The Woodland Trust: Becoming Paperless and Planting Trees

The Woodland Trust, a UK woodland conservation charity, was facing a challenge of managing and storing their legal documents in a format that was legally accepted by the courts. They were also looking for a solution that could integrate with their CRM and accounting systems, and provide home-based employees with easy access to important information. The organization was planning to move to a new, more modern building where they anticipated having less storage space, which prompted them to start evaluating document management solutions. The tasks included reducing storage space, creating a “legally admissible” electronic document archive, sharing information with home-based employees, and integrating a document management system with the organization's CRM and Accounting system.

Established in 1972, the Woodland Trust is the UK's largest woodland conservation charity and one of the leading conservation forces for woods and trees. The organization campaigns to protect ancient woods, restores woods that are damaged, and fights for those threatened by development. With the help of communities, schools, organizations and individuals, they create new native woodland throughout England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The organization was looking for a solution to digitize their legal documents in a format legally accepted by the courts and to securely store these documents with long or indefinite retention periods. They also needed a solution that could integrate with other key systems such as their CRM and accounting systems, as well as provide home-based employees with easy access to important information. With almost 2/3 of their employees working from home, access to information over the internet from a tablet, smartphone or laptop was an important consideration.