An end-of-life of a key application creates an urgent need for a physical records solution

The City of Kitchener is the municipal organization for Kitchener, a city in southeastern Ontario. In 2022, they faced a challenge managing physical records after the announcement that their existing system, OmniRIM Physical Records Management platform, would cease product support.

After a search for a replacement system, the City selected RecordPoint as it met the organization’s hard copy records management needs, as well as facilitating electronic records management and aligning with the City’s existing technology investments and budget constraints.

Robust physical records management at scale

RecordPoint provided better physical records management than the competition, with a more robust search functionality including advanced search options, a more modern, user-friendly interface, and better metrics and reporting features.

Due to the nature of physical records, when team members come across physical records in their departments, they need to be onboarded to RecordPoint to manage them. Fortunately, RecordPoint’s streamlined administration and user management function, complete with permission structures, makes this process far simpler, and the use of single sign-on makes it more secure, which satisfies the City’s IT team, Smith says.

Customer support streamlines onboarding to increase productivity

The initial onboarding to RecordPoint was made easier thanks to strong support from the RecordPoint team.

Records and Archives Specialist Grace Smith says the RecordPoint team understood the City’s goals in the transition and even spoke the same language.

“Kathy, who was a records management person, was awesome, because she just got the lingo we were talking about. She got everything we were trying to do. The people we were talking to knew what we were talking about. They understood event-based, retention, all that good stuff.”

This level of customer support has continued now the City is fully onboarded, Smith says.

"Melanie in RecordPoint support is the greatest human being ever, and you should base your whole company on her. She's so responsive. She's amazing. Whenever we reach out, she stays on top of things until they're done. We just love her.”

Physical records aren’t going anywhere

While the long-term trend is shifting towards electronic records management, several departments in the city are still heavily reliant on physical records.

“RecordPoint definitely fit that puzzle piece that we needed at the time to keep that going. And we do have boxes that will have permanent retention. So, unless someone invents an amazing digitization thing that costs nothing, those will always exist at the City of Kitchener.”

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