You know that the configurations for your document management software improves your entire company’s workflow, drives efficiency, and helps ensure all of your documents are delivered on time. The problem is, you need to make sure you’re using the right software and the right configurations to meet those varying project needs and customer demands.
In this blog, we’ll talk about the top 5 key configurations your engineering documentation management system (EDMS) should boast, as well as the importance of customization in your company’s configurations.
By the end of this blog, you’ll have the confidence you need to employ the right software solution that’s capable of meeting your demanding and ever changing project documentation needs.
5 Configurations Your EDMS System Should Boast
Let’s be honest: finding the right documentation management software can be overwhelming—there are so many options! That’s why we’ve identified the top 5 configurations you should focus on. We’ve also identified the value each configuration should be able to bring to your company.
1) Setting up a Document Repository
When you’re working with technical documentation within the area of engineering projects and operations, you can be certain that requirements will change over time.
This may be additional requirements from existing customers or specific requirements from new clients in regard to example revisioning, document numbering and status codes. In order to succeed, you need a flexible and configurable EDMS that can be expanded as the requirements change.
2) Progress Planning
This feature brings progress up to an activity or document package level for planning systems.
This type of configuration gives you the ability to report exact progress on document deliveries and improve tracking on subcontractor progress. With this high-performing capability, you’ll gain the confidence you need to deliver documentation on-time, every time.
3) Integrated Project Environment
If you’re like most businesses, one of your top goals is project efficiency. This means you need to employ proven methods for saving time and money.
One of the quickest ways to gain project efficiency is to stop wasting time communicating externally through email, ftp servers and manual data exports. Instead, extend features to clients and vendors through task inboxes, document search and navigation, comments, and document upload/ download capabilities.
If you can extend your EDMS functionality to external parties, meanwhile working according to the same data model with the correct lifecycle information, you’re guaranteed to experience better data quality and increased efficiency.
4) Review & Approval Processes
The right EDMS enables the right structure around review and approval processes, such as IDC (Inter Discipline Check, DIC (Discipline Internal Check), ICR (Issued for Client Review) and IFC (Issued for Construction).
This process ensures everyone completes tasks on-time, which is essential to your projects. Make sure you have enough flexibility to streamline your business processes by creating your own workflows, while having a built-in workflow designer.
5) Control Access & Protect Project Data
Make sure you protect your data and document integrity with the right security and access control.
A high-performing EDMS gives you the confidence you need to ensure compliance by systematically controlling the creation, distribution, use, maintenance and disposition of records, as evidence of business activities and transactions.
Importance of Customization in Configurations
Ineffective software solutions hold businesses back from experiencing further growth and success. The reality is, a lot of companies employ inflexible software that can’t scale with business growth because they settled for the most affordable solution.
However, the flip side is that if you “save money” on cheaper software on the front end, you’re actually going to lose money in the long run because software that can’t be configured to help you solve your biggest problems will never be able to handle the exponential growth your company needs to drive profitability.
Here’s the big picture: finding a software system that’s capable of employing all five of the configurations we discussed with fidelity will be an investment. Simply because, it’s easy to build a cheap software solution with standard capabilities. It’s not so affordable to build an intellectual and intuitive software capable of customized configurations and coding experiences.
You deserve a solution that fits your documentation requirements, not one that requires your organization to conform to an inflexible system.
Document management software platforms that are a 70% solution now are sure to cause headaches for your organization down the road. That’s why it’s a smarter business solution to look for a highly configurable solution that solves 90-100% of your challenges and more, now.
As your company scales to larger projects and contracts, you’ll have room to configure for even more efficiency with the help of the experts that built your software.
Discover the Ultimate Document Configuration Manager
Now that you know what to look for in an EDMS system and understand the importance of customized configurations, you have all of the knowledge you need to purchase the right software solution for your company!
If you find you have more questions, our team at Proarc would love to help you! Proarc offers a proven Engineering Document Management Solution guaranteed to reduce the lead time of documentation deliveries in engineering and construction projects and asset operations.
With more than 30 years of experience, our EDMS system solution truly grows with your company. Whether you’re a small or a large organization, we can configure the right solution for your team. Most importantly, Proarc boasts all 5 of the configurations discussed in this post (and more). Our solution is highly customizable and easy to administer. With Proarc, you’ll gain total control over your documentation at every step of every project’s lifecycle.
Schedule an initial demo to learn how Proarc can give your organization the tools it needs to meet growing project demands now and into the future.
