PPM Capital, a source of private equity finance for mid-market transactions, has implemented Enterprise Content Management software from Datum International in order to reduce administration and improve email storage capabilities. The KnowledgeWorker software will lead to time and cost savings, improving the overall efficiency of the business.
KnowledgeWorker will also help PPM Capital to deal with its expected growth in the early part of 2007. At present PPM Capital has no more than a handful of clients but it is estimated that this number will increase to between 30 and 50 early next year. A greater number of clients will inevitably lead to a greater volume of email, letter and fax exchanges as well as increased administration, and Datum's KnowledgeWorker has been selected to help PPM Capital deal with this forthcoming expansion.
PPM Capital is using KnowledgeWorker for email archiving; workflow; project management and document management.
Keith Haslett, Financial Director at PPM Capital, says, "Emails are very important to our business and at the moment we send and receive approximately two to three thousand per day. Moreover, owing to the long-term nature of investments, employees frequently refer back to emails that date back up to seven years or more. Every year the volume of data goes up by 50% to 75% and an enormous amount of pressure is put on the maintenance of the email and file and print servers."
Haslett continues, "By storing data on KnowledgeWorker, we are able to separate it from the main email server and decrease the amount of data we have to mirror offsite. The email archiving function of KnowledgeWorker has therefore enabled us to reduce pressure on the exchange server and led to significant cost savings, as the cost of mirroring data offsite is considerable."
KnowledgeWorker will also improve the practicality of PPM's disaster recovery strategy, enabling the company to identify when projects can be archived, at which point it can simply back up the data using tapes, which are much easier to retrieve information from. Until now, the processes of data recovery have been adversely affected by the high volume of data held on those servers mirrored offsite.
The Email archiving function will also bring benefits in terms of search capabilities for historical data. For instance, if PPM Capital were to find itself in a legal case, its ability to locate records would be greatly enhanced by the archiving system. The ?version control' function will also significantly reduce duplication of work, saving time and effort.
PPM Capital has also implemented the workflow aspect of KnowledgeWorker. By automating processes such as faxing, emailing and letter writing to the expanded group of investors, the company will be able to manage a much greater volume of communications without employing new staff. KnowledgeWorker will improve operational efficiency, productivity and accuracy throughout the organisation.
Commenting on the software, Haslett says, "We think the payback from KnowledgeWorker will be very fast and we expect the software to become a key component of our long-term business process development strategy."
Haslett concludes, "We have developed a very positive working relationship with Datum International. Datum's knowledge of the product and its ability to understand our business and the way we work has ensured that its team has provided an excellent level of ongoing support and we look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with them.''
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Tags: Compliance, Deduplication, Tiered Storage |
