"We can now retrieve or see a document in 5 or 6 seconds."
Ted Wetton
Managing Director
at
Gibson Booth
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"We can now retrieve or see a document in 5 or 6 seconds."
In this uncertain economic climate Gibson Booth: Business Solutions and Insolvency, has experienced their busiest first 6 months in 3 years, giving them a challenge to ensure their business and employees are working as efficiently as possible to continue to thrive and grow.
Ted Wetton is the managing director for Gibson Booth based in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. A qualified Chartered Accountant and Licensed Insolvency Practitioner. Ted is also chairman of the IPS (Insolvency Practitioners System) User Group and President of the Institute of Chartered Accounts for Sheffield and District.
He set up the insolvency wing of the business in 1992 and now has 12 employees, all qualified Insolvency Practitioners or carry the Certificate of Proficiency in Insolvency.
Ted has pinpointed areas in his business that help them to achieve their goals:
Although Gibson Booth have been paperless since 2001 they decided their existing document management system was becoming too expensive, and wasn’t giving them the return they were looking for. It was time to seek out an alternative that could offer them more for their investment.
Ted looked around the market and arranged meetings with 5 different document management providers.
"The one that shone in a meeting with 6 of my senior staff, the one we couldn’t trip up, and had everything we wanted, was Virtual Cabinet."
- Ted Wetton, Managing Director, Gibson Booth
They decided to make the move to Virtual Cabinet in 2013 and found it to be ”…a very easy process.”
Like most established businesses, Gibson Booth required an ever-increasing amount of storage space to house paper files. Resulting in lost floor space and high costs to the business. Creating digital copies of all their files has meant huge savings on storage bills.
"Since we went paperless, we managed to empty the equivalent of a terraced house full of paper. Which is now rented out and saved us an enormous cost."
- Ted Wetton, Managing Director, Gibson Booth
The benefits of digitising all their files wasn’t limited to saving on real estate costs. Ted has realised that huge amounts of time is also saved through improved efficiency in locating the documents now kept within the system - allowing Gibson Booth to serve their clients in a timelier manner.
"A major benefit is the time it takes to retrieve and see a document; the average time is approximately 5 or 6 seconds."
- Ted Wetton, Managing Director, Gibson Booth
“When we do an investigation, we will put part of the books of the insolvent company on to Virtual Cabinet. One of the biggest benefits of that is if we have to analyse bank statements, we can search for anything we want. e.g. a name, an account number, a type of transaction etc.”
When the firm started capturing digital copies of their paper files, they used photocopiers with incorporated scanners, but found these to be slow and clunky. They were also not practical for staff due to the number and their location.
To speed up this process Ted made the decision to move to fast, compact Fujitsu desktop scanners:
"We advanced to putting on everyone’s desk a Fujitsu Fi 7160, which is a very small scanner, a multi-sheet feed colour scanner which scans both sides. If someone is working remotely from home their post is scanned in and sent directly to their intray. Long term it has saved us space, but the major one is the cost of time to find papers on the file. You can’t lose a document once you’ve scanned it in, and from the viewpoint of compliance – there are no lost documents."
- Ted Wetton, Managing Director, Gibson Booth
Finding systems that complimented the business and could integrate seamlessly with each other was key to ensuring workflows and processes are effective and easy for the staff to adopt.
Ted started using Turnkeys IPS system in 1992 and had a pre-existing file structure that worked for his business and IPS. When he chose to implement Virtual Cabinet is was imperative that it could mirror that structure.
"When we adopted IPS we kept their structure of 1 to 25 index with approx. 8 to 10 indexing inside each section. So that’s what we went with and we haven’t changed that, so our paper files were the same as the files in virtual cabinet."
- Ted Wetton, Managing Director, Gibson Booth
With privacy regulations being hot topic for the last 2 years Gibson Booth is acutely aware of the importance of sending information securely. The use of portals is becoming more and required so Gibson Booth adopted 2. Both the Virtual Cabinet, and IPS Portals have become essential tools to eliminate the use of email to transfer sensitive information and request electronic signatures.
"You don’t have to worry about GDPR as much if you’re using the Virtual Cabinet Portal. I consider it confidential between myself and the client I’m sending documents to. The Turnkey portal is excellent, creditors can put reports and their claims on there which frees up a lot of time."
- Ted Wetton, Managing Director, Gibson Booth
Work life balance and employee wellness is paramount at Gibson Booth. Being able to provide flexible remote working and have access to the tools needed to complete the work is key.
"The main benefit of VC is I can be anywhere, and I can get into all my files, via the VC app or my laptop. My staff can work from home as if they were in the office and had the physical file there, which has improved staff working life. Staff can work more flexi-hours and can work from home. By having Virtual Cabinet they virtually have all the filing cabinets sat on their desk at home, so they can operate just as if they were in the office."
- Ted Wetton, Managing Director, Gibson Booth
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