Central Bedfordshire Council Selects Open Text as Key Enabler for Transformation

Open Text, a global leader in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), today announced that newly formed Central Bedfordshire Council has selected the Open Text ECM Suite to deliver the functionality to facilitate regulatory and practical requirements for Document and Records Management, to integrate with enterprise-wide Business Processes and deliver content over the web.

Central Bedfordshire was officially created on 1 April 2009 as an amalgamation of Mid Beds District Council, South Beds District Council and the respective area of Bedfordshire County Council. Both Mid Beds and South Beds previously used an Open Text eDOCS R/KYV Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS). Mid Beds had implemented the system across the council and South Beds used it primarily for planning documents. Information from both systems was made available through the councils internet sites to facilitate customer self service and assist customer service agents in their jobs.

As part of the project, Central Bedfordshire will migrate all relevant documents and records to the newly deployed Open Text ECM Suite and is creating a strategy to implement Document and Records Management across all of the councils departments.

The Council’s strategy to manage its information and content, establishing effective and efficient business processes, will help meet the requirements outlined in the Government commissioned Gershon and Varney reports; improving communication channels with citizens, and safely storing all records and data in a robust and secure environment.

The new council has significant savings targets to meet and will be undertaking a review of all major services to make them more customer-orientated, efficient and effective. Open Text Business Process Management Server, an integral part of the ECM Suite, is seen as a key enabler to assist the transformation of services. Use of the internet to assist both customer self service and enable customer service agents to better provide information will continue. The council will seek to make as many public documents, stored within the system, available through their new internet site as possible.

David Nice, Business Transformation Implementation Team Leader at the Council, says Open Text’s experience working with the public sector and other suppliers of systems to the public sector was a major factor behind the selection.

“Open Text’s experience with the public sector is a real asset. As a newly formed Council, it is imperative we have service and technology partners that we can trust. We’re looking to reduce business complexity and cost, to open better channels of communication with our customers and partners and to streamline our operations and we felt Open Text are able to help us,” says Nice.

“It was also important to us to engage with a partner who has strong links with suppliers of other key systems and Open Text demonstrated an integrated development approach with both SAP and Microsoft.” Nice concluded.

“Open Text’s experience in the public sector, having delivered numerous successful projects, has shown us how vital it is for an organisation to have a secure content management system that will grow with their evolving needs. We feel that Central Bedfordshire’s choice of Open Text will enable them to capitalise on their information strategy in the future, managing everything from documents, records, drawings and emails to web content, SAP documents and archives to Microsoft SharePoint content,” says Simon Lill, Sales Director, Open Text.