Gerry Stevens (left), the principal of a New Zealand bureau involved in scanning, document storage and file conversion, advised that a client, who required its use for the fulfilment of a contract, initially introduced MicroData Ltd to Trapeze™ Desktop.

However, once the contract was completed, the Wellington based company continued to use the Onstream Systems Trapeze™ Desktop product, simply because, as Stevens says, "We fell in love with it."

Working in document storage and retrieval services for business, government and private individuals, the team at MicroData originally stored all data on microfilm. Today however, the main focus is on archival document storage on CDs. The team quickly found that Trapeze™ Desktop solved two of the major problems that the company faced in its expanding data storage and conversion work for business and government.

Business Issue - Turn paper documents and files into stored data
By using Trapeze™ Desktop to turn paper documents and files into stored data, the MicroData operators found they could put separate subject 'stacks' into 'sort' jobs without having to make 3 or 4 files.

The team also found that they were able to go back at anytime and reopen a file, add to it, annotate it or re-index it, without having to open another file, as they had been forced to do with other programmes. "We now just add more pages," Stevens says. "At anytime."

Noting that the organisation has a policy of only using "tried, tested and true" software, Stevens says, " We like to know that any software has been well proven before we take it on." The key to the adopting of the software by his office and staff had been, besides its facility, its "user friendliness," he said. "Basically we saw a simple demo, found it very easy to use, and from that time have basically trained ourselves".

Stevens cannot yet determine whether Trapeze™ Desktop has generated extra income for the company, but he states that one of the major benefits has been the fact that its has cut back the time required for training part time workers. "We employ a lot of students to work part time at peak times and previously had to spend a lot of time training them. With Trapeze™ they pick it up intuitively and almost immediately. This ease of use has saved us a lot of training time."

The only problem MicroData has had with the system, Stevens says, has been related to OEM scanner software rather than the Trapeze™ Desktop software. "But even though it wasn't their problem the Trapeze™ team sorted it out really quickly," he said, noting that his company would be taking any upgrades which became available for Trapeze™ Desktop. "Our customers depend on us keeping up with software like this," he said. "It makes our job easier and it is also so much easier for customers to review and/or retrieve their own documents."

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