How an office move triggered a 100% digitisation of Trudo’s document archives

In a nutshell

In 5 months, we digitised a document archive stretching 300m for Dutch housing association Trudo, freeing up office space and making files easier to access for teams working on site or remotely.

About the client

Trudo is a housing association based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. It manages 4,500 owner-occupied homes as well as 7,300 social housing properties, plus commercial spaces. Trudo’s mission is to continually innovate, to find ways to make a real difference for residents and for the city.

The challenge

When Trudo decided to move to new premises there was no space for its document archive, which stretched 300m end-to-end. The team decided to turn a challenge into an opportunity and go digital.

The solution

Trudo called us in to help. We’ve digitised files for over 100 housing associations (and, helpfully, one of our Netherlands offices is just a short bike-ride away from Trudo’s).

The archive contained all kinds of papers, from construction drawings to rental agreements and permits. Our document management and digitisation experts worked closely with the Trudo team to agree how the project would work, what needed to be scanned and what could be securely destroyed in line with regulations.

Our experts checked everything: removing duplicate documents and reorganising the archive into a clear structure, ready for scanning.

The results

Instead of wasting time digging around in dusty boxes, the Trudo team can now find the information they need at the click of a button.

What’s more, the process was 30% quicker than planned – taking just five months rather than the planned seven.

The benefits for Trudo include:

• Saving space and cost. No need to rent premises to store boxes of hardcopy documents.
• Customer experience. Trudo’s team can quickly access anything from the archive onscreen, making it easier to answer customer queries.
• A smoother office move. The team avoided the time, cost and effort required to shift 300 metres’ worth of boxes,
• Constant access to files. Even while the scanning process was underway, it was easy for Trudo get hold of documents via a request to the OASIS team. And now they can self-serve with the click of a button, wherever they’re working.
• Scalability. No matter how many documents get added to the archive, they can be added to the digital system rather than swallowing up office space.

What the client says

“We want colleagues to be able to access the right information anytime, anywhere. Whether you’re at the office or working from home, you need to be able to find what you’re looking for quickly. That’s the core of the project. With OASIS, the digitisation worked surprisingly smoothly .”

Winny Fast, Communications Team, Trudo