No more paper chase: Tech Data Canada needed a document imaging solution that made paper go away. It almost lost the winner - Case Study
Computer Dealer News

As readers of this magazine know, Tech Data Canada is a national distributor of some of" the biggest names in information technology.

But it still took the company 10 months to find the document imaging solution it wanted--one that nearly got away.

The problem, explained Jose Brito, the distributor's director of credit services, is it has to store and keep track of thousands of Ontario provincial certificates certifying the sales tax exempt status of resellers, documents which are renewed every four years.

"As you're trying to manage drawers and drawers of paper you think there must be a better way to do this," said Heather Donaldson, TDC's assistant credit manager. "With document imaging making a lot of progress over the last few years, it seemed to be a logical solution."

When Donaldson was appointed to find an answer for the credit department, she was also delegated to get one that was robust enough to serve company-wide.

One quick way was rejected: buy the software used by the Tech Data Canada's U.S. parent. While that supplier--which Brito refused to name--had a Toronto division, for service it would have been dealing with its American office.

Among the other requirements was a system that was scalable, easy to use, secure, would run on Windows NT and was SQL-based.