St Peter's Trust, which handles trust and company
administration from Guernsey, has deployed an electronic content
management system to limit its reliance on paper documents and
improve document retrieval and security.
The financial services specialist said the system would enable
better compliance with regulatory requirements, including the
prospect of electronic filing with the Guernsey Financial Services
Commission within 18 months.
Onbase, developed by Avanquest, has been phased in by St Peter's
Trust over the past two years, during which time more than 250,000
highly sensitive documents held by the firm have been captured for
electronic management and retrieval.
Bryan March, IT manager at St Peter's Trust, said the move from
a primarily paper-based filing system to an electronic archive had
been a "staggering" undertaking that was initially driven by the
greater security and flexibility of electronic documents.
But with Onbase now established, he said the speed and
reliability of electronic document retrieval was proving a boon, as
were the workflow processes, which make document tracking more
straightforward.
The software - which integrates with the firm's Microsoft Word
and Excel applications, as well as Rightfax from Captaris -
captures and archives all documents through one gateway to create
what March called "an absolute record" of company business,
complete with a full audit trail.
March said the system had paid for itself over the two-year
deployment, enabling the firm to cut its staff by more than
50%.
The next step is to integrate the system more fully with Flying
Boat, a dedicated enterprise system for trust and company
management that St Peter's Trust uses as its core database.