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SCC is implementing Workspace Email Management and Vault for its 32 PC users with an order worth around £20,000. SCC is a £45m design build contractor with offices in Stockport and Sheffield. SCC completes a range of work for the health sector, arts, transportation and on car parks in particular. The Workspace Email Management platform, from Union Square Software, has been developed to help companies overcome the problems associated with using Outlook as the primary email store in a business. By removing emails from Outlook, Workspace solves issues such as ineffective sharing of project communications, unmanageable inbox sizes and ineffective email retrieval. Workspace provides simple tools that integrate with Outlook to enable employees to safely store, share and search for project emails in a central, online location.
SCC was experiencing problems with their information management systems; with no formal procedure for Email Management and inconsistent rules for sharing documentation on projects. Chief QS Jim Durkan explains, “Everybody stores emails locally and we have no way of effectively sharing emails, we rely on people forwarding emails to those that need to know. This results in delays in sharing critical information on projects which can cause real problems in the projects progress. Sharing drawings is also an issue, with an inability to access drawings quickly with certainty that you are looking at the latest version.” SCC was also suffering from poor security with employees viewing information from site or home via Remote Desktop Connection to the central file store with no way of knowing what they were accessing.
SCC reviewed the Workspace offering in detail and found that the Email Management solution was ideal to address their immediate issues. Emails are stored against multiple entity records – such as contacts, organisations and projects - with any original attachments. SCC will also be implementing the Email Vault which will capture every email going in and out of the business ensuring they will never lose any email. This will help employees to manage their inbox sizes as they know they can always find an email again even after it has been deleted.
SCC visited Caunton Engineering which gave them an insight into what they could achieve with Workspace over time. Jim comments, “As soon as we saw what they had done with Workspace we realised that we needed it in our business. The goal is to achieve the same level of control over procedures and company wide visibility of information that they have reached.” With email the real pain point in the business, SCC decided to address this area first. They also wanted to minimise the change to the business so a phased approach was decided as the best option. “Workspace is ideal as we can implement it in phases to gradually reach our goals,” comments Jim.
As soon as phase one is live SCC will be implementing the full Workspace product to manage all aspects of enquiry and project management including using the system to control drawing management. By tracking processes and providing employees with standard working methods Workspace will support the companies QA procedures, in particular ISO 9001 accreditation. Auditing for this will be made much simpler, with Workspace able to demonstrate compliance instantly. Financial Director Michael O’Donnell is looking forward to having better visibility of what is happening in the business, “When communication was primarily via post I used to see everything and know what was going on, now email has taken over as the primary communication tool I have lost visibility of activities. Workspace Email Management will ensure that I can see all project communications as they happen and so can stay abreast of any problems.”
Employees will benefit from one source of information that they can access from the office, site or home. “They will have 100% confidence that they can rely on the information being up to date”, comments Jim. The Workspace Email Management roll out will begin in July; with the full Workspace roll out expected to start in the autumn.
About Union Square Software
Based in Nottingham, UK, Union Square Software (unionsquaresoftware.com) is the author of Workspace. Workspace has been developed to provide organisations from across the construction supply chain with real competitive advantage through the pragmatic introduction of portal technology which enables effective Knowledge Management. Workspace provides a range of solutions for project centric organisations including: corporate database, enquiry management, document control and project collaboration.
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craig.coe[.]unionsquaresoftware.com 
