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HPI has been providing private car buyers, car dealers, finance houses and the insurance industry with key information on vehicles registered in the UK since 1938. Its collection of vehicle information enables anyone to check whether a vehicle has been stolen, written off or still has money owed to a finance company.

To help dealers comply with Consumer Protection Regulations and the Sale of Goods Act, HPI's National Mileage Register (NMR) investigation service contacts previous owners to verify mileage on a vehicle, identifying when a vehicle has been clocked - for example, displays false mileage typically lower than it should be. The practice had been on the wane, but the advent of digital mileage recorders made it easier for unscrupulous sellers to manipulate the reading, and in recent years the downward trend has reversed.

HPI's process is essential in order to give consumers faith in the motor trade and saves honest traders huge amounts of hassle and red tape. One in three cars it checks is found to have a discrepancy, with a quarter having outstanding finance and one in twenty an issue with their claimed mileage. The firm's checks identify 30 stolen vehicles and 650 insurance write-offs every day.

DATA OVERTAKES CAPACITY
The UK used car market hit a record high of £38.1 billion in terms of value in 2012, outpacing the total new car market by £5.8bn. As this coincided with a rise in clocked vehicles, for HPI these two developments created a growing database and a rapid increase in the number of requests for information.

With managing documents key to the company's business, the process of updating records had already been digitised, but its existing enterprise document management (EDM) system was proving unsatisfactory. As a result, there was a backlog of work, and the firm was struggling to provide the quick turnaround its customers demanded.

"Selling a car is a fast-moving business and dealers can lose a sale if there are delays in the process," said Paul Fitzsimmons, HPI National Mileage Register team manager. To make matters worse, HPI's ECM contract was based on digitising a set number of documents per year, and the company had reached its upper limit early. We had to go and beg for a few thousand more, and look at upgrading to the next level of contract, which was far more than we needed," Fitzsimmons said.

The market upturn of 2012 was a perfect opportunity for HPI but if it was to take advantage of the increased business it had to improve on its turnaround times, while dealing with increased workload and improving its efficiency.

A BETTER RIDE
HPI started looking around for a new enterprise content management solution and found OnBase by Hyland. Fitzsimmons said: "We had a look at two or three different options and OnBase seemed to suit all out needs, plus the sales person was local to us and easy to deal with directly, so we cut out a layer of the sales process.

"It integrates really well with our underlying business systems, because we have a framework that needs to be populated with data and OnBase does that really well. The other ECM system did it too, but OnBase seems to make it more simple and elegant. As an end user who doesn't really understand the intricate detail the software, that is what you really want."

In addition, OnBase helped HPI move away from its previous vendor's pricing model, where fee levels depended on document volumes - an unsustainable arrangement for a growing business. And OnBase could be tailored and integrated 'out-of-the-box', so it was implemented with minimal disruption to the team.

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