BOX-IT is a growing physical document storage business serving the whole of the UK from its Winchester base and through an established network of franchise operations. The merger with Stortext will benefit from the cross-selling of integrated services to both existing and new customers, accelerating the growth potential. The enlarged group is well placed in this growing market, driven by the need for customers to increase efficiencies, drive down costs and comply with increasing regulation. The transaction was supported by debt funding from HSBC, Southampton.

Rupert Bell, Investment Director, Octopus Ventures, said: "BOX-IT has continued to grow over the past few years, demonstrating its resilience to the economic downturn, which is testament to the quality of its offering and management's focus and drive. The team identified Stortext, having partnered with them over the past few years, as a good strategic fit for its business and are excited about the prospects for growth. The investment from the Octopus Capital for Enterprise Fund has enabled the company to become a mid-market full service provider to the document management sector to rival larger competitors."

Simon McCowen, founder and executive chairman of BOX-IT, said: "We have built a successful UK-wide document storage business based on our consistent quality of service. The market has changed significantly over the past decade, and whilst paper storage will continue to grow through regulation, we see an opportunity to diversify into the growing electronic document management market. Stortext offers unique in-house technology with its award winning Omnidox product giving customers access to their electronic documents from anywhere in the world. Bringing the two businesses together cements our existing partnership and creates a unified full service provider. Octopus and Carabid have been instrumental in unlocking this opportunity for BOX-IT and we look forward to working with them through the next phase of growth."

Simon Ellis, Managing Director of BOX-IT, said: "This investment is great news for BOX-IT and Stortext FM, facilitating a transformational step for both businesses. Benefitting from the experience of a combined management team, we are working hard to ensure an efficient and smooth integration and are excited about the growth opportunities ahead of us."

Rupert Bell and Scott Barham led the deal on behalf of Octopus. Octopus' principal advisers were CMS Cameron McKenna (legal), CIL (commercial diligence), and BDO (financial diligence). Harry Dhand and Andrea Errington from Carabid provided corporate finance support to BOX-IT with legal advice from Paris Smith. Ben Knowles led the debt funding from HSBC.

To find out more about Stortext and their document management services, visit their website at http://www.stortext.com/ or telephone 01582 845 900

Established in 1983, Stortext have grown into industry leading providers of Business Process Outsource solutions which enable organisations to streamline their departments, deliver efficiency gains and often significantly cut costs. Specialising in Hosted Document Management and Outsourced Document Processing, they pride themselves on delivering high levels of service and longstanding clients include Virgin Atlantic Airways, O2 and Scottish and Newcastle.

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Omnidox:Mailroom is the innovative way to converge electronic mail with hard copy, digitising hard-copy mail and eradicating the need for internal post. The speed of getting documentation to internal departments is quickened, leading to substantial savings. Businesses can respond to clients the same working day, maintaining a competitive edge and improving communication.

Nowhere is communication more important than at the offices of O2, the leading provider of mobile services to businesses and consumers across Europe. Correspondence is still largely in paper format - a major problem when the same document often has to go to several departments. With so many offices involved, it was becoming impossible to process items, or respond to customer queries, efficiently. At customer call centres, agents had to manually search for paper records - a frustrating and time-consuming process for both parties.

O2 realised they needed a unique electronic mail room solution. One that would classify, scan and index large volumes of incoming mail - more than 40,000 pieces per calendar month - and be capable of feeding output to various office systems.

The answer was Stortext, who supplied the perfect solution via their Omnidox Mailroom system. Mail is now collected from a PO Box unique to O2 by 6:00am every morning, and made available to staff by 9:30am the same day. A separate output to office workflow systems means customer correspondence is dealt with in the fastest time possible - improving staff productivity and business efficiency.

"With our Omnidox:Mailroom system, we were able to offer O2 the scalability and flexibility they needed," said Mark Iveson, of Stortext. "Previously, mail would sometimes not reach its office location until the next day. Thanks to us, O2 now operates with stream-lined efficiency."

O2 joins a long list of satisfied Stortext clients which include Barclays, Santander, Virgin Atlantic and the Isle of Man Post Office.

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Recently, Stortext partnered with the UK's leading E-procurement specialists, providing streamlined new Procure-to-Pay (P2P) solutions for their customers. Scottish and Newcastle is just one in a long line of prestigious clients to benefit from Stortext's cloud processing solutions. Others include Britvic, Marks and Spencer and McDonald's Restaurants.

E-procurement allows companies to purchase supplies and services using the internet. It integrates seamlessly into Stortext's outsourced invoice processing services and Omnidox, the Cloud-based invoice authorisation system which receives and authorises invoices in various formats - both digital and hard-copy - before returning to the client's finance system. The service is compatible with all major finance applications including Oracle, Sage and SAP.

This method of invoicing accounts has solved a major headache for Scottish Courage, who handle more than 50,000 delivery notes a week. Since their takeover by Scottish and Newcastle, business has shot skywards - meaning major problems with account handling until Stortext came along. Omnidox provides automated credit control; flexible settlement terms export to back office systems, and hosted document management, alleviating the need for in-house IT. Another benefit is a self-service customer portal, reducing inbound calls and increasing staff productivity. The result has been huge savings in both time and money.

Scottish Courage has 18 distribution sites and forms one of the largest brewery conglomerates in the UK. The traditional nature of the industry extends to the large variation of account settlement terms - something Omnidox handles with robust efficiency whether they are same-day or bi-monthly.

"It takes a particularly accurate and effective system to handle accounts of this complexity," said Mark Iveson of Stortext. "The sorting, coding and processing of 50,000-odd documents is not a task to be undertaken lightly. Luckily, Omnidox handles it with ease - and even points out the customers who don't settle their tabs on time!"

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