PanAfrican Energy

FILESTREAM & PANAFRICAN ENERGY TANZANIA

Interview with Felex Kaaya, who is the Finance System Administrator for PanAfrican Energy Tanzania

WHAT DOES THE COMPANY DO?

We support Tanzania bysupplying power to supp01t the industrial growth of the country as it moves towards a lower carbon future.

WHAT ISSUES WERE YOU EXPERIENCING BEFORE YOU STARTED WORKING WITH FILESTREAM?

I joined the company in 2013, 14 years ago, and at that time, most documents were paper-based and handled manually. This meant we had to store many records, and our office archive was full, so we had to outsource and rent containers outside the office to store extra documents, as our office did not have the space to store this amount of pape1work. It was one of the areas I knew needed to be dealt with when I joined the company, and I was eager to find a more efficient solution.

HOW DID THE TRANSITION UNFOLD?

I came into contact with Filestream through our UK operation via the Orea Group (our parent group) and I was introduced to the team. We realised we needed to move our documents into the Cloud however we needed to find a solution which was secure and minimised our exposure to risks such as a virus or hacking attempt. Filestream seemed to offer an answer for this. We found out more, signed up and worked with the Filestream team to sta1t uploading our archive – which was a huge task.

HOW DO YOU WORK WITH FILESTREAM TODAY?

We use the Filestream system across our business with a heavy focus on our accounts depmtment. On average we can handle between 500 to 800 documents per month and this can rise to 1000s if we m·e ve1y busy. We use the system for storage of many documents including purchase orders, invoices, contracts, contractual rep01ts, statements and it means we have a strong workflow m·ound this. Also when we are audited by our accountants, the info1mation is easily accessible and takes hours to deal with rather than days.

By linking the Filestream system to Office Outlook emails, documents can be retrieved easily and appropriately and shared with other user depa1tments and stakeholders via email rather than printing them, thereby reducing paper use.

WHAT HAVE THE BENEFITS BEEN?

There have been the financial benefits as we don’t have that huge level of storage of paper documents any more and we are increasingly paperless. We do have some paper documents but within a very small room in our office – no large containers. This has saved both time and money and helps towards our sustainability goals too.

We are confident that our system is as secure as it can be as every document is encrypted and also easily accessible by those who need to see it. Even our auditors have commented on how efficient our system is and how easy it is when they need to access documents.

The system also works well for us when it comes to general work flows and it integrates with the other systems we use across the business.

We find the Filestream team are very responsive and get back to us in a timely manner to help us when we need it.

DESCRIBE THE TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP YOU HAVE WITH FILESTREAM?

We trust the team based on over a decade-long collaboration, and we know we can grow and move forward with them. In fact, I’d like to thank the team for their support over the years I’ve been here. Very helpful, with a good, experienced team that responds promptly and provides timely support when we encounter any system-related issues. We are proud Filestream ambassadors and happy to discuss the benefits they’ve brought to our company. Systems like this are often hidden but essential for smooth operations, security, and the easy retrieval of documentation, making them a key part of our success.