Northern Ireland Tourist Board to streamline admin processes

The Northern Ireland Tourist Board (NITB) is to streamline its administration processes with the implementation of an electronic document and records management system (EDRM). The Board, which promotes Northern Ireland as a tourist destination, is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment Northern Ireland.

NITB has announced the system will be provided by Kainos, and will be implemented by October, and will feature Microsoft SharePoint 2010 at its core.

The move aims to drive forward a reduction on the reliance of the NITB on paper, enabling the Board to meet targets for responses to Ministerial information requests, and cut time-consuming administration in the process.

“We get European funding, and have to provide a strict information audit trail as part of our obligations, but we have got to a point where we are drowning in paper,” explained Louise Kearney, director of organisational development at the NITB. “Stakeholder engagement and the visitor experience is the core of what we do, yet so much time is being wasted trying to track down the right version of any given document so we can provide timely answers to Assembly questions.”

“Our target is 95% success in providing such correspondence to the Minister on time,” Louise added. “Meeting this requirement is challenging with current systems.”

Brendan Mooney, CEO at Kainos, said he was delighted at securing the NITB contract, and described it as “further endorsement of our expertise and experience in EDRM, which many organisations now see as a cornerstone of their strategy to cut costs, increase productivity and drive up the customer experience, particularly in the current climate where budgets are so tight and the pressure to reduce overheads is so great.”