Develop a customized document management application to increase collaboration and organization company-wide

A multinational corporation with headquarters in Japan, USA, Belgium and Thailand needed help organizing their vast stores of data. The company stored millions of files everywhere – on servers and individual PC’s, and lacked a formal standard for naming conventions, organization and versioning. They wanted to remove the chaos and put some order to their use of documents.

Iwerk recommended the purchase of several dedicated servers for the project. Rather than writing an application from scratch, iwerk proposed to customize Microsoft SharePoint, an excellent document management system. SharePoint has an extensive suite of capabilities – some of which the company could use now and others that they could eventually grow into.

We customized an interface that remains true to the established branding. We established an organized file structure and added security settings for varying types of users. We also incorporated check-in and check-out functionality for all files, ensuring that if a file is checked out it can still be viewed in a “read-only” mode by other users. We added an extensive search feature to ease accessibility to all data.

iwerk created a series of custom Web Parts with specific functionality unique to the needs of the client. We implemented an administration feature to manage subscription requests. We also created a system for requesting product information and specifications given to third-party suppliers. We created other custom Web Parts to request forms for the proper management of office equipment, supply requests, marketing material and promotional items.

Collaboration among employees has improved greatly along with the ease of locating and managing files, contributing to bottom line profit growth And because these files reside on dedicated servers it’s easier to back-up valuable data and files in the event hardware failure and disaster recovery.