ABOUT SERVETEK:
Servetek Engineering Nigeria Ltd is an indigenous company resolutely raising the bar for homegrown enterprise. Established in 1996 by a team of four visionary individuals, the company has grown into a 400-plus-strong business with services spanning telecommunications, construction, and investment – becoming a major player in the Nigerian infrastructure engineering sector. Initially catering to the telecommunications industry, Servetek have gradually expanded across market sectors and geographic borders, spreading it’s presence across the West African region.
CHALLENGE:
All Servetek project generates hundreds of documents, ranging from proposals to engineering drawings. Some years back, Servetek explored Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in an effort to understand how to remove these documents from individual PCs and file-share servers and compile them in a central location. However, Servetek knew they needed to have more in place than just understanding the solution more especially around upgrading their existing infrastructure. They needed to find better ways of managing new content and finding content across teams. With data growing at an extremely fast pace, this was absolutely necessary to meet deadlines and optimize resources within the company.
Servetek being a service provider also needed to cater for their partners and customers especially around providing information and documents to them real-time. Staff in the branches also needed access to documents. Document security was also a concern. They did have some controls in place as a business, but moving content to a central repository needed some convincing security-wise. Servetek operates in a very competitive market, and wouldn’t want documents related to high-profile projects finding their way into competitors’ hands.
When employees could not locate documents quickly, or reference incorrect or out-of-date documents, projects could be delayed. Also, because it was so difficult to track customer change-orders, Servetek did a great deal of work that it did not get paid for. Though Servetek operates in the telecommunications and construction business, they are also in the information management business. The longer it took to find and share documents, the longer it took to finish projects, so creating a top-notch ECM [enterprise content management] system became a mission-critical objective for them.
SOLUTION:
In 2011, Servetek awarded Weco Systems International Ltd., a managed Microsoft Gold Partner with competency in Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies, to help address these challenges.
Weco Systems identified Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 as the ideal platform for Servetek to build its ECM solution. “We agreed that SharePoint Server 2010 was the perfect fit for us because of its many new capabilities around Content management, Search and Information security” says Cesare Osuji, Principal Solution Architect, Weco Systems. “We also felt that SharePoint Server could accommodate the tremendous amount of information that we expected to have. Plus, the business needs of Servetek around access rights to documents and especially access to staff and business partners alike could be easily addressed using SharePoint Server 2010.”
Weco Systems helped Servetek deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 and began creating the ECM portal. The Servetek and Weco Systems team used Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 to customize SharePoint Server and create an attractive look and feel that was familiar to employees yet fresh and exciting. The team used the Microsoft InfoPath 2010 to build forms and automate basic approval process; and Microsoft Visio 2010 to monitor automated processes.
Servetek and Weco Systems divided the existing Servetek document stores into three parts, corresponding to their business units, to simplify their migration to the portal. Only active existing team sites were re-created, with new ones created on request.
The ECM portal functions as the enterprise intranet, which Servetek never had before, and an ECM system. Every time a new construction project begins, Servetek creates a SharePoint team site for it, where all plans, documents, schedules, and contacts are stored. Team members are able to quickly access and share news about their project and collaborate with other personnel.
A search site on the portal home page gives employees easy access to people and all documents stored on the intranet that they are authorized to see. Team site owners can set security permissions at the site, library, and document level. By using the content tagging features in SharePoint Server, employees are able to rate information by usefulness. This helps Servetek become smarter and more efficient with every search, as the most-useful information percolates to the top of the search results, saving employees time and returning higher-quality information.
“The built-in search capabilities in SharePoint Server are very fast and extremely accurate when configured,” Cesare Osuji says. “We have used the search engine to optimize search times and find documents faster. At first glance, employees can identify the type of document and tell who the author is so that they don’t waste time opening irrelevant documents. All this helps improve productivity throughout the day.”
BENEFITS:
With its new intranet and enterprise content management portal, Servetek has a centralized place to share documents and experience, which helps it complete projects on time and within budget. Documents are more secure, which enhances competitive advantage. Servetek is also better able to track and charge for work done and scale its ECM solution to accommodate terabytes of data.
- Faster Project Completion:
With a single, central place to share information and collaborate, Servetek employees are able to find needed documents. Thanks to the ECM portal, employees save time throughout the day looking for information.
- Enhanced Data Security:
Servetek has more control over project documents stored in the portal. Only people who are authorized to have access to documents can view them. With SharePoint 2010 Server, we have much granular permission control, which reduces the risk that valuable information will find its way out of the company. This enhances our competitiveness by safeguarding our intellectual property.
- Cost-Effective Scalability:
As Servetek continues to grow, so does its document stores in some areas of the business. The company is expecting its document stores to grow considerably in coming years, and SharePoint Server is fully capable of accommodating this growth. Servetek finally have an ECM system that can keep up with its growth so they don’t keep drowning in documents; rather, Servetek is using every document to its competitive advantage.
