The Samaritans improve sharing and dissemination of knowledge, and reduce operational costs, with Open Text's Livelink
Beaconsfield, UK - 1999-11-16 - The Samaritans has chosen Livelink, the leading collaborative knowledge management application from Open Text¹, to reduce costs and facilitate dissemination and sharing of knowledge across the organisation. Livelink, which encompasses document management, virtual team collaboration, workflow and information retrieval services, will provide the following benefits to The Samaritans:
- Reduce costs associated with paper based operations
- Ensure that the most up-to-date materials are easily available to The Samaritans 19,600 volunteers, through the creation of an on-line searchable archive of reference materials
- Leverage the sharing of knowledge and expertise between committee members and volunteers
- Enable volunteers to be trained more effectively and perform administration functions more efficiently.
Such an application will deliver significant productivity benefits across all branches - substantially reducing the amount of time it takes to locate relevant branch support and training materials.
Sue Scregg, director of finance and administration at The Samaritans, comments: "As a charity, approximately 95% of our funds come from donations. It is therefore vital to ensure that this money is prudently spent. Livelink is set to become an invaluable resource for The Samaritans, in terms of the money it will save us and the benefits it will provide. Over and above alternative competing solutions, Open Text s Livelink provided a good match to our requirements, offering high functionality, not just in terms of our current needs, but also in terms of any future requirements. Finally, Livelink is an out of the box solution, which is easy to deploy and use."
"We are delighted that Livelink will be instrumental in improving the sharing and dissemination of knowledge amongst The Samaritans, contributing in their mission to support those in crisis," comments Jill Wilkin, Open Text Marketing Director, Northern Europe. "Non-profit organisations clearly have a lot to gain from implementing an effective knowledge management strategy, and customers such as The Samaritans and the Terrence Higgins Trust demonstrate that this sector is increasingly recognising this."
The Samaritans Executive Committee and staff at the general office in Slough, Berkshire, are initially piloting Livelink. There are plans to roll out Livelink across the entire organisation by April 2000.
About The Samaritans
The Samaritans is a registered charity, founded in 1953, which provides confidential and emotional support to people in crisis. The Samaritans vision is that fewer people will take their own lives because Samaritan befriending is available, at any hour of the day or night for everyone passing through personal crisis and at risk of dying. The Samaritans provides society with a better understanding of suicide, suicidal behaviour and the value of expressing feelings that may lead to suicide. Across the UK, you can call The Samaritans on 0345 90 90 90 (1850 60 90 90 in the Republic of Ireland) for the price of a local call. You can also write also to The Samaritans at Chris, PO Box 9090, Stirling, FK8 2SA, send an e-mail to jo@samaritans.org or use the single national textphone number 08457 90 91 92 (1850 60 90 91 in the Republic of Ireland). The Samaritans logo can be downloaded from the website: http://www.samaritans.org.uk/
For more information, please contact
Richard Janes
Account Manager
Grant Butler Coomber
(00 44) 0181 322 1922
richardj@gbc.co.uk
Jill Wilkin
Marketing Director, Northern Europe
Open Text UK Ltd.
(00 44) 01494 679700
jwilkin@opentext.co.uk
