Case Study Specialised Structures achieves auditability and streamlined operaons with M-Files Specialised Structures Christchurch and North Canterbury provides a wide range of pre-engineered buildings from commercial, community, and industrial buildings to farm sheds and aircraft hangars. It offers a wide range of portable construction systems and tailors its buildings to the customer’s exact specifications. A document-intensive industry The construction industry is document-intensive. Each individual project requires at least 100 and sometimes more than 200 documents before it’s complete. These documents include initial proposals, engineering and drawing documents, Geotech reports, consent processes, and more. Eric Anderson, director, Specialised Structures, said, “The bureaucracy and paperwork involved in getting a structure from concept to completion is phenomenal. To be successful in this industry it’s crucial to manage these documents effectively and to be able to find the document we need without delay.” Eric Anderson and his son , Luke, had recently acquired the Christchurch and North Canterbury Specialised Structures franchise, adding to Anderson Construction Ltd. Eric Anderson said, “With a growing business and a newly-acquired business, we try to run light at the top end and minimise overheads. Manually-filed documents waste time so we needed to address that challenge with an IT solution.” COMP ANY NEW ZEALAND ON-PREMISE DEPLOYMENT WHY M-FILES? LOCATION CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT PARTNER
Transcript
Case StudySpecialised Structures achieves auditability and streamlined operations with M-Files
Specialised Structures Christchurch and North Canterbury provides a wide range of pre-engineered buildings from commercial, community, and industrial buildings to farm sheds and aircraft hangars. It offers a wide range of portable construction systems and tailors its buildings to the customer’s exact specifications.
A document-intensive industryThe construction industry is document-intensive. Each individual project requires at least 100 and sometimes more than 200 documents before it’s complete. These documents include initial proposals, engineering and drawing documents, Geotech reports, consent processes, and more.
Eric Anderson, director, Specialised Structures, said, “The bureaucracy and paperwork involved in getting a structure from concept to completion is phenomenal. To be successful in this industry it’s crucial to manage these documents effectively and to be able to find the document we need without delay.”
Eric Anderson and his son, Luke, had recently acquired the Christchurch and North Canterbury Specialised Structures franchise, adding to Anderson Construction Ltd.
Eric Anderson said, “With a growing business and a newly-acquired business, we try to run light at the top end and minimise overheads. Manually-filed documents waste time so we needed to address that challenge with an IT solution.”
COMPANY
NEW ZEALAND
ON-PREMISEDEPLOYMENT
WHY M-FILES?
LOCATION
CONSTRUCTIONINDUSTRY
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
PARTNER
Search for integrity and traceabilityThe team at Specialised Structures was frustrated by the lack of integrity and traceability of their documentation. The business needed a solution that would provide search functionality so documents could be located immediately. The team didn’t want to have to consider where a document had been saved, such as in a fileshare or on someone’s desktop. Instead, they wanted to be able to find documents based on the information they contained.
Eric Anderson said, “Given the complexity and volume of documents, Specialised Structures needs to be able to trace files to see when they’ve been shared or updated. We were looking for a solution that would let us work on documents while keeping track of who had made what changes and when.”
Specialised Structures also wanted to be able to send assignments to people in the organisation to trigger certain actions to progress projects in a prescribed workflow. The team also needed to maintain certification around traceability of materials used in the construction process. Previously, that process was managed via an Excel spreadsheet, which was cumbersome and error-prone.
M-Files ticked all the boxesSpecialised Structures shared an office space with Manux, an M-Files partner. Through that relationship, Specialised Structures was introduced to the M-Files document management solution. The team could immediately see that M-Files ticked all the boxes and would provide the necessary functionality to overcome its document management challenges.
As well as a comprehensive document management solution with search and traceability capabilities, M-Files offered the ability to send assignments to team members and manage workflows to simplify daily operations.
The implementation process was fast and simple, and M-Files is easy to use so the Specialised Structures team was up and running very quickly.
Eric Anderson said, “We’ve already implemented several workflows and we haven’t even scratched the surface yet. The ones we have in place, developed by the team at Manux, work very well for the business.
THEY SAID IT
“M-Files definitely saves the team significant amounts of time and we’ve not had to hire additional administration staff to manage the filing and administration associated with documents. We’ve saved up to one full-time equivalent employee and we’re only a small business; a larger business would likely achieve even more substantial savings.”
Eric Anderson Director,
Specialised Structures
“For example, when we receive invoices from our creditors, we now have an automated workflow through M-Files that manages the approval and sign-off process and codes the invoice into our accounting system for payment. The invoice can’t get to the next stage until two people have signed off on it. Managers can reject the invoice or put it on hold until it’s confirmed. That workflow process delivers governance and integrity that we didn’t have previously.”
M-Files delivered significant cost and time savingsThe Specialised Structures team is often out of the office on building sites, which means it leverages the ability of the M-Files solution to deliver documents to any device, at any location. So, if a project manager is on-site and needs to double-check that the building permissions match the plans, for example, they can search for the relevant documents and view them immediately. This was difficult to achieve in the past because documents were created over a long period of time and people had to remember where the documents had been saved.
Eric Anderson said, “M-Files definitely saves the team significant amounts of time and we’ve not had to hire additional administration staff to manage the filing and administration associated with documents. We’ve saved up to one full-time equivalent employee and we’re only a small business; a larger business would likely achieve even more substantial savings.”
M-Files achieved integrity and traceabilityEric Anderson said, “More important than the time savings we achieved is the level of integrity and traceability in the business that M-Files provides. Being able to access the most recent version of any document instantly is a crucial business benefit.
“In the construction business, project timeframes can blow out to months or even a year. When the original building applications were developed so far in the past, it can be easy to lose them, especially since so many documents have likely been created in the meantime. To find these documents as though they were created just yesterday is invaluable to streamlining the application process, which saves our business time and lets us work more efficiently on projects.”
THEY SAID IT
“Just like people say they’d never buy a car without air conditioning, I would never run a business without M-Files now.”
Eric Anderson Director,
Specialised Structures
Improved audit-readiness and paperless officeM-Files has improved Specialised Structures’ readiness for auditingregarding any of the legislation it must comply with. The information isavailable quickly and simply, and it’s verified so there’s no discrepancies.This makes the audit process relatively painless for both the auditors and forSpecialised Structures.
Eric Anderson said, “The need to retain documents meant that the office was practically overflowing with piles and piles of paper, on top of people relying on their computers’ hard drives to store information. Using M-Files, we’ve gone from that level of disorganisation to becoming an almost-paperless office virtually overnight. Our desks are clean now because there’s just no need to keep reams of hardcopy documents. Everything is safely stored in M-Files and immediately available when we need it, no matter how long ago the document was created.”
New discipline streamlines operationsThe M-Files workflow processes have introduced discipline into the organisation that was difficult to enforce previously.
Eric Anderson said, “The workflows keep people working to timelines, and the next step can’t be completed without each person playing their role in the workflow. This helps keep everything moving and it means that the person at the end of the workflow doesn’t have to chase the person at the start of the workflow. M-Files lets us make sure procedures are being followed. We can see who has done what and when; it’s almost like having a CCTV camera on the documents.
“The business no longer relies on disparate silos of information from Dropbox and email to hard drives and hardcopy. Everything goes immediately into M-Files where it resides according to what the document is, not where someone arbitrarily decided to save it.
“Just like people say they’d never buy a car without air conditioning, I would never run a business without M-Files now.”
M-Files provides a next generationintelligent information managementplatform that improves businessperformance by helping people findand use information more effectively.Unlike traditional enterprise contentmanagement (ECM) systems or contentservices platforms, M-Files unifiessystems, data and content acrossthe organization without disturbingexisting systems and processes orrequiring data migration. With theIntelligent Metadata Layer, M-Filesbreaks down silos by delivering anin-context experience for accessingand leveraging information thatresides in any system and repository,including network folders, SharePoint,file sharing services, ECM systems,CRM, ERP and other business systemsand repositories. Thousands oforganizations in over 100 countries useM-Files for managing their businessinformation and processes, includingNBC Universal, Rovio and SAS. For moreinformation, visit www.m-files.com.
Manux provides tailored technology solutions, hardware and support for New Zealand businesses. From design and development to integration, maintenance and a wide range of consulting services, including risk assessments, value audits and relocation planning, we’re your total technology partner.
