To create a Project Information Management (PIM) system that supports a business’s unique needs and adds tangible goals to their IT roadmap, it’s important to understand the everyday challenges they face and what it means to exceed their customer’s expectations.
They’re just some of the things pebble.it delve into when we offer clients an IT consulting service, because we know a ‘plug and play’ system won’t work for everyone. In fact, for some, it might even put them off, because they know their business is more complex and their IT solutions need more careful consideration.
We start with the absolute basics and work through things from the company’s perspective. Their email platform is the perfect starting point. It’s a simple but business-critical tool and its capacity to move, store and reproduce information at the rate a business needs to keep projects moving is vital.
The problem for most businesses is, project mailboxes are being used to organise email, but they’re separate to each user mailbox. So, if you have ten people involved in a project, chances are you’ll also have ten mailboxes scattered across the business, agencies and third parties, with each housing different parts of the project puzzle and none of them talking to each other.
This siloed approach leaves the business without a single, accessible project information repository, which means no one person will ever be able to find everything on a specific project – a problem that’s only set to get bigger as the client and project lists increase.
We’ve worked with many businesses in different industries and they all share the same concerns and roadblocks when it comes to this issue. To reassure business owners there’s light at the end of the tunnel, we’ve highlighted some of the most common challenges and benefits of effective PIM, to prove there are very few issues that haven’t been solved before, and how the solution can be business-changing.
The Challenges of Project Information Management:
- Project-wide confusion over the use and functionality of shared folders
- No single view of information
- No archiving (fragmented and disorganised at best)
- Wasted time, money and resources searching for and duplicating lost work
- Problems sharing and transferring large files
- No remote access to information
- No synchronised calendars
- Poor project management collaboration
- Inability to systematically assign, log and track actions
- Network under pressure because of duplicated locations and files
- Difficulty meeting audit, compliance and legal regulations
- Missing project deliverables because of unsupportive systems
It’s hard to imagine how any project could be delivered on time or budget with so any hurdles to overcome, and just think how timescales and costs could be reduced if project teams weren’t peddling twice as hard to over-compensate.
On the flip side, these are just some of the benefits the right project information management software and a well-designed email platform can bring to the table.
The Benefits of Project Information Management:
- Create one, accessible home for all project-specific documentation
- Access all project files, even if they’re on different servers
- Run searches on filed email, even if you’re not on the distribution list
- Run network searches for email attachments and ZIP files
- Assign, track and close out actions across the team
- Log and manage submittals and requests for information
- Capture and maintain a register of issued revisions
- View documents with drawings, graphics and AEC-specific file formats, without authoring software
- Manage document mark-ups, tracked changes and comments
- Easily identify and track changes in iterative documents and drawings
- Compare files with different origins
- Share files too big for email, without the hassle of FTP set-up (File Transfer Protocol)
- Make file-sharing safer
- Create audit trails around downloaded information
- Create and log transmittals
- Browser access to shared information for third parties and remote employees
I could go on, but you get the idea. The list of benefits is endless and the effects will be felt throughout the business, improving everything from project management to network performance and reflecting positively on the bottom line.
Discover how we can help you set up the right project information management system and email platform for your business by downloading our eBook below:
