Portsmouth International Port is the biggest municipal part in the country and is part of Portsmouth City Council.
It’s a major transport and cargo hub in the South of the UK. It has strong links with ferry companies and cruise ships (small to medium-sized) and is a direct route to France, Spain and the Channel Islands by sea.
WHAT DOES THE PORT TEAM DO?
We have a directly-employed team of about 90 people and we also have many contracted services. We run the port and keep it active on a day-to-day basis working with our partners which are many and varied.
WHAT’S YOUR ROLE?
I’m Julie Shotbolt, and I’m the finance and commercial specialist at the port. I’ve been with the port in various roles for 30 years.
WHAT ISSUES WERE YOU EXPERIENCING BEFORE YOU STARTED WORKING WITH FILESTREAM?
We had a system in place for more than a decade and increasingly it didn’t meet our needs. It had basically become an electronic filing cabinet which was clunky and we just didn’t have ‘buy-in’ from staff because of that.
We found that while some of our team – admin, finance etc – would use the system, other members would not because it was not user-friendly. Therefore they would either print physical copies or ask someone else to manage it for them. That was becoming increasingly time-consuming and, frankly, inefficient.
Also saving documents became an issue because they were often such large files – then there were problems emailing those large files.
WHAT MADE YOU CONSIDER MAKING A CHANGE?
We reached a cross-roads when to upgrade that system was very costly and we decided to go to the market to see what was ‘out there’ at the time. We have very strict rules around how we procure services so we went out to potential bidders and Filestream was one of those bidders. The Filestream were successful in their bid.
HOW DID THE FILMSTEAM RELATIONSHIP BEGIN?
I knew this would take time and it was in 2019 that we went ahead – little did we know then that the world would stand still a year later. As for so many other organisations this disrupted our plans and we had to do our best during that period.
Long term, we had a vision to bring together our diverse team which were office-based and our operational team members who were out and about doing their jobs. Some areas we got up and running very quickly, others took more time, especially when the pandemic came.
It became clear that we needed more resource to integrate Filesteam’s software into our organisation. We employed a professional on a contract to help us with implementation and to deal with our legacy documentation. This helped enormously and that role has continued with training all of our staff in how to use the system effectively.
WHAT HAVE THE BENEFITS BEEN?
There have been a number of benefits. We know with confidence that our documents are better protected both from cyber risks and in being compliant with GDPR. We also have a vital automatic retention schedule which allows us to keep essential documents for a specific period and also deletes documents that are no longer required safely.
The workflow is much better and that has meant we’ve got rid of silly delays which had become endemic previously around things like ‘approval’ and other matters. This saves time and is more efficient. It means everyone is looking at the same document which is always the latest and most up-to-date version and this minimises the risk of duplicating errors.
HOW HAS THE TEAM RESPONDED?
There has been far better ‘buy in’ with Filestream than with our previous system. It is less clunky and we can provide one-to-one training which is relevant to the role of each team member. We’ve been able to set clear parameters around security and who can – and cannot – see what documents.