Bentley Drivers Club takes outsourcing route for records management

Every Bentley produced since the 1920s comes with a handwritten engineer's build record detailing every stage of the car's construction process. The Bentley Drives Club currently holds 10,000 of these precious and delicate records for its membership.

While an asset to the Club and its worldwide membership, the records are a burden to manage; for every inquiry from a Bentley owner, hours are spent locating the right storage box among several hundred, in addition to photocopying and mailing the record to the Club member.

The Club's committee determined digital archiving would greatly simplify the accessibility and transfer of these records. With many eighty-year-old records in "not the best of condition," it would also eliminate fire risks and other accidental damage concerns, according to committee member Robert Miles.

At first the Club looked at buying a scanner and undertaking the task in house, but outsourcing was quickly approved "when we realized just how long it would take to scan all 10,000 records," said Miles. British service bureau HMSL scanned and converted all 10,000 Bentley build records into electronic images, storing the originals while giving CD copies to the Club.

Today inquiring members receive copies of their Bentley's build record via PC printouts or as an Email attachment. The Club saves hours in retrieval time and eliminates the risk of accidental damage to the paper records.

The Club is delighted with the results. "We get perfect copies of a seventy-year-old record every time we want one," said Miles, adding that in many cases the converted records look better than the originals. "For us and our precious archive, going digital has certainly made sense.