Getting onboard with mobile technology

Chris Conway

For the last three years, Zaizi has been working with Eurostar to implement their Alfresco solutions. 

Originally the project was to combine and organise the 60,000 engineering drawings that were needed to be stored and shared between their English, French and Belgian depots.

Since then, they have expanded their requirement to include a company documents project, which includes all of the internal policy documents. Being a part of a regulated industry and operating out of several countries, auditing is a regular occurrence and records management a key area for the business.

They have also expanded to include all board documents to make their office and processes as paperless as possible. 

Our latest project is to supply a mobile solution to a very specific issue in the transport industry.  Due to regulatory issues, staff working on the trains are required to carry with them a large amount of documentation, with train drivers having to carry fifteen books with them at any time, and train managers, eight books.

This can lead to issues such as back problems due to the sheer weight of the documents which can be several kilos, as well as printing costs for updates to the books costing £20,000 a year.

Obviously a solution was required, not only for health issues, but also environmental.  The current systems requires a manual update to all required materials, which have to be signed for on receipt, but also taken, read and understood, then signed again once the documents are understood.

This is a laborious process which is time consuming and leads  to staff having to be present when it is not otherwise necessary for them to be so

The ultimate goal…

With this in mind, Zaizi has developed a bespoke mobile App for Eurostar, The Safety Documents App. With key functionalities including a search option, got to page, and swipe capability for all their documents as well a real time update and acceptance protocol of critical data.

They are now able to deliver an increasingly professional service which allows them to deal with customers quickly and have the right information at hand whenever it is needed. It also has a French language version which is vital for Eurostar.

“The problem that it solves in terms of environment and the paper that is consumed, but also regulatory, is super interesting. So I was really excited to see Zaizi take the open source app and augment it with the exact requirement that Eurostar had of making sure that people got documents on time, read them, understood them and that information is circulated back to the back office. That’s the perfect Alfresco back end plus mobile combination. I couldn’t find a better example.”

Marc Dubresson | Director, Product Management at Alfresco

What do the users think?

The initial trial phase went live in August 2013 and already feedback from the drivers and managers has been extremely positive.  Here are just a few:

“The potential is enormous” 

“It’s physically so much easier” 

“I can respond to queries anywhere, anytime” 

“From a green point of view it couldn’t be better”    

“Since 2010 Zaizi have been helping us implement Enterprise Document Management and improve collaboration across our business. This is not limited to the initial roll out which is still in progress. They have also assisted with some bespoke Eurostar projects including all company documents and policies being governed in Alfresco. Work has started for an alfresco mobile solution to enable our on board crew to locate and access the relevant documentation and enable remote working.” 

Nicola Palmer | General Manager, Operational IS at Eurostar

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