GBM is an independent firm of engineering consultants specialising in mining projects. Engineers and project staff work with large volumes of documentation and data.
Better business systems
For a long time, staff had been requesting a document management system that would make it easier to organise, find and access files. Rapid business growth made this need even more pressing. GBM Project Manager, Joe Russell says: "We urgently needed to improve our business systems, so I went on a hunt for a tool that we could use to build an intranet and, more specifically, to manage document control and communication with our clients. With engineers on site, often at remote locations and reliant on dial-up connections, we needed a relatively robust online application."
GBM’s technical support provider introduced Russell to PointBeyond for advice and guidance on using Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server (MOSS). He says: "We had been looking around for someone who could help us decide which technology to go with. Although SharePoint was one of our options, it wasn’t an automatic choice. There were a number of other systems that we could have used, but we wanted to be sure, as a business, that we weren’t tied into something that could change in ways we didn’t want and end up costing us even more."
Confidence in SharePoint
"SharePoint was the first product to give us the comfort we needed. We knew that Microsoft wasn’t going to go away and that SharePoint had been well developed. PointBeyond gave us a lot of confidence both in SharePoint and in their technical skills. A major benefit was that, as a mostly Microsoft house, we could keep costs down by doing a lot of development ourselves, with PointBeyond providing technical architecture expertise."
PointBeyond deployed MOSS and helped GBM develop its corporate intranet and document management capability. One of the major benefits for GBM was the level of functionality available ‘out of the box’; GBM could get MOSS up and running fairly swiftly and then build on the solution over time.
Immediate benefit
The project team created a structured, hierarchical set of sites for project and document management. Built in version control and approval processes provided immediate benefit, as did the ability to search across documents and information using captured metadata. Content types and centrally maintained document templates make it easier for authors to create new documents, and Wiki functionality gives GBM a quick and effective way to build its knowledgebase.
Russell says of SharePoint: "It’s doing what we need and it’s working well." Of PointBeyond he says: "They listen to what you say. They actually respond to what you want rather than insisting on what they think might be the best idea. They made sure that SharePoint does what we need."
