Latest News
Medical Files – Occupational Health (January/February 2011)
In late 2010, a large rail franchise performed a cost analysis of the outsourcing they’d been doing to an Occupational Health provider and determined that by bringing these services in-house, they would be able to save over £500,000 over the next three years. Within months the rail franchise had hired a professional medical administration team and taken over the service themselves. The transfer of existing employee medical files from the previous supplier proved the perfect opportunity to convert records to electronic formats.
“The system is great,”, said the centre manager, “all of my employee records are right here, right at my desk. I can get replies to the consultants within minutes. We still generate paper, but we capture it then and there using the Unified Services model, so the right people have access to the right data in a timely manner.”
KCL performed both the initial back-file conversion of over 6,000 employee medical files, and then worked with HR and Occupational Health management personnel to develop a simple and effective Unified model. “These are just the types of scenarios that Unified Services was designed to service,” said Joel Prendes, Director.
Fleet Vehicle Records (December 2010)
The Engineering teams at UK rail franchises are the people who keep these heavily used pieces of equipment in good operating order. Without them the whole network would come to a standstill, quite literally. So when a large rail franchise in the southeast approached KCL about capturing their service records and exam packs, KCL immediately understood the urgency and importance of these records. “These are critical business documents that prove that maintenance requirements are being followed to the letter and that allow engineers to easily analyze trends and patterns in their ongoing service schedules,” said Joel Prendes, Director.
Due to the enormous volume of historical records, the franchise decided on a day-forward approach via the Unified Service method. KCL configured the network infrastructure and worked closely with the Engineering team to determine the best methods for long term search and retrieval.
With the project now well underway, Engineering managers hope to tie the documents directly to their primary engineering system. One of the Administrators shared this: “The live system only has the items available that are currently being worked on, none of the historical records get maintained electronically. By linking the two we should be able to give our engineers the best and most broad overview of a unit’s history.”
Oracle Contracts (October 2010)
KCL has partnered with Hitachi Consulting to develop and release an integrated document management component for Oracle iProcurement Contracts module, an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite. Designed to improve users access to critical contract documents and separate non-essential DM functions from the business critical Oracle database, the project was sponsored by three separate rail franchises and was rolled out successfully to all franchise’s users in October 2010.
“This is another successful integration within the Oracle E-Business Suite, proving how KCL’s software offering can adapt to various business areas and drive real value for our customers,” said KCL’s owner and Managing Director, Karl Cooper.
Apart from improved access by the user community, the franchises all had a stated goal of minimizing database recovery times. DM was a requirement for the user community, but IT Directors weren’t keen to see the size of their databases expanded by terabytes over the coming years just to store non-critical business contracts, with one Director offering: “If my Oracle database needs to be restored, I can’t have that timeframe extended even by a few hours; I need my Oracle up and running – if I don’t have access to my documents for a few hours, the business can still run.”
September 24th, 2009 – KCL completes large-scale MFD implementation in record time
Having won the Southern Railway franchise business was only part of the equation – KCL’s engineers were then tasked with implementing the solution, totalling over 50 multi-function devices throughout the Southern network offices and stations. Working after-hours to avoid interrupting employee’s workdays, KCL staff were able to complete the install on the third day of the new franchise with no impact to employees. Additionally, KCL’s technical team were able to port over all mailboxes and scanning configurations from existing devices before the installation, meaning that all new machines were instantly ready to use after the install, with no further configurations required by the Southern IT department. A big “Thank You” to Southern IT and Procurement from KCL for their support during this install process!