The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) is a non-profit organization working to make the most of science, technology and innovation in Kuwait. Established in 1976, it has a particular focus on how these disciplines can improve the quality of life for the people of Kuwait through modernization and sustainability.
KFAS works in a broad variety of ways including scientific publishing and collaborating to improve research quality. It also subsidizes specialist organizations including a diabetes research facility and a public science attraction.
As with many organizations that have expanded in scope over time, information management at KFAS grew unwieldy. It recognized the problem and asked itself whether its software solutions were still the most effective and efficient way to meet its current needs. In 2022 it engaged NVSSoft to review its information management setup, specifically its use of its current document management solution which dated back to 2014.
Learn more about their experience with NVSSoft’s solutions in this case study.
KFAS had recently seen a servicing and management contract for its document management system expire, opting not to renew it. This decision inspired a rethink of whether this legacy solution was the right tool for its needs across the organization.
While their current solution is a popular tool, its use in KFAS had major limitations which had led to a lack of adoption across the organization. By the time NVSSoft came in, only one KFAS department was still using it, with others preferring to use different methods to achieve their goals. The most commonly cited reason was that adding documents to the system was too complex and required too many steps.
Maintaining the status quo was no longer a practical option and the company faced a choice between reorganizing its current implementation or switching to a new solution completely. The latter would be more efficient in the long term but would require a complex operation to migrate existing data.
Following NVSSoft’s advice, KFAS decided to switch its data management across all 20 departments to ArcMate Enterprise. The project involved three key elements, the first being planning and training to get staff up to speed across the organization.
The second element was dealing with a backlog of documents that had yet to be scanned into the legacy solution. NVSSoft used Fujitsu production scanners to capture 1.5 million images, then transferred them from ArcMate’s Capture application into the ArcMate Enterprise system. Efficient planning meant this task took less than three months. The operation took full advantage of ArcMate Capture’s features such as batch scanning support with the option of page insert/delete/reorder. This makes it possible to target speed while knowing that any errors such as missed or out-of-order pages can be fixed without major headaches.
The final element was migrating existing data from the legacy solution into ArcMate Enterprise. This was not a simple task, thanks partly to the complex relationship between the database and folder structure in KFAS’s previous implementation and partly to the lack of technical support available with the SMC having expired.
NVSSoft built a custom tool that successfully completed the migration within three months. This took advantage of the way ArcMate Enterprise uses unlimited metadata and user-defined multi-level folder structures. This means folder structure was no longer a barrier to quickly retrieving documents. However, it also offered greater access control over documents with different levels of security and confidentiality.
KFAS reported immediate benefits from the switch to ArcMate Enterprise including:
- A notable improvement to the employee experience when adding new documents, a process that now involves a single screen and just two clicks.
- An overall reduction in support and management contract costs.
- Minimal disruption to information access thanks to the speed of the operations to clear the scanning backlog and migrate the data.
Perhaps the ultimate proof that the switch has achieved its aims is that KFAS has recently acquired extra licenses for ArcMate Enterprise. The organization now has an information management solution that serves its needs and enjoys support across all departments.