Initial situation

As a publicly owned project management company, DEGES oversees complex transport infrastructure projects such as roads or bridges – from initial planning and the awarding of contracts to external service providers right through to final acceptance and invoicing. It had reached the point where up to 500,000 documents were being exchanged in the course of each project — including plans, contracts, acceptance documents, invoices, pictorial documentation and special formats such as PDF maps, etc. Coupled with the fact that the organisation was becoming increasingly decentralised, this meant that the documents and associated processes were becoming more and more difficult to manage. By introducing a powerful ECM platform, the aim was to abolish the existing information silos and to press ahead with the switch-over to digital, which had already begun – with a clear focus on the mapping of business processes.

Reasons for SER

• Selected via a pan-European tendering process with assistance from ECM consultants
• Detailed specifications and scoring key with a major focus on quality
• SER achieved the highest overall score of all the respondents from the perspective of quality and price

The solution

Doxis4 iECM suite, including (among other things) archive, DMS, electronic records, integrated image archive, document sharing via project spaces, processing of incoming and outgoing mail, invoice processing with integration of SAP & records plus workflows

Integration

SAP, GE 7 land purchase system (specialist application), Microsoft Office

Volume of documents

• 1 million documents transferred from legacy systems and file archives, 30,000 images migrated from obsolete image database
• Within one year, the volume of documents has doubled thanks to the promotion of the new digital approach. There are now approx. 2 million documents occupying 2 TB of archiving space

Users

280 users

Implementation

Multi-stage introduction project:

• Documents, image management and records on a single platform – with external sharing via project space
• Electronic processing of incoming and outgoing mail — with central categorisation, distribution and release
• Automated invoice processing — with purchase order records and documents linked to SAP objects

Next steps: Further workflows for awarding contracts, purchasing land etc.

Benefits

• Collaboration across locations and departments without convoluted communication channels
• Comprehensive information in relation to projects, contracts, invoices, etc.
• Easy sharing of documents with external project participants
• More efficient invoice processing and workflows thanks to automation and integration