Who are Co-op Legal Services?
Co-op Legal Services has over 600 employees working from offices in Manchester, Bristol, Stratford-upon-Avon, Sheffield and London.
It is the largest provider of Probate and Estate administration services in England and Wales, trusted to deal with over £1.3 billion in Estates annually.
Co-op Legal Services is divided into six legal practice areas: Probate, Wills, Family Law, Personal Injury, Employment, and Conveyancing.
The Challenge.
Co-op Legal Services wanted to improve its existing mailroom process to handle inbound correspondence in a more efficient and compliant manner, to better serve its clients and to improve speed of response.
The manual handling and distribution of large volumes of inbound paper documents was creating inefficiencies and risk for the team at Co-op Legal Services. Preparing, sorting, and distributing mail was time consuming and required dedicated staff; typically, post arriving in the morning would not reach the case handler until much later in the day, causing a delay in response times. Furthermore, there was
no means to identify and prioritise urgent correspondence, high net value cases, or critical court documents that required an immediate response.
The distribution of paper around the building and between sites created a significant risk for lost documents and misdirected mail. As a regulated organisation, required to track audit trails and to maintain compliance regarding the sensitivity of documents and the information they contain, Co-op Legal Services recognised a need to adopt more robust processes.
Our Approach.
Co-op Legal Services required a digital processing system to enable documents to be scanned through the system quickly, delivering a more efficient service for customers and reducing the manual burden on its teams. The advantages of a digital mailroom were readily understood, with colleagues welcoming the improvements to communication and efficiency throughout the business.
The Solution.
The team that is now at Embrace Digital, worked closely with Co-op Legal Services to understand their requirements and objectives, and to develop a bespoke mailroom solution. As experts in providing digital mailroom technology to the legal sector, the team were able to provide guidance throughout each stage of the project from concept through to go-live.
The automated mailroom was deployed across Co-op Legal Services’ key sites, automatically digitising, indexing, and routing inbound documents and emails. The solution prioritises and sorts communications, ensuring they are received efficiently and quickly by their intended recipients. Integration with existing MI dashboards allows the tracking of KPIs and the opportunity to identify further areas of improvement.
The mailroom has provided a compliant and efficient process that has been well received by colleagues. The reduction in paper handling and the ability to receive inbound communications more quickly has had a positive impact on customer service and removed an unnecessary burden on fee-earners and other personnel.
Most recently, Co-op Legal Services has embarked on new initiatives with Embrace Digital to upgrade and further improve the system to refine processes and to incorporate additional capabilities such as online learning to heighten automation levels.
Product Spotlight...
To secure the positive outcome, Embrace Digital used the following...
Benefits...
Reduced costs.
There is no longer a requirement for dedicated teams to manually process inbound communications.
Improved customer service.
Faster and more accurate transfer and retrieval of documents and prioritisation of urgent matters, has improved customer response times.
Greater compliance & security.
The business now has a clear audit trail and documents are only accessible by authorised staff.
Reduction in storage.
The original post room is no longer required and the absence of physical documents around the business has freed up space that has been repurposed.
What Was Said...
“We have increased operational efficiency and improved our service to customers. Crucially, we now have a complete audit trail for inbound communications; As a regulated organisation this is very important to us.”
James Barron, Life Planning & Legal, CLS Technology.“We continue to work closely with Embrace Digital. The teams’ expertise within the sector and the guidance they offer, enable us to continually improve the processes we have in place and take advantage of the latest technologies available.”
James Barron, Life Planning & Legal, CLS Technology.
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