Independent risk management organisation Lloyd’s Register is to extend its use of a digital archiving system after it generated savings of 10 per cent in its Marine Data Systems division.
The division, which holds all documentation associated with vessels insured by Lloyd’s Register around the world, installed the Xerox-based system a year ago.
The savings have prompted the firm to implement the system across its pensions and technical investigations departments.
Marc Bunce, client account manager at Lloyd’s Register, says the company is looking at other areas where the system could generate savings.
‘I am not surprised that other departments want to implement the system because it saves so much space and is a safer form of storage,’ he said.
The system, also implemented by Xerox, scans documents and converts them into electronic files for storage in the firm’s document management archive.
The project was initially intended to back capture of all Lloyd’s drawings and plans that form the master copy of a ship’s plans when it is built, says Richard Neasham, manager of Marine Data Systems.
‘A ship can have 10,000 documents attached to it, and hard copies sitting in London are not much use to our inspectors, surveyors and staff in 120 countries,’ said Neasham. ‘The saving is significant when you think that I can employ an extra person or two.’
Neasham says the firm had problems with the quality of some of the documents it wanted to archive.
‘The success of the project has been because documents that were previously unreadable have now been rendered readable,’ he said.
‘There is a trade-off between the size of tif files and quality of the image, and one of the biggest challenges was getting that balance right.’
Lloyd’s has previously transferred many documents to microfilm for volume reduction but has been aiming for electronic transfer of documents since it launched a web information service six years ago.
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