TELL US ABOUT ALARM SUPPLIES SCOTLAND LTD?
Alarm Supplies Scotland Ltd was set up in 1993 (according to CH) by George McCartney in Glasgow. Today the team has its HQ in the city and seven satellite offices across the UK employing a team of 50. For more information visit https://www.alarm-supplies.com/
WHAT DOES ALARM SUPPLIES SCOTLAND DO?
We supply security products including CCTV, intruder alarms, fire alarms and access control systems to installation companies across the UK. We don’t fit the products, we supply them to trading partners who fit them into their client premises.
WHAT ISSUES WERE YOU EXPERIENCING BEFORE YOU STARTED WORKING WITH FILESTREAM?
We had our main premises in Glasgow and about 25 per cent of it was being taken up by storage of documentation – this was around 15 years ago – and on talking to a supplier we realised that smart and secure document management could really help us free up valuable space and make our business more efficient.
Having a warehouse with stock in Glasgow’s city centre is an expensive asset and it was not sensible to have a quarter of that asset filled with paperwork which was necessary and had to be kept – in some cases for years – but it was passive and not earning us any revenue. The cost of that was substantial and growing year on year.
HOW DID THE TRANSITION UNFOLD?
We knew it would take time to put our paperwork into the software, to understand how it could work for us, to adapt it to our own systems and processes and then to roll it out to our satellite offices. It took time to become paperless.
This was a hurdle and it took several years for us to use the Filestream systems to its full capability but gradually everyone has come to understand that it’s worth it. We’ve recently acquired two more sites in the Manchester area via acquisition and we will soon be rolling out this technology to those sites too, they’ve not used anything like it previously.
Taking years of physical paperwork and scanning that in and creating an online system that worked for us was a large undertaking but it’s more than paid for itself.
WHAT HAVE THE BENEFITS BEEN?
There have been the financial benefits. Our Glasgow premises cost us about £40,000 a year and 25 per cent of that cost was simply looking after and storing paperwork. Taking that paperwork securely online meant that £10,000 was saved as we could use that space for storing stock which earns us revenue. The cost of Filestream was set against that so it was very cost effective.
There was also the saving of time for staff. We have to keep a lot of paperwork which the HMRC requires for six years so if a client came to us and needed copies of invoices, or we needed to chase invoices, staff members had to find the originals, possibly print them out as hard copies or run extra copies and that is time-consuming for those staff. Now we can access them quickly and easily online and it takes seconds.
Finally, this has allowed us to improve our customer service in that we can supply that information quickly when our clients really need that crucial paperwork.
DESCRIBE THE TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP YOU HAVE WITH FILESTREAM?
Over the years we’ve built up a high level of trust. They are so easy to deal with and very efficient. When we have had glitches they are dealt with in a timely manner and we’ve also had continuity of service. The team know us and we know them. We are not talking to different people every few months. For us the service has been exemplary and first class.