Octopus Group approached Restore Digital to help them on their digital transformation journey, reducing their physical archive and ensuring it wasn’t simply replaced going forwards.
Sector: Renewable Energy
Octopus is a group of companies that invests in the people, ideas and industries that will help to change the world. They believe that the companies serving two of our most important needs – our financial wellbeing and our planet's future – are failing. And they want that to change. That's why they're also a certified B Corp, as they want everything they do, whether that's in financial services or energy supply, to have a positive impact on the people it touches.
Strong partnerships
The Octopus Group were traditionally paper-based, like most organisations.
The temptation to keep simply everything was high. Their archives were both in long term storage, and throughout their offices in filing cabinets. And the archive simply kept growing.
The costs associated with this archive were mounting. Both from a paper creation point of view, but also costs associated to the premium office space being taken up to store the archive, and long term storage costs.
The most important part of ensuring project success, was recognising that Octopus Group was made up from different business, and different departments. Recognising their differences, and speed they need to go on the digitisation journey was essential, while keeping one eye on the overall business objective of becoming a paper free organisation.
Working closely with their Restore Account Manager who visited the offices and teams, and understand what they want to achieve from the project. Samples were completed, to ensure all stakeholders within Octopus were completely happy with the digital image, and associated metadata they were to receive.
Tailored approach
Different teams required different specifications for their digitisation. Some archives were particularly complex, for example Real Estate Teams, which required complex indexing and classification. Other teams, such as investments, had a combination of typed information with handwritten notes.
Results
Over the past six years, Restore have built a strong partnership with Octopus Group, reducing a storage archive of nearly 6,000 boxes, down to less than 500.
Restore Digital were supported by Restore Datashred, who securely destroyed the originals, once Octopus had completed their quality control checks. Working with one organisation to digitise and shred the archive, made the process not only easier for the Octopus team, but more secure, as their was a single chain of custody for their data. Filing cabinets have all but vanished across the estate, allowing offices to either downsize, or repurpose the expensive, city centre space for revenue generating activity.
Resilience through COVID
Having digitised all their records allowed Octopus to successfully support their customers during lockdown. Remote working was not an issue as the archive is available at a click of a button, and the majority of paper processes are now electronic.
Restore Digital have been our long-term digitisation partners. Their values and beliefs align with our own, and reducing our reliance on paper is an important part of protecting our planet. But the day-to-day partnership is built through their reliability. We trust them. They always deliver. They are always there to help. So the realities of working with them has been easy
Peter Mendham, | Facilities Manager
Key Facts
- 6,000 storage boxes reduced to 500
- 1 team means one chain of custody between Restore Digital and Datashred