LaserVault Comes Highly Recommended by Big Rivers Electric

With faster turnaround and more comprehensive usage, Big Rivers Electric is seeing LaserVault pay off in more than just money saved.

Big Rivers Electric Corporation of Henderson, Kentucky is a generation and transmission cooperative with 1,459 MW of generating capacity. As an electric utility, Big Rivers is required by the Federal Government and the RUS to retain detailed records for extensive periods of time. Gathering, organizing, and storing the necessary records could be an expensive and time-consuming process, especially when you consider that Big Rivers has facilities located throughout western Kentucky. Thanks in part to the LaserVault Reports document management solution, storing and retrieving these reports isn’t a problem at all. We talked with Dain Hill, Head of Records Management for Big Rivers, to see what he could tell us about the subject.

Microfiche – a thing of the past

“For twenty or so years we used microfiche. We didn’t do the ’fiche 'in-house.' We would send the tapes out to our service bureau in Louisville, and they’d convert them. If we sent something out on Monday, we might get it back on Thursday or Friday at the earliest, and more typically we’d see a two week turnaround. It might be another week by the time we got the microfiche out to our distribution cooperatives for them to take a look at it. So you might see anywhere from three weeks to a month to get a report printed and stored on microfiche.”

Faster turnaround with LaserVault Reports

“With LaserVault Reports, it’s a completely different situation. Our member cooperatives feed us their reports overnight, I get them in the system the next morning, and usually by noon I have everything in the system. Users can access the information throughout the day, anytime they want. Someone can call me now and say, ‘I really need the billing register right now’, and I can get them that info in five minutes. This is just wonderful, the ability to turn things around in a day.”

A capable system

“It takes up very little memory – especially since on LaserVault the data is compressed down to the real data. And the search capability – I went nuts – there are nine possible keys. I’m the type of person, that if you tell me that I can build nine keys, I will try and build nine keys.”

“We’re still on Access, but by keeping the number of keys down and simplifying them, users are able to get the information needed, no problem at all. They can search anything and everything on there because it’s all digital information. We know that everyone is moving to Sequel, and we are prepared to move to it too, but for now it’s great to have a system that works with or without it.”

The Real Benefit

“We have seen such a growth in usage and number of reports, and the volume of reports. The volume is clearly double. This format is so easy and convenient, and I think that’s the return on your investment right there. You can take a one page report, that microfiche wise you could never have justified, and now it’s no problem to archive it. With LaserVault, we really get a big bang for the buck.”