Zolfo Cooper

Overview

We were awarded an exclusive national contract for a leading firm of corporate and financial advisers, Zolfo Cooper, in early 2009.
 
Zolfo Cooper provide a wide range of corporate financial services and have offices located throughout the UK. 

They looked to Cintas for an efficient and secure document archiving solution, whereby all storage invoices produced could be easily integrated into their in-house accounting system, which would greatly streamline their monthly billing process. This was not something they were able to achieve from their existing supplier.

As our electronic document management system is bespoke and highly flexible we were able to easily integrate the billing data into their required formats, which has provided them with significant time and cost efficiencies.

The Migration

The remit was to uplift circa 36,000 boxes from a number of their incumbent supplier’s sites across the UK and to transfer to our Manchester and London storage facilities. This was accompanied by a phased data import (whereby the data was provided by their incumbent supplier and modified by Zolfo Cooper) and we used this to update our document management database with all the relevant electronic data fields as used by Zolfo Cooper.

A key part of the project was also to work with Zolfo Cooper in identifying and dealing with those boxes which had been transferred and identifying whether they were appropriate for a) destruction, b) client re-charge, c) permanent retrieval from storage; in effect carrying out a complete audit of their material as part of our migration programme.

Business as Usual

Zolfo Cooper’s key requirement throughout this migration was to ensure that their staff could continue to access their documents as and when they needed. This was particularly important, given the nature of their business and their requirements to conform to the time constraints as set out by the external regulatory bodies (FSA, HM Customs and others). They needed to know that they could successfully retrieve any box of documents within urgent timescales (2 hours), during the period of transition from their incumbent supplier to us, to enable them to carry on their business as usual functions.

We were committed to providing them with this access through measures such as:

• Prioritising the putting away of every delivery of boxes from the incumbent, by ensuring we were fully resourced to process each box within the agreed timescales, so that they could be retrieved immediately upon request
• Ensuring that we had vehicles and manpower available, should they have requested a box that was not in store but was on the incoming delivery from their incumbent supplier
• Ability to search our database to establish whether a requested box had already been received into Cintas and duly processed, or to check whether this currently was with their incumbent supplier pending delivery to us

These measures gave us ultimate control and visibility over where each and every box was at any time, and allowed us to successfully retrieve the correct box for delivery to Zolfo Cooper.

Management of Transition

The London element of the project formed the bulk of the quantities to be transferred, with 25,000 migrating boxes.

Our Project Team lead the migration by coordinating initial project meetings with their incumbent supplier, ourselves and with Zolfo Cooper, and our careful management of this process resulted in a clear understanding between both parties regarding:

• Transfer schedules (dates and timescales)
• Notice periods
• Termination charges
• Site and security access
• Pallet manifests
• Batch movements of boxes

This ensured a smooth and seamless transition from their incumbent to Cintas, through open, clear and regular communication.

Transition Timescales

Upon project commencement, we collected 250 boxes every weekday, and processed this same number at our sites (this involved scanning, labelling and putting-away) and therefore showing as ‘in-store’ to Zolfo Cooper via our online FileTrak system, daily. Zolfo Cooper had visibility of all the newly delivered material in real time, as well as the ability to request any box for retrieval, whether this was in transit for delivery, or already processed and in store with us.

Box Checking & Tracking

The checking and tracking of all material was managed by a very straight-forward process for logging new ‘transferring’ boxes. This involved our warehouse migration team labelling each new box in-bound with a Cintas bar-code, and then utilising our hand held scanners, used this to scan the Cintas barcode, then scan the boxes’ historic barcode and then scan the box to its final location in our warehouse.

This produced a location specific item record on our database that we were later able to match (using the previous barcode number) with the electronic data we had imported, to supplement the data held for each item and allowed us to update accordingly.

This method of electronic integration of data to re-barcode all boxes allowed us to process the material far more efficiently and accurately than manual checking and indexing, with the barcode data being uploaded into our systems to ensure that all items could be tracked, whatever their status and location.

Communication with Zolfo Cooper

In order to keep Zolfo Cooper fully up to date and involved in the migration project, we produced a weekly report confirming the progress, volumes migrated, exceptions due to pick errors and other metrics and we maintained regular dialogue with Zolfo Cooper (principally with their Project Management team).

In this way Zolfo Cooper had full control and visibility over the project as it progressed, and this included addressing any concerns or queries they had and allowed us to really focus on eliminating any possible discrepancies before they caused any operational and client issues. This focus on getting the detail right was of immense importance to Zolfo Cooper, and is the principle we apply to each any every migration, through thorough project planning and management lead by our dedicated Project Manager, Jill Manger.

Positive Management of Migration Challenges

During the course of the uplift, it became apparent that the agreed end date of the migration would not be met, (due to delays not of the client’s or Cintas’s doing). We successfully negotiated an increase in the frequency of deliveries from their incumbent supplier (from 250 boxes daily to 500 boxes migrated each day). This had the result of completing the migration ahead of schedule, and within budget.

The Migration Highlights

• Full Audit completed as part of the migration project
• Project completed ahead of projected timescales and within their budget
• Additional information recorded relating to each box, to enable us to produce more sophisticated management reporting to Zolfo Cooper

The Future with Cintas

Since completion of the migration, Zolfo Cooper have benefited from:

• Automated imports into their billing system of monthly storage invoices, saving them time and administrative expense
  Improved and more accurate cataloguing, to enable them to identify different types of boxes in compliance with current legislative requirements
• Accurate destruction dates recorded, enabling them to forecast annual storage budgets and proactively manage document retention to make significant cost savings year on year
• Based on our successful migration we have built a strong relationship and become a trusted partner of Zolfo Cooper, and we continue to provide ongoing document management services to cater for their business expansion and success.

Contact Details

Our key contact at Zolfo Cooper is Andrew Constable, Facilities Services Supervisor who will be more than happy to discuss his experience of Cintas’s management of this project, with you. He is contactable on:

aconstable@zolfocooper.eu

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7332 5123