East Lothian Council

The Benefits

• Simplified document uploads for quick processing

• Secure access controls

• Endless automatic workflow options

The Background

With 4,800 staff managing an area containing over 105,000 people, The East Lothian Council naturally generates a lot of paperwork.

As the council’s provider of digital solutions, Apogee hosted an Document Management system to organise their company database – which housed over four million documents, accounting for approximately 270GB of data. New documents were collected from site, scanned, and uploaded onto a secure server by Apogee, allowing council staff to access them easily.

Forced to incorporate remote working as a result of the pandemic, East Lothian Council needed to maintain essential services while ensuring staff safety. Therefore, it was up to Apogee to adapt a new way for them to operate.

The Challenge

The main challenge was the collection process. The volume of paperwork being collected meant that switching to mail wasn’t economical – but with employees being moved to remote working for their own safety, in-person collection wasn’t an option either.

It was quickly clear that council staff needed the capability to upload documents directly to the server – which presented its own challenges, since an online portal would need to be easy for staff to use, so they could upload and workflow their own documents.

The Solution

To meet this requirement, Apogee adapted the existing Document Management system to include a simple client portal for uploading documents – but customised with built-in naming conventions, ensuring that uploads would be saved and indexed quickly and easily.

To archive invoices, staff only need to drag and drop them into the portal – and once saved, they are able to enter workflows that would automate certain document processes, such as approval, and payment.

The Outcome

Thanks to this solution, East Lothian Council managed to maintain their existing Document Management system – and were able to upload documents safely throughout the pandemic and beyond.

What’s more, the use of automatic workflows created many internal efficiencies, which lightened the load when it came to adapting to the new normal of flexible working – with a future-proofed system that can easily meet the demands of a fast-changing business landscape.


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