Last Updated on May 15, 2023 Sarah Gayda
“From my point of view, Colligo simply makes SharePoint transparent to the user. The user can keep spending all their time in Outlook, feeding the SharePoint libraries and adding metadata without any effort. I don’t think you can properly use SharePoint without connecting it to Outlook.”
Jean-Francois Thibeault, P.Eng., Vice President, Major Projects, Ovivo
For any business running multimillion-dollar global projects, profitability depends on having mastery of project knowledge, including the thousands of legacy discussions and decisions related to estimating, managing, billing and executing projects in a way that can be legally defended to the letter of the contract.
Ovivo’s water treatment business is based on executing large-scale global projects, some spanning more than five years, involving globally teams distributed of employees, partners and contractors. Thousands of documents and many more emails are produced containing critical information for project decisions, billing and defending contracts.
Ovivo recently adopted Microsoft SharePoint in place as a foundation for centralized knowledge management. While SharePoint is in place, employees spend most of their time in Outlook and the old habit of saving emails and attached critical information to personal Outlook folders was inhibiting preserving project knowledge, accurately estimating future projects, recovering costs, and legally proving contract obligations were met long after a project was completed.
Summary
Challenge:
- Storing email in Outlook PST files was inefficient for cross-team access to information for project planning, budgeting and management.
- Knowledge transfer was at risk as project teams shifted.
- Legal discovery was time consuming and error-prone.
Solution
- Simplified information capture by integrating SharePoint folder access directly into Outlook.
- Enabled much faster search and sharing of complete project information by email and attachments in SharePoint, logically classified and with useful metadata.
Results
- Complete project knowledge supports full project cost recoveries and more profitable project estimating and management.
- Timely, economical legal discovery saving tens of thousands of dollars per year.
- Company project knowledge protected as employees shift roles or depart.
