The iFerret search and discovery solution developed by iPLATINUM is now installed at 35 councils across Australia and New Zealand and is becoming widely recognised as the defacto standard search facility for local government.
Whilst there are many features that elevate iFerret above other search technologies (as proven in recent evaluations), the main differentiator for iFerret in local government is the installation approach developed by iPLATINUM. iFerret is installed as an appliance “turnkey” solution which means there is minimal effort required on behalf of council staff and the solution can be made operational in months, unlike many tool boxes that often take years to install without ultimately achieving the desired outcomes.
The value proposition developed by many councils is a pretty simple one, iFerret enables any staff member to find any piece of information (security permitting) quickly and efficiently without having to understand the complexity of their corporate systems, office products or network structures. Some councils have reported time savings of 2.5 hours per employee per week. When you multiply these numbers across a councils’ workforce the time and cost savings become very compelling.
Whilst in its simplest form iFerret is a wonderful search solution, iPLATINUM has provided customised features to specifically address the requirements of local councils. This includes: the automatic electronic packaging of information for Freedom of Information and Government Information (Public Access) purposes; optical character recognition (searching on scanned documents); reporting to easily identify copies and duplicates and standard connectors for the commonly used systems in local government.
iFerret will be a “must have” for councils facing reform as it will give them the capability to quickly and easily access and retrieve information across disparate systems in different locations.
*Copy supplied by iPLATINUM
