CHANNEL Islands IT business C5 Alliance has undertaken a major project to improve document management at the Generali International’s offices in Navan, Ireland.

The project involved creating an automated retrieval system where documents could be stored and then searched for, as needed, in a Sharepoint-based document repository.

Lead developer Matt Thornton said that this would allow staff to work more efficiently and provide a better service to clients.

“Moving to a dynamic and efficient digital solution enables all records to be instantly searched and called to an employee’s desktop, meaning they can now reply to client enquiries in seconds,” he said.
C5 were also responsible for providing Generali with a software suite that would not only improve the speed at which documents could be located, but also improve audit trails, compliance requirements and result in more integrated working between Generali’s global network of offices.

Padraig Jones, Projects Manager at Generali International in Navan said: “We were impressed with the level of knowledge and expertise C5 Alliance were able to deploy to the project. They had previous experience of providing a similar system to our head office in Guernsey so we were confident they could meet the brief. The solution that is now in place will benefit our operations in Guernsey and Ireland, as well as our other offices around the world including Hong Kong and Cyprus.”

However, the project required careful management in order to keep the office running smoothly during the transition with one of the biggest challenges being to ensure that the documents were available to the policy administrators while they were being processed.
“We couldn’t simply take large chunks of their library away; if a client called and asked for policy details they would have to be able to access the right information quickly. As in all our projects, it was vital that we enabled Generali to carry on as normal while the work was on going,” said Mr Thornton.

With phase one complete and the system in place and in use, C5 is now working on closer integration with Generali’s other business software and adding additional features and functionality to the system.