Birmingham, 16 September 2010 – Dotted Eyes, the market leading GeoData and information software specialist, today announces a report from the National Trust that it is reaping considerable rewards in reduced time, cost and resources in serving its internal staff and partner organisations since adopting the Contractor Portal data sharing system, this summer.

Launched to great acclaim in July, Contractor Portal was quickly adopted by the National Trust, which recognised its capability for providing hundreds of subcontractors with highly effective self-serve access to both internal and Ordnance Survey (OS) data, whilst delivering automated compliance and critical audit trails. Specifically, the system is helping this prolific organisation to better manage its vast portfolio of property, events and community engagement directives whilst ensuring up-to-date data access for all internal users and subcontractors.

“Contractor Portal has given us a low-cost, time-saving solution to delivering effective, efficient and accurate location intelligence to the huge number of subcontractors with which we work every day,” said Mike Renow-Clarke, Senior Land and Property Data Officer at the National Trust.

“The simplicity of the system has removed the burden of managing thousands of map users, whilst liberating data access for the tendering process and smaller, short-term projects. Critically, it ensures that our internal MapInfo users and all contractors are accessing the most up-to-date datasets. Based on an average time saving of two hours per data request, when compared to our previous manual data handling process, we estimate that it has freed-up 300 hours since we went live in July and will continue at this level.”

Contractor Portal services the National Trust’s vast network of internal users and subcontractors, whilst managing the flux of tenders and small projects – particularly by consultants. For example, it enables the review of potential sites for micro generation of renewable energy which helps the organisation to achieve its goal of a 50% shift from fossil fuels to renewables by 2020.

Hosted by Dotted Eyes, the National Trust Contractor Portal system is served and supported externally, further reducing IT and data management resource requirements, whilst ensuring that datasets are completely up-to-date. It is directly helping the National Trust to deliver on key directives such as local community participation and promoting trails for walking, cycling and kayaking.

“The National Trust is an exemplary customer for Contractor Portal,” said Ben Allan, Managing Director of Dotted Eyes.

“Ultimately the Return on Investment in Contractor Portal is considerable. With minimal investment, the system addresses several key needs in a single solution: increasing user numbers, minimising data licence management, freeing-up internal resources, facilitating multiple data formats, almost eliminating IT support needs and delivering a critical audit trail.”

As an established data licence customer of Dotted Eyes, the National Trust first saw Contractor Portal being demonstrated early in 2010 at a small workshop prior to its formal launch. Mike Renow-Clarke was quick to realise its potential for the organisation and become one of the early adopters, alongside a number of local authorities such as Liverpool Direct Limited when it launched this summer.

Contractor Portal is powered by FME, the market leading spatial data transformation software, from Safe Software. This is integrated with Dotted Eyes' leading mapping interface to provide an intuitive user experience. Contractor Portal is available as a hosted or installed solution, and a flexible licensing model enables costs to be charged back to the end user, as required.

About Dotted Eyes
With a long heritage as innovators of data and information solutions for private and public sector organisations, for more than 20 years Dotted Eyes has pioneered location-based intelligence products and services which enable better-informed business decision making at every level of business operations.

Serving some 900 customers UK-wide, through expert consultancy, training and product development in healthcare, local government, not-for-profit and the commercial sector, Dotted Eyes’ mantra is to ‘simplify, automate and integrate’ data and information. This approach uniquely equips senior and departmental levels of organisations to access, visualise, analyse and share complex data in simple, useable formats to make more cost-effective, locally-relevant decisions.

Dotted Eyes maintains long standing expert partnerships with location data providers such as Ordnance Survey and Pitney Bowes Business Insight and operates certified training courses nationwide. It serves 220 Local Government customers, some 130 UK Primary Care Trusts and every ambulance service in England and Wales.

For further information, please visit: www.dottedeyes.com/cp

About the National Trust
The National Trust is a charity and is completely independent of Government. We rely for income on membership fees, donations and legacies, and revenue raised from our commercial operations.
Founded in 1895 we have over 3.7 million members and 60,000 volunteers. More than 14 million people visit our pay for entry properties, while an estimated 100 million visit our countryside and coastal places. We protect and open to the public over 350 historic houses, gardens and ancient monuments.
But it doesn’t stop there. We also look after forests, woods, fens, beaches, farmland, downs, moorland, islands, archaeological remains, castles, nature reserves, villages - for ever, for everyone.
Visit: www.nationaltrust.org.uk