Engineering firm designs business success with ECMMMM Group enhances collaboration, boosts performance with OpenText Content Suite

“OpenText Content Suite enables us not only to manage project information internally, but to manage the delivery and presentation of that information in such a way that it provides value to our clients, streamlines our business, makes us more efficient in the delivery of that information, and gives us a legacy platform for the future so that we can ensure knowledge retention and continuation through the lifecycle of a project.”Gordon Reid Manager of IT Project Delivery and IT PMOMMM Group

Success story

Fast, easy access supports project success

Knowledge retention supports future growth

ECM acceptance supports collaboration, productivity, creativity

MMM GroupIndustry• Engineering

Solutions• OpenText™ Content Suite• OpenText™ Tempo™ Box• OpenText™ Communities of Practice

Results

Engineering firm designs business success with ECM

Content is king for engineering. However, MMM lacked adoption for its enterprise content management solution. Within a year of focused attention on ECM, the firm almost doubled projects managed through OpenTextTM Content Suite, enhancing collaboration and performance.

Building on a DEEP modelMMM Group Limited (MMM) is a civil engineering consulting firm with a 60-year history and offices across Canada. More than 2,000 MMM professionals participate in excess of 3,000 projects every year.

Serving clients in the public and private sectors, MMM focuses on creating vibrant communities. Like other companies—especially engineering firms—its business is critically dependent on high-quality, accessible information, explained Gordon Reid, manager of IT project delivery and the MMM IT Project Management Office. “We live off of what I call our DEEP model: our data, expertise, experience and people. We don’t manufacture. We don’t own or sell the assets we are involved in constructing. So, the information is the core platform for all those things to be successful.”

Reid leads with considerable experience in Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Industry characteristics and trends are driving ECM for engineers, he noted, including:

• High reliance on content and collaboration

• Long-term responsibility for knowledge and resources

• Employment of an emerging workforce accustomed to fast, easy access

“Strategically, if we’re going to drive our business forward, improve our efficiency and improve our profitability, we need to not only control information, but proactively use that information across the business,” Reid said.

ECM beginningsIn 2011, MMM implemented Content Suite, a comprehensive ECM system designed to manage the flow of information from capture through archiving and disposition.

Within a couple years of deployment, however, the firm recognized room for growth. Only 30 percent of employees used Content Suite on a daily basis. “Although we’ve had considerable success in the past with capturing documents and projects and using the solution, we noticed there was an awful lot more information out there available to us which was not in controlled environments,” Reid explained. “We wanted to bring all information under the fold of Content Suite and ECM.”

Change management effortsThe firm set a goal to increase the volume and depth of Content Suite—gathering more people on more projects to meet business needs. “Most of this is about change management and making our people aware of why they’re doing things,” Reid said. “We employ very smart staff members. They need to understand why they should be working this new way as opposed to the old way.”

Reid recognized training as a strong mechanism for education, change and communication. He and his team developed focused training materials, split into core and advanced functionality. They established an ongoing training program with sessions in all major offices and online.

“The speed with which we can onboard newly hired employees and get them involved in a project is fundamental to our success.” Gordon Reid Manager of IT Project Delivery and IT PMOMMM Group

Engineering firm designs business success with ECM

Along with training, MMM established practices supporting adoption and ECM integration, including:

• Streamlining the user interface

• Fully integrating key files from CAD, GIS, etc.

• Developing “champions” across the organization

• Clarifying governance roles and responsibilities

ECM and MMM working togetherMMM’s dedicated efforts paved the way for Content Suite and other OpenText technologies to address civil engineering requirements.

Content and collaboration

“We have busy people who are focused on billable work for clients. Information is high on their agendas, but it has to be easy to access,” Reid noted. Content Suite ensures files are always within reach for engineers, whether they are in the office or in the field. The repository is also accessible to outside parties when authorized. “Our project teams are often spread across the country and even overseas. Sharing to ensure they have the right information with no lag time is absolutely critical to that team moving forward effectively,” Reid said.

Long-term responsibility and knowledge building

Highways and subdivisions have a long lifespan. MMM must retain information for these and other projects for decades. For instance, in 20 years, a bridge may require modification by MMM professionals, but not necessarily the original bridge engineers. Content Suite ensures information retention meets compliance requirements and transfers knowledge to future generations.

Information-ready workforce

Content Suite serves all users, particularly young professionals who are accustomed to accessing content quickly and easily. “We have to respond to that expectation,” Reid said. By equipping all professionals with centralized, immediate and secure access to information, MMM supports them and the bottomline. “The speed with which we can onboard newly hired employees and get them involved in a project is fundamental to our success.”

OpenText integration

To further support its content management strategy, MMM is leveraging other OpenText solutions, including OpenText™ Tempo™ Box and OpenText™ Communities of Practice.

Tempo Box file sharing and synchronization allows users and clients to share content from Content Suite via a web interface. “Tempo Box is easy to set up, easy to use, and easy to manage,” Reid said. “It provides a platform for clients to have access to and return the latest information on projects. And in the backend it’s also integrated to our Content Suite platform so we’re not losing any of the control or any of the audit-ability of that information.”

Communities of Practice leverage social networking tools to unite professionals and ideas across the enterprise. Users interact through an intuitive, portal-like web experience. “We’ve deployed Communities of Practice extensively to share non-project information, whether it be best practices, references, templates or tools. We share them across the organization so that our teams in Vancouver who work on transportation are working off the same templates and tools that our teams here in Toronto are working on. That’s a growing part of our business, and it’s very valuable for us to maintain the knowledge and ensure we spread that knowledge around the organization,” Reid explained.

“The more we can reduce the time our resources spend looking for or manipulating information by providing a single source of accurate information, the better we perform as a company.” Gordon Reid Manager of IT Project Delivery and IT PMOMMM Group

Engineering firm designs business success with ECM

About OpenTextOpenText, The Information Company, enables organizations to gain insight through market leading information management solutions, on-premises or in the cloud. For more information about OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX) visit opentext.com.

Customer stories opentext.com/contactTwitter | LinkedIn Copyright ©2018 Open Text. OpenText is a trademark or registered trademark of Open Text. The list of trademarks is not exhaustive of other trademarks. Registered trademarks, product names, company names, brands and service names mentioned herein are property of Open Text. All rights reserved. For more information, visit: http://www.opentext.com/2/global/site-copyright.html 09752BEN

Driving performance and productivityBy spreading ECM throughout the enterprise, MMM is driving business forward. “MMM is primarily a project-driven organization. The content we use and deliver to our clients is absolutely critical to what we are as a company,” Reid explained. “Content Suite enables us not only to manage that information internally, but to manage the delivery and presentation of that information in such a way that it provides value to our clients, streamlines our business, makes us more efficient in the delivery of that information, and gives us a legacy platform for the future so that we can ensure knowledge retention and continuation through the lifecycle of a project.”

Following a successful change management initiative, greater ECM adoption enhances collaboration, knowledge-building and productivity for real benefits.

Collaboration enhances company status

External collaboration supports MMM’s position as a company that can actively participate in engineering markets. Teamwork within the company and with partners is fundamental to project management and business success supporting new client acquisition. “With Content Suite, we can share controlled information and share controlling of information with external partners, clients and other people who participate in projects,” Reid said.

Knowledge-building supports client service

Content Suite securely stores data for compliance and enables MMM to build on previous work. “For MMM, ECM is about efficiency. It’s about capturing, sharing and retaining knowledge over potentially long periods of time. It’s a key value to our clients as we can build off our expertise and our experience … we’re delivering innovative work but we’re not re-inventing the wheel,” Reid noted.

Meeting employee expectations returns productivity and performance

With Content Suite, employees have absolute confidence that when they look at a document, it is the latest version and they can view the history of that version as well. “Being able to access that document from anywhere in the organization and from a number of devices and platforms is also very key to their confidence level that this is a repository for our core information,” Reid explained.

The ready resource also boosts efficiency and performance. “The more we can reduce the time our resources spend looking for or manipulating information by providing a single source of accurate information, the better we perform as a company,” Reid added.

Benefits drive adoption

When users understand the advantages of ECM, deploying a solution for business benefits and processes becomes easier. Within its first year of focused attention, MMM achieved impressive growth surrounding the use of Content Suite:

• Almost doubled projects managed from 5,400 to 10,400

• Boosted the portion of staff members using ECM on daily basis from 30 to 50 percent

• Increased documents, from 2.8 million to nearly 6 million

• Capture and control of email, up 150 percent, from .5 to 1.25 million

Future plansMMM is growing aggressively with plans for integrating automation and cloud-based management. The firm expects to advance with Content Suite at the center of its ECM strategy.