Kerry Records Management provide document storage facilities. The facilities may be in the form of electronically scanned documents or of the physical documents themselves. In the latter case the documents are stored in boxes. A typical customer would be a solicitor who requires documents relating to cases to be stored on their behalf. Easy access and retrieval of boxes is essential to the service offered.

With the company expanding, the management of the boxes started to present problems. George James Business Systems was consulted to provide a system that tracked the movement of the boxes from initial storage through to destruction, tracking all the movement of the boxes in between. Linked to the tracking features of the system is an invoicing module.

The system is based on a Microsoft SQL database with the user interface provided using Visual Basic. Each box is given a unique bar-coded identifier. The barcode is read using Symbol Technologies PDT 3100 hand held terminals.

Each operation carried out on a box, for example the storage or retrieval of a box, is logged using the hand held. Currently the information is recorded and stored in the hand held terminals The data is transmitted to the SQL server in batches. However future plans include moving to a Radio Frequency network that will allow interactive validation.

The system had to be flexible enough to allow Kerry Records Management to be able to add to their portfolio of services without having the system re-written.

By using bar-coding supported by a comprehensive business application Kerry are able to offer the customer a unique and truly excellent service with plans such as full Web access taking the benefits even further.

A quote from Mr. Lee Smith of Kerry Records Management “It is important that we offer our customers the best system possible therefore as a company we decided that we could not get an off the shelf solution. George James have taken our requirements and delivered a solution specifically incorporating our experience and skill as the leader in document storage.