Lamb and Hayward, established in 1923, is a progressive Christchurch based company of funeral directors with a long held community service focus.

As part of their community service policy, Lamb and Hayward are involved in the establishment of a living memorial in partnership with the New Zealand Department of Conservation and local Maori. Otukaikino wetland reserve was a traditional Maori sacred burial site and is being restored by the gradual planting of living memorials. The native trees and plants are donated by Lamb & Hayward in commemoration of each funeral organised by the Company.

Each year Lamb & Hayward hold a memorial service in the reserve to honor the lives of those who have died that year. The area is open to the public for visiting and viewing, and walkways have been laid so that people can gain access to the reserve without damaging it. It is a place of quiet reflection and contemplation.

Otukaikino Reserve

Business Issue - Compliance, Customer Service and Marketing
Funeral Directors face a difficult task. Within a very short period of time they have to meet various legal requirements while dealing with grief-stricken customers at one of the most difficult and stressful times of their lives. Lamb and Hayward wanted to increase the efficiency in their compliance with legal requirements by gaining rapid recall of information kept on the paper records for the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

But internal requirements are important too. The details of a spouse’s funeral will locate the spouse’s grave site and other vital family information. This enables Lamb and Hayward to provide a faster, less troublesome and more personal service.

Lamb and Hayward also wished to provide readily available historical funeral records to the local community. “We are burying 5th and 6th generation members from the same families,” explained John Rinckes, of Lamb and Hayward. “We are always being asked ‘What did we do for dad at his funeral?’ and ‘Who was great-grandad married to?’ We wanted to help these families promptly and accurately, especially as planning a funeral is difficult and painful for family members.”

Although marketing is part of every funeral home’s business plan, it has to be carefully handled with great respect and tact. Lamb and Hayward know that being actively involved in their community helps them be chosen to assist with the last rites in the cycle of life. But they also realized that they needed help in dealing with the paperwork associated with a death.

Solution
That’s where Trapeze Vault from Onstream Systems comes in. Lamb and Hayward selected Trapeze Vault along with a Canon 5020 scanner to help organise and retrieve the required information. “Vault took us about 20 minutes to set up on our own, including the database, search criteria and the rest, and none of us are computer experts,” said Jon Rinckes. “From then on, it was just a matter of scanning the old paperwork – in-between funerals. We think we have about 50,000 recorded funerals on the system.

Lamb and Hayward perform about 850 funerals each year, and they estimate they have conducted over 100,000 funerals, starting from the early 1920s. They started scanning in papers from 1991 and are working backwards through the years. Once those are all indexed, they will capture the past decade and then update the system on a monthly basis.

The lack of training requirements, ease of use, the ability to customize it to their exact requirements, and savings in storage space are some of the many benefits Lamb and Hayward have received from the new system. Vault has become a key component of the business, allowing them to respond to information requests quickly and accurately, as well as providing copies of the original documents that really mean something to their customers. Previously, when a relative came in looking for information, it would have taken at best 10 to 15 minutes to get the information by manually looking through the Master Year Books and then their relevant folders. At other times it would have taken longer, as the older records were not fully recorded. Now, a record on the system can be quickly found by a search on surnames and a date range.

The installation of the Trapeze Vault solution enables Lamb and Hayward to more quickly comply with legal requirements, while helping them offer a better service to their customers.

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