Microstat are very proud to announce that they have teamed up PHS Datasafe, who provide Records Storage and Records Management.

PHS Datasafe was established to offer and deliver the very highest standards in commercial records storage and file retrieval services within the UK. With brand new storage centres in London , Bristol and Brimingham, PHS Datasafe has the national capacity to handle over 2.5 million cubic feet of records or 25 million individual files. As a Birmingham company ourselves, we were particularly interested thaT PHS Datasafe have recently aquired 50,000 square feet at Hurricane Park in Birmingham, giving capacity for ½ million cubic feet of boxed records storage and additional vaulted capacity for over 200,000 files, deeds or wills on mobile racking.

Microstat, who have been providing a document scanning and document management systems for 27 years, now believe the time is right to link with one of the biggest names in record storage to gain a competitive edge over other scanning companies, who simply cant compete with the efficiencies of scale and the level of IT and infrastructure investment made by PHS Datasafe

Managing Director, Steve Cave, was particularly pleased with the new arrangement, ” For many years we have been asked by clients to store documents, sometimes in addition to having them scanned, sometimes as an alternative for those documents whose reference is infrequent or retention period is short. Whilst we have been able to accomodate them up till now with our own storage facilities, future expansion was impossible. Allied to this, is that record stoarge has moved along way since the days of just placing a box on a shelf was sufficient for clients. Nowadays, clients expect an integrated service, whereby a company can actively manage all their different record types and in the most cost effective manner. This means proper ROI analysis at the planning stage of any project, and for those records not deemed appropriate for scanning, cataloguing and timed destruction dates being given to each record to eliminate unnecessary cost in the future. Also, whilst being stored, a client may want an individual record returned urgently, in electronic form, perhaps as an e-mail, all of these things PHS Datasafe can and are doing. In our opinion they are the leaders in their field, perfectly complimenting our scanning and web-hosting services.”

Commenting on the new partnership, Commercial director at PHS Datasafe, Nick Burke added ” We have had a loose association with Microstat for many years, using their services and their specialist knowledge in all areas of imaging including scanning, workflow systems, OCR software and  web hosting , so we are particularly pleased to be able to have a proper partnership between our two companies, and we look forward to gaining many more clients who know that proper records management needs a multi skill approach.”

So for any prospective client who wants a free evaluation of their records management, and whether we can propose any improvements in terms of cost savings, improved customer service and improved profit margins, we would very much like to talk to you. Contact Tim Myatt at Microstat on 0121 486 2020 to arrange an exploratory meeting, or simply to have a chat regarding options

We are proud to be able to announce that we now have 36 private medical practices using our document scanning services.  It is now 5 years since we scanned our first set of medical notes for a Private Practice in Harley street, and since then we have scanned around 2 million documents and some 250,000 individual medical files. It is our ability to integrate with the various different private practice management software, along with our strict quality control that has seen Microstat recommended time and again throughout the medical world.

We are able to provide a total solution from collection of the notes, right through to the hands on process of uploading and seamlessly integrating the files of the practice into their computer system - this means a practice has the contents of their filing cabinets always at their finger tips within their PC. We even add Full Text Search, ( also known as OCR )so a Doctor or member of the admin team can look up a precise drug name or medical condition across their entire patient database, and get an instant list of which patients have been prescribed that drug or suffer from that condition. This has been hailed as a trtemendous asset by all those practices that have selected this aspect of our document scanning service. All of the work is carried out by our experienced team of scanning professionals based in our Birmingham scanning bureau. Our Midlands location allows us to offer a nationwide document collection service.

If you would like your practice to benefit from our document management services, contact us, and we will visit you and scan a sample of your files free of charge. This visit will also allows us to assess the practice management software that you use and explain how our scanned images will be retrieved if you use our document scanning service.

Quick and accurate conversion of paper invoices into digital formats, is a critical step for Accounts Payable departments to minimise labour intensive tasks such as, data entry, manual matching and reconciliation processes.  Reducing paper invoices can deliver significant benefits in terms of accurate metrics, lower costs, improved visibility and efficiency and shorter invoice cycle times.

At Microstat, we can let you achieve these cost savings and efficiencies by advising on established best practices that will automatically match the key data on the Invoice ( Company name, date, Invoice value etc ) with the data held on your Company’s ERP system.

Whilst some of our clients choose to scan their Invoices in-house, others use our tried and tested document scanning service which serves clients nationwide from our Birmingham scanning facility.

Contact Tim Myatt for a free appraisal of your existing practices, and see just how quick the payback can be on a new system!

Midland based document scanning bureau, Microstat has just announced that they have now scanned and made available to their client, their one millionth document image on their website hosted service.

Managing Director, Steve Cave, speaking from their Birmingham offices, said ” we are all really pleased that this milestone has been passed, we never expected it to happen so soon, we have only been offering the service for 12 months ” The web hosted service, that is offered via Microstats purpose built website, www.filingontheweb.com/microstat and is used in conjunction with Microstats document scanning service. Once a clients documents are scanned they are uploaded by Microstat to the website where the client can access them with their unique log in and password details. Clients choose the service  as it allows them access to their files anywhere in the world, and does not impact their own companies I.T. resources.

Remember, it is not just for documents that are scanned, we also load images that come from client supplied microfiche and microfilm, which our midland production facility converts to digital format. Also, clients can have large size drawings converted.

More information, pricing details, and even a sample on the website can be shown to interested parties. Contact our Sales Manager, Tim Myatt on 0121 486 2020 or e-mail tim.myatt@microstat.co.uk for more information

Microstat clients can now view their documents on-line through our web hosted solution - Filing On The Web.  Fully encrypted with secure sign-on functionality, documents are loaded to the web servers for viewing 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  There is no specific software to purchase or support (apart from Adobe Reader), and so your documents can be viewed from any pc with an internet connection. Goto

https://www.filingontheweb.com/microstat/

This is ideal for customers with remote workers, or those who require a quick turnaround from scanning to image access.

OCR searches can also be performed through Filing On The Web

Please contact us on 0121 486 2020 to find out more

Microstat are very pleased to announce that they have taken delivery of the very latest microfiche scanning equipment from Wicks and Wilson. This is because Microfiche scanning and microfilm scanning is an important part of Microstats business. Converting microfilm and microfiche to PDF or TIF format is becoming increasingly important to organizations.

After carefully evaluating the market we settled on Wicks and Wilson FS 300 microfiche scanners to give us the best possible equipment for high speed and high quality images from microfiche. This is in addition to our ability to scan from microfilm in reel format and microfilm drawings in aperture cards.

Commenting on this latest purchase, Managing Director, Steve Cave added, ‘ We strongly believe that we are able to handle any job of any size very quickly indeed with this latest investment. Myself and my team were very impressed with the speed and quality offered by Wicks and Wilson kit - and the fact that they are designed and built in Britain is the icing on the cake, I think it is superb that we can invest in a home grown product!’

We have already scanned 10,000 microfiche for a client within a matter of weeks of taking delivery, and the results so impressed the client, a repeat order has already been secured.

If you want a quote or a free sample from your microfilm, microfiche or aperture card, please get in touch, we would love to help.

Microstat is pleased to announce that their Managing Director, Steve Cave, will be participating in ‘The David Ryan Challenge Ride’ on 21st June 2009.

This event is a charity cycle ride commemorating the life of David Ryan, a physicist and keen cyclist whose life was tragically taken by a speeding driver. David’s favourite cycling routes were in the Cotswolds and its surrounding hills - the steeper the better! The route is therefore situated in this beautiful area, in mainly traffic-free lanes, and provides the option of two routes; 70 or 102 miles.
 
Steve will be pushing himself to the limit (and far, far beyond!) by partaking in the 102 mile route, and we hope his strict training regime will ensure he completes the challenge!
 
Money raised from the event will be donated to the charities Helen & Douglas House and Yorkshire Air Ambulance. Over the past 4 years, the Circuit of the Cotswolds (as the challenge is also known) has raised more than £42,000.
 
Microstat is proud to be supporting such a worthwhile cause and we wish Steve the best of luck!
 
If you would like more information, please visit http://www.circuitofthecotswolds.org.uk

Please contact Steve on 0121 486 2020 or email him at steve.cave@microstat.co.uk if you wish to make a donation, any amount , however small will be very much appreciated by both Steve and the charities.

Microstat is pleased to announce the recent marriage of Emma Harris , a member of staff, to her childhood sweetheart James Walker.
 
The wedding took place on saturday 30th May at Kings Norton Parish Church, with the reception being held at the local golf club. It was a lovely ceremony and the whole event was thoroughly enjoyed by all attended, including many Microstat colleagues. One of whom, Sam Cooper was a bridesmaid for the couple, who is not only a work colleague but also her cousin and life long friend! Emma and James are now on their honeymoon in America.
 
Emma, 26, has been a valuable member of the document scanning team for seven years. First starting with us as her holiday job whilst studying Psychology at university. In addition to being a skilled scanning technician, Emma applies her IT skills to Quality control, Data indexing, Image merging and a host of othe Document Management requirements.  

Congratualtions to Emma and James (Mr and Mrs Walker!) from all at Microstat, we wish them a long and happy marriage!

In light of the recent news concerning NHS London losing around 40,000 patient details, we thought we would take this oppurtunity to remind you of the importance of securing your company data.
 
Unfortunately, this sort of incidence is not a rare occurence, with the details of 100,000 pension schemes stolen from the accountancy firm Deloitte last October, the Ministry of Defence losing data concerning 100,000 of its personnel last september, and HM Revenue and Customs (HRMC) losing two computer discs containing personal information of 25 million people. It is apparent that the common theme to these losses has been that the information has been out of the office environment, often it has been an employee who has left a laptop in a public place and it has been stolen. Apart from raising the question of why it was not closely guarded, or in the public place at all, the other amazing lapse of security was not encrypting the data -  relying on password protection alone is extremely poor security for such sensitive data. At Microstat, we have to deliver data and scanned images on a daily basis, and we believe the only safe electronic route is encrypted images via secure FTP transfer.

The consequences of these data losses were disasterous enough, imagine if the information had been stored in paper form and there had been a fire, flood or theft. There would be no way to restore these documents.
 
We urge you to digitise your documents, not only for security purposes but for day to day ease in locating and sharing a file, saving staff time, and therefore cost and boosting team morale. By using a company like Microstat, your documents will be a mouse click away and full text search will locate a specific file in seconds. Everything we digitise is also backed up at our highly secure site because disaster recovery is a top priority.
 
Don’t risk the total loss of your company’s documents, if you would like any further information on document scanning, a quote or a sample, then please contact Tim Myatt on 0121 486 2020, or email  tim.myatt@microstat.co.uk