CASE STUDY FACTS:
DIGITECH SYSTEMS RESELLER: Fireproof Records Center
Columbus, Ohio
PROBLEM: Offer a digital storage solution to existing and new records retention customers
SOLUTION: ImageSilo® and PaperFlow™
RECOGNIZED BENEFIT:
“We felt our focus should be on providing customer solutions. Utilizing the Digitech Systems product suite has allowed us to achieve that goal.”
- Mike James, CEO |
Fireproof Records Center was founded in 1909 as a household moving and storage company that typically stored furniture. In the late sixties they diversified into commercial moving and storage.
The diversification into records storage came from the commercial moving services. Companies would move from an older office to a new office and not want to fill the space with files and boxes of records. Fireproof would store the boxes and filing cabinets for them, and if or when they needed a record, they would come down and look for it.
As time went by, they saw the need to diversify into records storage by offering services to retrieve the box or file cabinet, which was soon followed by data protection and imaging. Today, Fireproof provides complete Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)to their customers. ILM is the management of data from creation to obsolescence. ImageSilo has become an integral part of ILM for Fireproof Records’ customer base. Their partnership with Digitech Systems has allowed them to meet customer’s needs by giving them a complete information management system utilizing Digitech Systems’ electronic content and document management (ECM) offering.
Business Goal
Fireproof Records has successfully provided storage services, records retention and disaster recovery to businesses for close to a century. They currently have approximately 1,800 customers. Fireproof has four warehouses in Columbus, Ohio with a combined total of 500,000 square feet containing over 1.5 million boxes of paper. They also have a 60,000 square foot warehouse in Cleveland. As the ILM marketplace changed, some of their customers and potential clients began asking for a digital option for records storage that would allow them to electronically organize files into a central location and access files from their own business site.
To meet this demand, Fireproof began developing an in-house hosted solution called Webhouse. This proved to be a daunting task. Fireproof had only one engineer on staff who bore sole responsibility for developing and supporting the application. Additional resources for support and management of the application proved to be ineffective from a cost standpoint. In meeting customer requirements, Fireproof also discovered that maintaining the appropriate levels of backup and redundancy for data, power and access was a huge expense and a very complex undertaking. In addition, the time spent maintaining and managing the system, took key business personnel away from customers.
The Digitech Systems Solution
Fireproof Records became a Digitech Systems reseller in October 2001. They now utilize PaperFlow™, a complete, full-featured production-level document capture and indexing system to convert their customers’ paper documents into electronic images and index them for searching. ImageSilo, Digitech’s hosted document management and retrieval service allows them to provide their customers access to any document, anywhere, anytime utilizing any internet-accessible computer, including their own office’s desktop computers.
“Why re-invent the wheel? ImageSilo provides us with an easy-entry solution to sell to our existing customer base at a great price.”
-Mike James, CEO, Fireproof Records Center
Initially, twelve customers were migrated from the Fireproof Records hosted solution to ImageSilo. The migration was transparent to the end user and well received in terms of ease of use and functionality. Because their customers were already using a web-based search and retrieval, the transition was easy. As a result, customers were thrilled, and Fireproof continues to expand this customer base.
The Digitech Systems’ product line, when combined with Fireproof’s own traditional box storage offering, allows them to offer complete ILM to their clients. Customers store their most current records, which require frequent access, in the ImageSilo system, and archive older records to paper storage. Mike James states, “Our partnership with Digitech has allowed us to expand our product offering in a very attractive way. We now offer our customers a hybrid solution by storing older paper records and imaging current documents. Our customers are happy, and we are thrilled to offer them the solution that best meets their needs.”
Business Value to Fireproof Records
ImageSilo has provided Fireproof Records the ability to expand from a purely physical warehouse to a digital warehouse as well. They provide over thirty customers the benefits of digital technology without the investment in hardware, software, technical and administrative staff, allowing them to bring electronic document storage and retrieval services to their customers at an affordable cost.
ImageSilo has allowed Fireproof to expand their product and service offering to meet customer’s demand for electronic document management without negatively impacting their focus on the customer. As a hosted service, ImageSilo does not require Fireproof to maintain complex hardware, software, or storage systems. It provides a highly secure solution that is managed and hosted by Digitech Systems’ experts; they don’t have to maintain this expertise in-house. In addition, they can continue to expand their customer base without purchasing expensive new hardware or increasing the management costs of storage.
Best of all, ImageSilo provides a recurring revenue stream that stabilizes cashflow for Fireproof Records, while allowing them to build an ongoing relationship with key clients. As a result, revenue from their digital customer base has quadrupled!
Conclusion
By adding Digitech Systems to their product mix, Fireproof Records Center has achieved their goal of offering their customers a digital solution. ImageSilo simplifies their business model because they don’t have to invest in infrastructure or maintain expertise in-house. They continue to provide strict attention to meeting customer’s needs, while simultaneously offering them the best information management solution for their business. Through their partnership with Digitech, Fireproof Records Center has more than doubled their digital customer base and quadrupled their revenue.
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