Office interiors

Pickfords puts Standard Life in control of its assets

Standard Life is a leading long-term savings and investments company headquartered in Edinburgh and operating internationally. Established in 1825, Standard Life provides life assurance and pensions, investment management and healthcare insurance products to over 6.5 million customers worldwide. The Group has around 10,000 employees across the UK, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Austria, India, USA, Hong Kong and Mainland China. At the end of June 2009 the Group had total assets under administration of £156.5bn.

Unique asset management solution

Pickfords Business Solutions was recruited to provide Asset Management services to support the national removals contract for Standard Life managed by Pickfords.  Pickfords utilised its own software ‘Asset King’. This is a unique system, which allows Pickfords’ clients to manage, track and run specific reports for their assets. The system can be used to store over 250,000 assets per customer, including photographic images to assist with visual recognition. The system was built utilising Access 2007 software so is compatible with most Microsoft applications. This allows data to be transferred, migrated and stored in various ways to suit each client. 

Four week project

Standard Life required the transfer of over 10,000 office furniture assets from the incumbent’s warehouse facility to Pickfords Business Solutions’ own store located in Edinburgh.  The service included the cataloguing of all items including description, make, model, colour, dimensions, condition and photographic image. The items’ final location into containerised units within Pickfords’ store was also registered into the Asset King system. The asset management team processed each item as it was delivered and added a unique bar code sticker to allow future identification. The number reference of each bar code sticker related directly to the registered item. Working closely with Standard Life’s representatives, each asset was agreed and processed to ensure future recognition and understanding of the stored items.  The exercise commenced in August 2009 and took a period of 4 weeks to complete.

Once the database was complete the data was transferred to Pickfords’ IT server to allow Standard Life total access and control via a login and password process.

Detailed reporting

Pickfords Business Solutions arranged for a dedicated database manager to assist Standard Life on day-to-day management and control. Via the server login, Standard Life can review all assets to determine the requirements within their office environment and communicate retrieval instructions. Pickfords Business Solutions implemented remote access to allow its client greater control and coordination, as well as ensuring total security of all assets and images. Once the client has logged onto the system they can search for assets, sort assets, and run specific reports on the furniture in store.

Cost effective solution

Pickfords Business Solutions delivered a bespoke and cost effective asset management database software solution to capture and control all of the Standard Life’s assets. All data field headings were determined by the client to ensure they designed their own requirements for future use. The asset management team collated large quantities of assets in a short period of time working around the client’s staff and customers. During this 4 week project Standard Life representatives required furniture to be available at all times for moves and changes within Standard Life’s business as usual and weekend internal relocations. This was successfully achieved and the transfer and asset register was fully complete within the project timescales.