Camden Centre for Learning (CCfL), a special school based at two sites in Camden, is a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) specifically organised to offer alternative education for children who aren't able to attend school and may not otherwise receive suitable education.

When Pippa Higgins, Business Manager for CCfL, joined the school she inherited a lot of paperwork, often scattered across the two school sites. These were mainly HR-related documents, such as staff onboarding forms, overtime forms, disclosure and barring service (DBS) schedules, proof of ID, etc.

Pippa explains the issues: "With over 70 members of staff record-keeping was difficult. I started by scanning all our documents and saving them to our shared drive. Although this solved the immediate search and access problems, it wasn't ideal considering our need to comply with GDPR regulations and retention schedules for certain types of documents. It was also difficult to present a clear overview when we were audited by our local authority."

During a business forum Pippa was introduced to Records Transformation, who were looking for a pilot school to implement its GilbyIM solution. This is a cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution based on Micro Focus Content Manager, providing best-of-breed electronic document and records management (EDRM). Through a unique, multi-tenancy licensing agreement with Micro Focus, Records Transformation customers benefit from the economies of scale associated with using shared infrastructure components.

Neal O'Kelly, CTO of Records Transformation explains: "We have developed templated configurations for specific industries, including education. Any school subscribing to GilbyIM will find their classification scheme, records types, retention and disposal schedule, and access control model already fully developed, dramatically reducing their onboarding process and staff training."

Pippa saw the value immediately and with just a simple click and drop action more than 2,000 CCfL documents were handed over to Records Transformation. Although CCfL timed this for the school's Christmas break, onboarding new clients can be done within a day. Records Transformation fully replicated the existing folder and sub-folder structure for ease of use. They built relevant security groups, imported CCfL's data, tested it, and delivered it back within the GilbyIM framework.

"When we returned in January all our documents could be accessed through the simple GilbyIM interface," said Pippa. "Such a difference from before where remote access to our shared drive relied on school-owned devices and secured VPN connections. I showed my colleagues how to log on and add a document. This took all of five minutes, and we were all impressed with how user-friendly the system was."

CCfL is now so confident in its data privacy and retention compliance that it is looking to store pupil safeguarding documentation in the solution. These are hugely sensitive documents and this future direction is a testament to the robustness and security GilbyIM and Content Manager offers CCfL.

Pippa concludes: "We have a great working relationship with Records Transformation. GilbyIM is tailored to schools and this enabled us to be up and running without any business disruption at all. We now have a resilient and highly available document repository that can be accessed remotely with ease and has opened the door for different use cases as we move forward."

More info: www.recordstransformation.co.uk