Background
Simarc Property Management are a service provider to both leaseholders and freeholders, managing over 100,000 properties across the UK. Based in Borehamwood, the company has around 52 employees.
Their business services include freehold sales, lease extensions, subletting or property rental and obtaining consents, which involves storing a significant amount of property leases.
Reasons for outsourcing storage
Simarc Property Management maintained its documentation on-site in a dedicated archive room. However, when contemplating an office relocation, they recognised the efficiency of transferring their documents to an off-site secure storage provider. The archive room occupied approximately 2,000 square feet of office space, incurring high costs, especially considering the high rental rates in the area. Additionally, the room was equipped with specialised roller shelving, which would have been expensive to relocate to a new office.
As well as reducing rental costs and freeing up valuable space, Simarc wanted to find information faster, facilitate agile working and improve compliance through a consistent and fully audited document management system.
How did SPS help?
Document Storage & Scan-on-Demand
SPS offered a combination of services and solutions to Simarc Property Management, including:-
Secure document storage
Online archive management system
Scan-on-demand retrieval
Scanning services with upload to SharePoint
Shredding services
Enhanced Security & Protection
Simarc’s leases are now stored in SPS’s secure storage facilities, which are protected by early smoke detection alerts and water detection systems. Facilities are monitored by 24-hour CCTV and feature Redcare security, with facial recognition and biometric entry systems. Business compliance is an integral part of this contract, and SPS’s standards met all requirements. These include:- ISO27001:2022 (Information Security), ISO9001 (Quality Management), ISO22301 (Business Continuity),
BS EN15713 (Secure Destruction) and Cyber Essentials Plus.
Collection & Tracking
SPS’s drivers securely collected the property leases from Simarc’s premises using their tracked fleet of vehicles. Archives were barcoded with a unique reference number and checked in and out for every stage of the process. Ensuring a full audit trail by user, time, date, shelf/location and action taken.
Online Archive Management
Files were catalogued into SPS’s Cleardox AMS, cloud-based archive management system, with indexing provided to file level. This enabled:-
Easy search and fast digital retrieval of the leases and associated documents.
Authorised users can submit file retrievals, request collections and archive boxes. Users can see a statement of their records at box/file level, with a full audit trail of any physical interaction.
Standard reporting includes contents lists and file retrievals by user, time & date.
Destruction notifications are delivered automatically to notify Simarc when records are approaching their end-of-life date. Authorised users can authorise destruction via the system, with documents shredded using SPS’s on-site shredding equipment.
Scan on Demand
On request, files are retrieved, scanned and digitally returned, providing fast and easy access to property leases and documents stored offsite.
Scanning Services
SPS has provided document scanning services, with digital indexing and upload into Simarc’s SharePoint System. Records were scanned in line with BS 10008 for legal admissibility, using our IBML & Kodak technology.
Client Feedback
Benefits
“SPS’s document storage services have enabled us to fully catalogue and retrieve our property leases on demand.
Their offsite records management solutions have allowed us to establish a consistent and efficient approach to document storage, benefitting from a fully audited archive management system.
We’ve found the Cleardox Archive Management System to be very straightforward to use. The keyword search functionality makes it so much simpler to find our leases, compared to frequent trips to the archive room and sifting through paper files.
The scan-on-demand file retrieval provides prompt access to our records, with digitised documents uploaded into our SharePoint sites. The quality of the scanned images is excellent, and any questions or queries have been dealt with quickly and turned around straight away.
We have been an SPS customer for the past four years and have found their team to be approachable, responsive and easy to work with. "
It's been refreshing to collaborate with a company that consistently brings practical solutions to the table. From their Drivers to the Archive Team and Account Managers, the whole experience has been open and transparent.
Group Head of IT, Simarc Property Management
"It’s been refreshing to collaborate with a company that consistently brings practical solutions to the table. From their Drivers to the Archive Team and Account Managers, the whole experience has been completely open and transparent.
I would highly recommend SPS’s document storage and scan-on-demand services to other businesses in the property sector. It’s saved us valuable time searching and retrieving our leases and significantly reduced our on-site storage costs.”
Group Head of IT, Simarc Property Management
Simarc Property Management Case Study
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