services for communication, emotional wellbeing, sensory needs, positive behaviour support, social development and everyday living tasks. The adults are helped to live fulfilling and independent lives at home or in several four or five-bedroom, privately rented properties in Kent and Sussex.
To help improve and streamline the services it offers, Independent Lifestyles has digitised most of the processes, systems and documents it uses to support its customers and run the business. “Over the last few years, our business and those who rely on us has expanded rapidly. In line with that growth, we needed to adapt and modernise how we work. We have increased IT and shifted towards more paperless working. That left us with a legacy of paper documents that for legal reasons we must keep,” said Charlotte Morris, Administrator at Independent Lifestyles.
Wasting valuable office space
The documents included confidential information on cared-for adults, medical records, meeting notes and reports as well as finance and HR documents used to manage the business. Although historical and not often needed, these documents must be kept for several years. But they took up a lot of valuable space. There were around 40 large boxes stuffed with thousands of A4 pages. If information from the documents was needed, it was often difficult to find especially if a carer looking after someone in their home needed access to information in a box at head office.
Independent Lifestyles had engaged a supplier to start digitising the documents but did not have a good experience. It seemed the business and the project was too small for the supplier, and implementing the service was challenging for staff focused on care rather than complex digital functions. So, it was a breath of fresh air when the business connected with Document Options.
Document Options: a great company to deal with
“Form the first moment we met Document Options the response was excellent. My initial enquiry was answered in under 10 minutes. I was dealt with in a very friendly, personable way and there was no pre-conceived idea that we were too small or not worth the investment. Document Options has been a great company to deal with from start to finish,” said Charlotte.
Document Options has provided Independent Lifestyles with a document scanning service, coming to the business’ offices, removing 40 boxes of paper documents and scanning them at its facility in Crawley, West Sussex. The documents underwent Optical Character Recognition (OCR), so content is text-searchable. Charlotte said that when she received the digitised documents, she was given a simple, easy-to-follow guide to downloading and archiving files, making the process quick and efficient. It underlined the quality of service and no-job-is-too-small attitude Document Options delivers.
Delivering cost and time savings
The Document Options service proved to be a far more cost-effective way for Independent Lifestyles to digitise its document than undertaking the project itself. Besides time and cost saving, it ensures valuable staff did not waste time on mundane document scanning. “Because of the sheer volume of documents, had we done scanning ourselves we’d probably still be doing it long after the documents were no longer needed. Also, it was not worth us investing time and money, compared to the cost, efficiency and speed of service that Document Options delivered,” said Charlotte.
Improving compliance and efficiency
As well as making information easier to find, the service has helped Independent Lifestyles improve compliance since it can now demonstrate organised and efficient legal document retention and record keeping. “If we are asked for information or documents about someone’s medical records, for example, we have a much quicker and more efficient capability to access that information,” said Charlotte.
The Document Options service also saved Independent Lifestyles having to invest in more space at its head office to store the paper documents.
“The impact of the Document Options service is huge. From my perspective as the sole company administrator, Document Options has removed the headache and daunting task of processing thousands of documents, and provided a simple, straightforward and cost-effective service,” said Charlotte.
If your organisation still relies on paper-based files or legacy hardcopy retrieval systems, contact Document Options today to discover how we can help you reduce costs, improve efficiency, and enhance compliance through expert document scanning and digitisation services in the UK.
