project-gmb

Document Management in SharePoint at GMB

The company GMB stands for sustainable solutions in the fields of water safety, water quality, bioenergy and industrial construction & infrastructure. With the aim of greater safety, a cleaner world and efficient use of raw materials and energy. Projects in which it is extremely important to document everything well. Ditio helps the company by improving their document management environment in SharePoint and making it smarter. Of course with the goal of delivering projects faster and more efficiently.

Purpose of the project

Ditio was asked to optimize GMB's document management process and make it more manageable. To realize this, we divided the project into 3 phases:

  1. Survey current process and retrieve user needs/requirements
  2. System comparison and advice
  3. Implementation

Ditio's Expertise

At each stage of the project, we were able to apply a different facet of our document management expertise:

Phase 1: research current process and retrieve user needs/requirements

To map the current process, we organized several sessions with the users. We incorporated the results of these sessions into a process flow diagram and analyzed them. Based on this, we made initial recommendations for improvement.

In addition, we inventoried with the users what their wishes were for a document management system. We gave these wishes a weighting using the MoSCoW method (Must, Should, Could, Won't Have). Based on the scores, we drew up the most important requirements for phase 2.

Phase 2: system comparison and advice

With the input from the research and the wishes and requirements of the users, we started comparing systems from the market. Systems with which Ditio has often been familiar. For GMB we made a selection of 3 solutions that we compared based on functionality, user-friendliness and cost.

Based on our advice, the final decision was made to improve and automate GMB's current SharePoint environment.

Phase 3: implementation

To implement the improvements and automations, we used several products within the Microsoft 365 platform plus a number of external tools. First, we standardized GMB's project sites to achieve a unified way of working. This laid the foundation for the next step: automating certain tasks and processes with Power Automate. Using Encodian products, we were able to make the automations available across SharePoint.

All this has allowed for better structure in document management and better visibility into where documents are, their status and with whom they have been shared.

Challenges and solutions

The biggest challenge in this project was in the implementation. To arrive at the standard we have now set, we had to make many considerations. After all, each user wants to see and be able to do slightly different things. And although some of this is still possible, we have laid a good foundation with the standard design.

Another challenge during the implementation was setting up the automations. This was very complex, because of the different ramifications in the process and the possibility of external users having to use this as well, a good elaboration on the front end was therefore very important.

Results

With the SharePoint environment and automations adapted by Ditio, GMB can now organize and manage its documents in a better way. Where previously much was done by mail and manually, this is now done centrally via SharePoint. For example, records are automatically kept of to whom a document has been sent or who has approved a document.

We have more improvements in the pipeline, but with this foundation we have already been able to make the biggest and most important impact.

What did we learn in this project?

Above all, we learned again that haste is seldom good. No matter how simple an automation may seem at first, working it out in some cases leads to more complex solutions. These need time to work out properly. It is important to go through all possible scenarios well and not to overlook things that could cause problems later on. Quality over speed!