Last Updated on August 20, 2024 Sarah Gayda
Construction, architecture and engineering firms are finding time and cost savings using Colligo for project management and ensuring project emails are captured
Using Colligo for project management can save you a significant amount of time while helping organize and archive projects for future reference or even legal purposes. As a result, many construction, architecture and engineering firms are switching over.
Firms are increasingly looking to leverage Microsoft 365 and SharePoint as the central place for their project-related emails and attachments. Traditional and legacy project management information systems fall short here in several ways and often continue to be far more costly.
We most commonly see firms opting to use Colligo in place of Newforma construction project information software.
Why firms are replacing Newforma with Colligo
Construction, architecture and engineering firms are making the move away from specific project management solutions, like NewForma, to SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365.
Common reasons we hear for this move include:
- Clunky process to file and retrieve emails, resulting in low adoption
- Poor support
- Proliferation of data siloes
- Inadequate records management and legal eDiscovery and legal hold capabilities
- Costly to pay for another solution when they already own Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online licenses
What firms want in a modern collaborative information management system
Switching to Colligo plus SharePoint Online for information management in project management information offers up numerous benefits for firms and users:
- Easily file an email to a specific project folder in SharePoint Online
- Easily search on attributes and metadata to find what they’re looking for
- Centralize on one system of record with retention and disposition capabilities
- Save and send emails in one smooth process
- Retain mail attributes or metadata, so users can easily find emails
- Easily port attachments and keep the attachments from an email
Engineering customers using Colligo to save project information to SharePoint from Outlook
Here are a couple examples of engineering firms using Colligo for management of information:
1. A mid-size engineering firm was looking to modernize their email management and project-related document management.
They were moving away from their traditional information management system, NewForma. They are using Colligo to make collaboration easier in the cloud with Microsoft 365, while also increasing compliance and governance. As a result, management can find proof of approvals and work orders, original statements of work and scoping documents.
2. A large engineering firm needed a better way to save project related documents that were coming into the firm through the engineers’ and architects’ inboxes.
These emails and documents contained important information. For example, the team made decisions over email, and signed contracts and purchase orders, and they needed to file the emails and attachments in the right location.
Legacy and dedicated project management solutions did not offer a clean integration with Microsoft 365. They often contained an outdated and cumbersome way of working. Further, they created another silo for information outside of Microsoft 365 and SharePoint.
Colligo helped the firm by providing a simple way for engineers, architects, project managers and admin staff to easily file and tag emails to the corresponding client or project site or folder in SharePoint. In addition, the team could do this quickly and all from within Outlook.
3 key reasons firms need to keep project-related emails & documents
The clients we work with have a few key reasons for keeping project-related emails and documents:
- Future reference and findability – For example, “What was in the initial project scope of this project?”
- Keeping company knowledge and record keeping for audit or general purposes – For examples, “Who approved this purchase order?”
- When the length of a project is greater than the time an email deletion policy dictates you keep emails – For example, projects often last 6-7 years, but the firm has a 2- or 3-year email deletion policy. This accentuates the need to port emails and documents that are worth keeping over to SharePoint.
Colligo provides a solution for these needs and challenges. Colligo Email Manager makes it easy to select an email or a batch of emails and bring them over to SharePoint. We can even automate the moving of emails from an Outlook project folder to the project or client folder in SharePoint. This also reduces the storage burden in Outlook and reduces risk.
Firms finding significant time savings filing email to SharePoint
In a firm with 100 individuals, saving on average 10 emails a day to SharePoint, Colligo can save you about 1,000 minutes (16 hours) of labour time, per day. This becomes a much larger number annually.
If you consider what each of these workers costs on a per hour basis, the business case for finding more efficiency with Colligo gets even stronger. Try this out for yourself with our ROI calculator.
Get started using Colligo for project management today
Let Colligo move your project management information to SharePoint while reducing your risks and costs of non-compliance and saving you time. Start a free trial today.
