Singapore Swimming Club: Improving Processes with Canon Therefore™ Solution
Founded in 1894, Singapore Swimming Club is now perched along the luscious greens of Tanjong Rhu. The premier members-only recreational club spans over 27,000 square meters,and includes a variety of sporting facilities like two Olympic-sized pools, and tennis, squash and badminton courts. Singapore Swimming Club also prides themselves as a family club, regularly organising recreational and social activities suitable for members of all ages.
With ever-growing membership, Singapore Swimming Club needed to look for more efficient methods to accommodate their database.We sat down with Rajesh Kumar, Director of IT & Innovation, and Ken Lim, Senior Manager of Membership, to understand the hassles they faced, and just how they managed to curb their troubles and worries with Canon’s Document Management Solution.
What were the challenges you faced before the implementation of Canon’s Document Management Solution?
Ken: The overarching problem was time, and how every task was taking more time than it should. We were manually filing thousands of our members’ documents in a storage facility away from our office. That made retrieving the same files more tedious with some files accumulating to over 300 pages. Tracking the movement of the files was also difficult as other departments outside of Membership would request for these files.
How were these challenges mitigated?
Ken: Canon looked closely at the challenges we faced and were swift in proposing their intelligent Document Management Solution, Therefore™. It electronically files all types of information from many different sources to save us the trip from one office to the other. Its Full-Text Search feature no longer makes it necessary to flip through hundreds of pages to look for one document. For example, if a member breaks a club rule and we want to check if the member has had any prior violations, we can now just search with keywords, saving us time.
Do you have any specifics on the amount of time saved?
Ken: We do our filing weekly, so just for that purpose, we save about five man-hours a week. Before implementing Therefore™, we would also spend hours searching for files when any department needed them. After the change, we were no longer wasting our man-hours on problems like that.
Did you face any challenges or problems in the shift from manual to digital in your operations?
Ken: There was cynicism amongst our senior staff members who were used to the traditional way of operations, but after just one or two attempts at working in a digitised workplace, they got the hang of the operations. Of course, the solution’s user-friendliness and Canon’s after-sales support helped with the transition immensely.
Did the user-friendly experience and after-sales support help in choosing Canon?
Rajesh: Yes, we evaluated a few solutions from various suppliers, but those two factors were imperative in implementing a solution. Not all tech users are IT-savvy, so we just needed the simplest solution.
Ken: In fact, part-timers and new employees got used to the software within a day or two.
Rajesh: Adding on, we have always appreciated Canon’s customer service. Even problems like reaching maximum storage capacity were dealt with by Canon immediately.
How about security concerns that came about with digitising your documents?
Ken: Security is always a concern, even more so with digital content. We have thousands of our members’ credentials on hand, so security was certainly of utmost priority. Thankfully, Therefore™ came with security features that allowed access control, giving our staff limited access to only the documents they require.
What advice would you give to other companies and organisations who are looking for similar solutions?
Rajesh: There were three categories that we looked at: ease of use, customer service, and price. I believe every company should be focusing on these aspects of a business solution, and that is where Canon has exceeded our expectations.
More information on Canon’s Document Management Solution Therefore™, is available at our product page. Follow us on our LinkedIn for more case studies conducted by Canon Singapore.