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Background to Portman International
"Portman International Ltd is a provider of fiduciary and financial support services managing a substantial number of companies worldwide with a staff of 50 people in 2 countries. The core service of the company is the formation and administration of companies and trusts which is supported by accounting, audit and operational support services. These processes are largely managed through a Lotus Notes based application.
Large numbers of forms and applications are submitted to regulatory authorities around the world and the company is responsible for ensuring timely and accurate submissions to avoid censure and fines being incurred. The company is also responsible to ensure that its clients are complying with all regulations within their jurisdictions..
While all the required data is maintained within a series of Lotus Notes databases, Portman faced a challenge in extracting the information in exactly the correct format for the required submissions to regulatory authorities who demand very specific layouts. We also required the capability to make modifications to these layouts with minimum developer intervention to conform to evolving regulations in each jurisdiction speedily and cost effectively.
To ensure the smooth operation of the company, it is essential to have a clear indication of the submissions required in the months ahead so as to ensure that the resources are available to handle the required work load on a monthly basis.
Usage of Integra
At Portman International we have used Integra for Notes for over 18 months and Integra has enabled us to transfer data from multiple Notes databases to Word and Excel for improved presentation, better layout control, printing and further analysis.
Prior to using Integra, the company re-entered data from their Notes databases onto forms provided by the regulators in each country. In addition to the time taken to do this, there were significant resources of qualified staff used to check the submissions made for accuracy.
In addition to the efficiencies gained through the automation described below, Integra has enabled us to produce output of an extremely high quality meeting the expectations of our customers for a quality service and those of regulators which Notes itself could not guarantee.
We estimate that in just one process, using Integra we have saved approximately 40% of the time of the 13 people in 2 locations involved in the regulatory submissions process only. In addition, due to the level of automation now in place, we have been able to have this task undertaken even by trainee level staff as checking is concentrated on the validity of the Notes databases rather than the manually re-imputed data. Our work is more accurate, saving rejection fees and costs of resending documents by courier.
On another example, Integra has been used to generate an automated monthly statistics report in Excel including charts which obtains data from multiple Notes databases about all the services provided to all clients. This report allows identification of the services being provided and another report allows us to assess the profitability of each client and service. Prior to Integra, our financial controller spent 2 to 3 days per month compiling this analysis which is today automatically collated by Integra and e-mailed to him on the first of each month.
A recent exercise was carried out using Integra analysing all billing for services to Excel which identified non-billed items in the previous year to the tune of US$15,000, 5 times the cost of Integra.
Integra has increased our productivity, provided improvements in our presentation and corporate image and made our corporate data more accessible to us allowing an improved basis for decision making. Of particular value has been the fact that we can create our own reports and need to rely less on design changes to our applications by the developers. This shortens turnaround times and reduces disruptions to our systems.
Integra for Notes is an application which we utilise in various situations including importing of data to Notes databases and it repeatedly provides us with value. In total at Portman we use 90 different Integra profiles most for exporting and some for importing data. About 50% of these profiles have been created or modified by the end-user department who have no Notes development skills. This has enabled a quicker turnaround for changes and has empowered our users.
Previously we used to run reports using Microsoft Access. The report generation skill required was considerable given the complex structure of our data in multiple database and response documents. The skill was vested in only one person, who was in a senior position within the company and outside the IT function. In addition, since Access used ODBC access to Notes, this exposed us to security weaknesses regarding data access which we do not face with Integra for Notes.
Key differences with this product to alternative solutions are that it is a tool able to be used both by the developers as well as end users and that the Integra imports and exports can be undertaken according to a timed schedule with our users receiving the reports in their mail or in a reports database. All this while it can still be integrated closely into our applications."
David Marinelli
Managing Director
Portman International Ltd
david.marinelli@portmaninternational.com
note: today, Portman still uses Integra on a daily basis. |
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