Solutions - ePolice

In a recent paper, the then Home Secretary, Rt Hon Jacqui Smith MP, said:

The effective use of information is at the heart of successful policing. The analysis of information about offences and offenders enables investigation, analysis of crime patterns determines deployment and planning, good communication with the public is the basis of reassurance and can provide vital intelligence about criminal activity. Officers who are able to access accurate, timely information in an efficient way can deliver better service and achieve better outcomes.

She goes on to say...

Reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, improving systems and processes and the innovative use of new technology are all powerful examples of how the service is changing the way it delivers. All of these approaches are helping to deliver the improvements in efficiency and productivity that are essential if the service is to succeed in delivering for the public

ePC's solutions allow you to quickly and efficiently assimilate data, therefore providing swifter intelligence led enforcement, freeing officers from red tape or simply reducing resources on manually intensive data entry. The requirement for this was reiterated by the new Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, in December 2009:

The Government expects to see a significant amount of process improvement and other work to make back office support functions more efficient.

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ePC has established itself within police forces nationwide and has proven to reduce time and resources required for data capture, while freeing up time for staff to increase productivity and throughput.

Your Challenges

Whether your department processes training course evaluation forms, new enrolment application forms, vetting or Activity Based Costing data, our solutions can meet your challenges:

• Collecting good and accurate data from potentially high volumes of respondents.
• Streamlining processes to be as efficient as possible.
• Manually reading and checking all information from submitted forms.
• Keying in information; this, due to human error, inevitably leads to inaccuracy.
• Manually storing appropriate information within in-house database systems.
• Manually retrieving and handling paper records is time consuming and labour intensive.

Our Solution

We have combined years of technical expertise with the leading products to provide robust solutions to:

• Replicate your current forms or design new ones within our intuitive form design application.
• Paper forms are batch scanned with hand written characters and responses read and extracted.
• High speed data verification designed to suit your process rules.
• Only complete and accurate data is stored within existing data systems.
• Easy image archival of originals for fast effective retrieval; no more manual filing and indexing.

Our systems can be used to design flexible blank or pre-filled forms. These can be printed or eMailed to recipients for completion on screen or on paper. Paper forms are scanned via our range of quick and efficient scanners. The electronic images are then read; it extracts the machine print and handwritten information from the form, checking the data is correct and as expected as it goes.

A brief manual process is then required to verify poor handwriting, invalid data or incorrect entries. Only bad data will be brought up and the presentation of this to the user is designed to be as high speed as possible. Our aim is to reduce the time required to enter the form data by 95% or more.

Complete form images and data can then be exported out to your end databases such as Excel, Access, Oracle or SPSS. Permanent records of the form images are also stored for reference and archive purposes.

Return On Investment?

Although our existing clients have benefitted from many non-tangible benefits such as a better framework for managing form designs or easier staff handover of processes, our solutions are always designed to provide a swift return on your investment:

• Required resources are significantly lowered.
• Workload reduced, freeing up time for staff to undertake more productive tasks.
• Increase in productivity and ability to capture more data from more forms.
• Freeing up time for staff to analyse results rather than manually keying in data.
• More accurate, more comprehensive and quicker feedback of data resulting in:
  • Better operational decisions leading to better service to the public.
  • Faster turnaround of processes resulting in a more responsive force.
  • Lower administrative costs allowing funding to be spent on better policing.
  • Better feedback leading to more appropriate training material and delivery.

Who Is Already Benefiting?

For one force, ePC were able to advise and implement a high-volume scanning solution for candidate application packs consisting of many types of forms including applications for constables, specials, civil staff as well as staff transfers and rejoiners. Data accuracy is of supreme importance. In addition is the capability of receiving partial application details over the phone to be merged onto forms for either post or email delivery for applicants to complete.

ePC have worked with another force in implementing a high efficiency solution for capturing and storing high volumes of Activity Based Costing data. Flexible forms are able to be designed and setup to be as simple as possible for the recipient completing them but with the data exported in the correct format to satisfy the Home Office.

We would be pleased to arrange an appointment with you, in order that we can provide a demonstration of our solutions. This will enable us to understand your requirements and allow you to see the benefits we have outlined firsthand.

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