A place for everything and everything in its place

If you look at my personal desk right now, you’ll see a few piles of paper and various to-do lists. It’s logically organized by subjects…

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Deidra (Dei) Jow

January 7, 20194 minutes read

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If you look at my personal desk right now, you’ll see a few piles of paper and various to-do lists. It’s logically organized by subjects such as finances, bills and household projects. My college roommate once said that I had a place for everything and everything was in its place.

But when you look at all the “digital piles of content” your organization has in disconnected silos scattered all across the enterprise, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. You may feel like saying, “I give up!” or “That’s not my problem.” But deep down, you know you can’t just walk away. Instead, it’s critical that organizations find a way to manage and control their documentation—no matter where it’s stored.

Asking and answering the bigger questions about your enterprise information

How do you find key documents and their related metadata that live in separate silos? And, more importantly, are you able to mine all your content, wherever it lives, for business insights that you can use to propel your business forward or to create new products or services?

It’s a common business problem that’s amplified when you are working for a global company with operations across time zones and geographies. Who did what, where did they put it, how do I access it now and what does it mean for our business? These are just some of the questions users grapple with daily.

To answer those questions, organizations are realizing it’s critical to integrate Content Services with lead applications to extend the strengths of their traditional ECM platform, bridge content silos and deliver content in context for more effective business processes.

OpenText™ Extended ECM for Microsoft® Office 365® provides the critical connection between content and business processes that enables organizations to maximize their investment in Office 365 and accelerate efficiencies across their enterprise.

Let’s look at a real life example where users went from document chaos to having the right information at their disposal, leading to improved efficiency and compliant and controlled information.

An oil and gas case study: Fixing real world problems

Recently, a global firm grappled with managing their engineering documents. The business challenges for this offshore drilling company were multifold. This client has global operations with drill ships and rigs deployed around the world, supported by design, maintenance and construction teams in the U.S. and Asia. Their document management practices needed significant overhaul:

  • Critical engineering drawings were stored on different file shares in multiple countries, making it difficult to access official versions of designs, standards and procedures
  • Users tended to create one-off folder structures from one asset (drill ship or rig) to the next, so finding the required documents was a time-consuming process
  • Change management processes were administered mostly through email, limiting visibility to in-process changes and decision points solely to people on the distribution list

So, how do you fix a problem like this? This enterprise worked with Alitek, an OpenText partner, to help them implement OpenText Extended ECM and bring order to their key engineering documents.

The integration and implementation of OpenText Extended ECM allowed it to:

  • Enable the systematic management of all rig related standards and engineering content through the OpenText platform
  • Create a process for migrating existing information from legacy applications and file shares into the new standardized application workspace
  • Ensure that authenticated users have access to current versions of drawings, standards, procedures, etc., while also limiting access to superseded information
  • Provide mechanisms to retain superseded information for historical reference
  • Architect the solution and provide a blueprint for future integration with SAP®

With OpenText Extended ECM, this global customer reduced costs and compliance risks, while improving user experience and productivity. Overall, they were able to:

  • Simplify and streamline document control processes by standardizing document taxonomies across the global organization
  • Improve user self-service capabilities around reliably searching and locating relevant operational documents
  • Reduce time and cost for drill ship and rig maintenance by providing the correct versions of controlled documents in real-time to the users
  • Improve global compliance by automating the process for managing document versions and retention
  • Contribute to safety gains by ensuring that critical documentation is readily available

It’s time to move your enterprise forward

It’s always a good idea to have a place for everything and everything in its place. If you are running Microsoft® Office 365™ and use leading business applications like SAP, Oracle®, Salesforce®, Microsoft Dynamics 365®, or others, reach out to us find out how to maximize your enterprise information and fuel digital transformation that really makes a difference to your bottom line.

To learn more about OpenText Extended ECM for Microsoft Office 365, visit our website.

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Deidra (Dei) Jow

Dei is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager for OpenText Microsoft solutions. These solutions help customers connect content, people, and processes and enable them to run their complex Enterprise business at scale. She has been in the software industry for 25+ years and previously worked at Microsoft and has a degree in Business Marketing from the University of Hawaii.

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