TSB Unit Trust Electronic Document Handling System

One of the UK's first Document Image and Workflow Systems

To be edited and expanded with section titles.

The TSB Trust Company was the entreprenurial unit trust, insurance and pensions arm of the TSB Group. In the eighties it was experiencing 25% annual compound growth. IT played an important part in sustaining customer service and new product development. One of the roles of the IT Strategy department was to investigate new technology that was at a commercial viability stage. If the initial desk research appeared positive, then the next stage was to undertake a pilot.

The research team's initial investigation into Workflow (WF) and Document Image Processing (DIP) centred on US insurance companies. They were reporting enhanced productivity and improved customer service with these technologies. A feasibility study into the potential within the TSB Trust Company was undertaken using techniques such as work measurement and process redesign. This required negotiations with administrative managers and their staff as well as with potential suppliers. We used the term Electronic Document Handling (EDH) as this was more user oriented, but would now prefer the term Electronic Document Management (EDM).

This initial investigation showed that in the UK with its lower labour costs, such advanced but expensive technology could not be justified on a pure direct cost/benefit basis unless a very large system was installed, which of course had very high risk. Marketing at the time were reluctant to quantify the additional business profits that would arise out of improved service. However, by projecting forward, reducing IT costs lowered the risks and increased the potential for smaller systems. Two suppliers were selected and they were asked to summit proposals. One was selcted and the team then made a successful allocation to the Directors for development funds for a pilot system, even though it had an negative NPV.

The project then past to Systems Development for implementation but at a lower priority because it was of course unscheduled in the annual IT plan. Because of a reorganisation within Systems department the project passed back to myself to Project Manage to completion. This was successful, with the department achieving a significant 100% productivity improvement, fast 24 hour customer service, higher staff morale and improved management control. These were measure improvements, made by comparing the before and after work measurements. Customers also noticed the difference - within the first week we received 2 letters praising the excellent service.

The Post Implementation Review also highlighted unexpected, but positive changes in staff motivation and work handling. This subsequently led to my choice of subject in my MBA in service assignment and in my disseration subject: Business Process Re-engineering and Organisational Cultural Change Techniques. Whilst details of the full dissertation are not yet on this web site, you can access the results of the associated survey.

Subsequently I provided consultancy support to large 100+ work station system within the general insurance division. I also presented the project at the Optical Imaging Systems conference in May 1989 and the project was written up as a case study for the National Computing Centre (NCC) report on Electronic Document Management Systems..

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