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The SA Board for Sheriffs (SABFS) has integrated digital multifunctional devices at its Cape Town-based head office directly into its Microsoft SharePoint collaboration software, in order to help automate and streamline processes as the organisation moves to a paperless environment.
The SABFS is a statutory body established under section 7 of the Sheriffs' Act. Its objectives are the maintenance of the esteem, the enhancement of the status, and the improvement of the standard of training and functions performed by sheriffs. It also plays an indirect role in the appointment of sheriffs through its control over the issuing of Fidelity Fund Certificates, without which a person is not entitled to function as a sheriff.
The implementation was executed by Konica Minolta South Africa, a division of Bidvest Office (Pty) Ltd, a leader in document imaging and management. With Konica Minolta South Africa's bizhub Extended Solution Technology (bEST) connector, the company is able to seamlessly integrate any of its bizhub devices into a range of third-party document management solutions, in this case Microsoft SharePoint. In addition to automating and streamlining processes and improving internal collaboration, documents can now also be allocated according to their content type.
"Our bizhub multifunctional devices recognise meta data when documents are being scanned and automatically routes each document to the correct list or library within SharePoint," explains Greg Griffith, national software services manager at Konica Minolta South Africa. "Innovation of this kind has gained traction as businesses realise the importance of enterprise content management and the streamlining of processes that can be made with proper integration into these environments."
"The SABFS needed a partner that could meet our operational needs and could assist us in creating a paperless environment by scanning and renaming documentation directly from the multifunctional devices to the structured files in SharePoint," explains Mr BZ Luthuli, acting executive manager for the SABFS.
"From the time that we partnered with Konica Minolta South Africa, SABFS has been extremely satisfied with the services rendered. Furthermore, the Konica Minolta South Africa technical team has been able make the necessary changes and customisations to accommodate the operational needs of SABFS."
He also praised the Konica Minolta South Africa’s development prowess, saying: "We would absolutely recommend Konica Minolta South Africa's services to any business wanting to improve and enrich its document management and imaging processes."
"SABFS' board, management and staff are looking forward to further utilising this effective business automation system that has not only streamlined our processes, but has also freed up our staff to do strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation reports to ensure the better management of the board," concludes Luthuli.