About Our Client
Wilson Blanchard is a full-service condominium management company with offices across the GTA, Golden Horseshoe and Kitchener-Waterloo Regions. They are one of the largest and most respected condo management firms in Canada and have provided services to condominium Boards since 1995 with over 46,000 condo units under their management.
The Challenge: Running out of office space
Each of Wilson Blanchard’s condo units has its own unique file of documents. Any time there is a sale or purchase of a unit, or any other significant changes to the unit, additional documents are created and filed. By 2019 Wilson Blanchard found itself drowning in paper, with valuable corporate office space dedicated to the storage of paper files.
The Solution: In-house or outsource?
Wilson Blanchard purchased Sharepoint software to manage their digital documents with a plan to transition to a paperless office. They purchased high volume scanners, and hired students to upload the condo files from their largest office in Hamilton, Ontario. Progress was slow, and challenges many. Within a year they decided they needed a trusted outsourced scanning partner. Wilson Blanchard approached Bay Area Records to complete the work from their Hamilton Office. Bay Area Records managed the project, in close collaboration with the WB team, to create a solution that mirrored what the WB team had already completed in-house. Each day throughout the project the Bay Area Records team communicated with the WB team to inform them what batches had been prepared and uploaded to a secure FTP site. The WB team were able to download the digital files into their Sharepoint application. At anytime the WB team was able to make urgent retrieval requests that Bay Area Records could make immediately available to the WB team.
The Results
The project was such a success WB used Bay Area Records to complete the digitization of their Cambridge and Toronto offices too. More than 2,500,000 documents have now been digitized and uploaded. On a monthly basis each of the WB offices sends their newly created files and paper documents to Bay Area Records. These are uploaded into Sharepoint ensuring the Wilson Blanchard team has a comprehensive digital document management system. Bay Area Records also provides secure and confidential record shredding services for Wilson Blanchard, providing a digital “Certificate of Destruction”.
