APP Corporation
Services across all phases of the capital investment lifecycle - Strategy, Definition, Delivery and Transition.The APP Corporation was established in 1989 as a project management company in Sydney for the building and construction sector. Within a decade they had expanded nationally and acquired AQUAS, an environmental, quality and safety management systems and compliance audit services business.
In 2006 they were acquired by Broadspectrum (previously Transfield Services) and further extended their service offering through the acquisition in 2012 of commercial real estate property and asset management business CI Australia (previously Chesterton International (NSW)).
More recently the parent global infrastructure services business Ferrovial has brought access to global expertise and benchmarking through their Centres of Excellence and established human resources advisory business Appoint consulting.
Today their national business works on $24 billion of capital value for over 500 clients across more than 800 projects annually. Their engagements range from providing advice on small, niche assignments to the full spectrum of end-to-end services on major landmark projects, as well as everything in between. They have a dedicated, hard-working culture and a workforce that continues to deliver beyond expectations.
Challenges
As a large construction services firm the APP Corporation has teams of professionals working on hundreds of projects for clients who need to collaborate and share information at any one time.
…operational efficiency – Huge reduction in filing and searching time
The APP Corporation wanted to leverage the investment in its OpenText document management technology to solve its email management problem and create a single central repository for documents and emails: a repository that is secure, easy to use and supports the management of large volumes of daily project email correspondence.
Email management was the biggest challenge with 5 Terabytes of emails stored in Public Folders, high volumes of emails requiring daily management and public folder performance degrading quickly as a consequence.
Staff frequently move between projects making it difficult to maintain a complete up-to-date correspondence record for each project.
Challenges
- Combining emails and documents
- No single source of all project documentation
- Time-consuming email and document filing and retrieval
- Difficult project collaboration
- Leveraging investment in existing document management technology Maintaining files as staff move between projects
- Migration of 5Tb of emails from Public Folders
Solutions
- Knowledgemill Mail Manager to create a single central repository in OpenText Content Server
- Access all project files from Microsoft Outlook
- File ‘as you go’ project files up-to-date in real time
- Knowledgemill integrated with OpenText Content Server
Results
- Single central set of project email and document files – management confidence and improved communication
- All project team kept up-to-date in real time
- Huge reduction in filing and searching time
- Simple take-on and staff rollout simple
intuitively part of Outlook - Increased productivity and better
client service
Solution
The objective was to create a set of project folders in OpenText Content Server that are easy to access, file and find emails that are up-to-date in real time.
The Knowledgemill team extracted, indexed, de-duplicated and compressed all emails from the APP Corporation Public folders and loaded them into the appropriate project folders to create a complete central set of project files containing documents and emails.
All APP Corporation staff use Knowledgemill Mail Manager from within Outlook to file and retrieve all of their project-related emails, ensuring complete project records are accessible for emails and documents.
The creation of new workspaces has been automated using Knowledgemill’s rich set of APIs and all replies of filed emails are filed automatically in the right place / workspace.
Knowledgemill’s open architecture technology integrated with OpenText content server (the DMS) to leverage the DMS investment.
As Martin Rubens, APP Corporation Solutions Manager, explained “Knowledgemill Mail Manager resolved a complex business problem for which no other product could be found.”
Results
A structured set of project folders in OpenText Content Server that are easy to access, find and file documents and emails up-to-date in real time.
The ability to work more effectively as a team / Collaboration made easy – every member of a project team can see the latest communication tread and pick up on it without having to copy or forward to colleagues.
Saving time and effort – APP Corporation is delighted with how Knowledgemill’s automated filing has cut down the time spent by staff filing and looking for emails, asking colleagues for information or forwarding and cc’ing: every email, attachment and document relating to a particular project is now gathered together in a central project folder.
Simple to take-on and roll-out to staff, intuitively becomes part of Outlook, results in increased productivity
Maintaining complete records – APP Corporation now keep a comprehensive record of all electronic communication, classified and stored by project.
Simplicity of adoption: because Knowledgemill works intuitively as part of Microsoft Outlook, and because filing is mostly automatic, there is little cultural change and users have no problem learning to use it.
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