Scottish Qualification Authority Takes Paperless Approach with ECM Strategy

The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), the national body in Scotland responsible for the development, accreditation, assessment and certification of qualifications other than degrees, has deployed a new Enterprise Content Management (ECM) strategy from Information Management Consultancy Neocol.

The new solution will accelerate the speed, quality and capability of information to develop over 300 new qualifications as part of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) framework as well as automate workflows, reduce paper, improve efficiencies and cut costs in the wider SQA organisation.

Rob Gibson, Director of Business Systems at SQA said: "CfE is a significant transformation programme requiring us to think and operate differently. The complex environment that we will develop new qualifications in requires a fundamentally different approach and the only way to manage the new processes is with an Enterprise Content Management system.

He continued: “We were looking for an ECM solution which would integrate fully with all our existing systems and had spoken to a number of companies who offered possible solutions to our requirements. We selected Neocol as they came highly recommended from a number of other organisations and were the only company that could offer true seamless integration."

As part of its involvement in CfE, SQA is using Neocol’s ECM solution to automate the approval workflows of some 30,000 qualification documents between the organisation and key stakeholder groups such as colleges, universities, employers and local authorities. SQA plans to digitise where possible paper forms, capture all emails and rationalise multiple content stores all into one central and secure ‘vault’. In addition the new ECM solution is allowing external subject specialists access to information to support the implementation of the CfE project.

Integrating IBM FileNet and Omnifind with their Collaboration, Portal and Email solutions, SQA will be able to rationalize multiple search tools and content stores from nine, down to a handful and maximize their IBM investment.

Bill Alexander, Head of IT at SQA said: “Since the project began Neocol have provided a first rate service which has made the project very easy to implement both internally and externally. Their team has been on hand at all times and they have helped guide us through the implementation seamlessly. We are now planning how we can roll out the solution to other areas of the business and the ECM project will now provide a key part of our overall IT strategy as we move forwards.”

In the future SQA plans to deploy a records management strategy from Neocol across the organization where the user will be able to securely capture, declare, classify, store and dispose of electronic or physical records improving transparency, accuracy, continuity and compliance of the information. Staff will be able to “hot desk” as information will be stored electronically and enable SQA to become more flexible in their business practices.