Sybrin integrated document management solution for Sanlam

Sanlam Securities is one of the leading securities trading companies in South Africa.

It has a direct link to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and trades on the various stocks and markets available on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).

Prior to Sybrin being implemented, a system was utilised to receive printouts of reports from the JSE; this system is called ERD and is a green screen application.

Various reports were sent to Sanlam Securities via this system. Reports received needed to be printed out daily and others exported and e-mailed to traders and brokers.

The process of printing all the reports was a three-hour process. Exporting the files and converting them into what was required to be e-mailed took another hour. This was a cumbersome process that took up a lot of constructive administrative time in a working day.

Problems that were experienced on site:

* Some reports were left out during the printing process, and to check what had been printed was a time-consuming exercise, as all the COLD reports were printed on a dot-matrix printer. This meant having to work through all the reports or to wait for a broker/trader to request a specific report from the administrative department if they had not received it for the day.
* If some reports hadn't come through from the JSE, it would require the administrative department to once again work through the reports received to figure out which reports hadn't come through.
* Reports could not be printed prior to the start of business as they required someone's presence to start the process for each batch of reports.
* Saving reports to a file first and then e-mailing them to recipients was also a timely process.

Sanlam Securities uses software called Rumba (Virtual Printer); reports are printed to this virtual printer. The software converts the print stream into a readable text file. Sybrin collects these reports from the virtual printers and automatically indexes them into the Sybrin Document Management system overnight.

Once the reports have been received, a scheduled process runs every morning that prints out all the reports needed for that day prior to the staff members walking into the office. All reports are ready for collection at start of business for all traders and departments that require the information sent by the JSE.

All exports and e-mails are handled on this same scheduled basis. Only certain reports out of the list of reports sent each evening by the JSE are required by various traders/brokers. These reports are automatically split and e-mailed to the relevant parties.

Sanlam Securities' previously manual process has been automated, allowing for the administrative department to spend more time dealing with daily tasks in the time that it would have taken to print and e-mail the reports to traders and brokers. Sybrin has thus helped in creating a more productive environment.