Norton Peskett Case Study

Norton Peskett is a long established legal firm, founded in 1892. With seven branch offices and over 100 staff, the company covers all types of legal requirements for the general public and for commercial businesses. To cover the increasing burden on storing records, Norton Peskett originally established one central off site location to store all documents, to ensure the company met the stringent legal requirements. However, as both government and law society requirements now mean that many documents need to be kept for a number of years or indefinitely, the need for storage was constantly increasing.

Norton Peskett soon needed an overflow storage site since retrieving data was becoming a major headache for the firm. As a rule, the company would make daily visits to both storage sites, before sending out documents in internal post. This meant that when a client had a query regarding an archived file, not only was it very time-intensive to locate a file, but for non-urgent queries there could be a delay of up to 24 hours in responding. As Jo Long, IS Manager of Norton Peskett comments: "With seven branches around East Anglia managing two storage sites for the company was becoming impossible. Daily trips to the storage facilities meant that we could respond to client queries promptly, but this was a time-intensive process, which was becoming increasingly difficult as our company grew. We estimate that each branch will close around 100 files a week, all of which need to be archived. As a result, it was clear that we needed to find a better storage solution fast."

With the opening of two new offices, one in 2003 and one in 2004, Norton Peskett began to investigate online document solutions that could solve the company's growing storage problem. As Jo Long explains "We realised that we needed to invest in a system that would allow us to store and retrieve documents online. However, with over 100 staff potentially wanting to access the site, it was critical that it could integrate with existing software and be very easy to use."

Norton Peskett needed a solution that linked to it's SOS Practice Software and to Citrix - and ideally would only take one or two mouse clicks to retrieve documents. As a result, the firm turned to Invu's document management solution.

Norton Peskett installed a trial system at the end of 2004 to test the product and begin the process of online archiving of files. Following this successful trial, Norton Peskett is in the process of rolling out the software to all 100 staff in all offices. Initially, Invu will be used to archive new documents as they are created, to ensure that no further storage space is needed, as the company can now destroy hard copies once an electronic copy has been made. Following this, it will begin the task of scanning in all saved documents from the two storage locations, allowing it to reduce overhead costs.

"To date, rolling out Invu software to all our staff has been a positive experience. Since it uses applications that our staff are already familiar with, only limited training is required, before people feel comfortable using the system. We're confident that purchasing Invu will allow us to offer a more efficient service to our clients as well as saving us overhead costs for storage in the long term," concludes Jo Long.

"Like many solicitors, Norton Peskett was feeling the strain of the legal requirements for document storage," commented Douglas Embleton of Invu. "However, by installing our document management solution, it has in place a robust solution that can locate files with a few mouse-clicks. We look forward to working with Norton Peskett and supporting the company as it's storage requirements increase in years to come."

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