4-page Case Study - Posted 7/24/2007
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Rail Agency Boosts Productivity by 100 Per Cent with Content Management Solution
The European Railway Agency is an independent European Union (EU) body working to create an integrated rail area and revitalise EU railways. With just 95 employees, the agency collaborates with thousands of civil servants, engineers, consultants, and academics, working within tight budget constraints and to tough deadlines. The agency considered several options for its enterprise content management platforms, but, on the advice of Getronics, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, chose Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 because of its resilience and workflow control features. As a result, the agency’s employees are more productive because the portal solution and upgraded Microsoft Office system offers transparency, ease of use, and seamless connectivity to external organisations and people.
Situation
The European Railway Agency (ERA) is charged with creating and promoting the highest common standards of safety and interoperability in railways across the European Union (EU), playing a key role in the development of an integrated railway. For the past 150 years, European railways have developed on a national basis and in line with national technical standards and operating rules, but change is now on the way.
The objective of EU legislation is to integrate rail systems by harmonising their technical standards and developing a common approach to safety. The agency’s mission is to help people and goods to move around more easily by promoting the railways as a mode of transport in Europe and to make the railways more competitive. The challenge is considerable. Currently, a high-speed train travelling through Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France has to interoperate with seven different signalling systems.
The ERA, founded in 2004 and based in Valenciennes in northern France, has 95 employees, mainly professionals from the European railway sector. It must not only manage signalling, but unite an array of diverse specifications into a single EU-wide system. The key challenges include:
- Speed of developing technical standards and recommendations.
- Doing more with the same resources to keep operating costs low.
- Transparency to the public.
- Good governance and compliance.
- Quality and reliability of products and services.
To make progress with such a huge task in a short timeframe, the agency needs help from thousands of civil servants, engineers, technicians, consultants, and academics from across Europe and beyond. The agency’s internal structure reflects its mission by grouping workflows under business units and by making those units responsible for the outcomes of working parties and task forces and liaising with external domain experts.
With such a huge mandate and a need to meet deadlines, the agency considered various options for an enterprise content management (ECM) solution to help its employees work smarter with less dependence on e-mail messaging and faxes.
Stefan Zutt, Head of IT and Facilities Management, ERA, brings a wealth of experience to his role, having previously worked for the United Nations as IT manager for the post-war government of Kosovo. He says: “Not only are there a large number of external parties involved with us from organisations such as the European Commission, but there is a huge amount and diversity of information being exchanged between the different parties.”
In view of their tight budgets, Zutt and his IT team of 10 needed to focus on streamlining the agency’s internal business processes to avoid taking a long time to deliver new products. High product-development costs were another worry, as well as the need to create new ways of collaboration for experts from all over the EU. Quality assurance was a third issue, with documents needing to meet the exacting standards of the Commission.
The agency was seeking an ECM solution that would help it to offer a more complete information management system, including an easier way for task forces and other stakeholders to stage and review content before submitting it to the Commission. The agency also needed a more efficient way to archive documents and wanted to find new ways of extracting value from its databases.
Solution
The agency wanted much more than a document management system. In mid 2006, it took the advice of Getronics, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, and selected Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 for its intranet, extranet, and, eventually, Internet solution. Getronics was helped by the Microsoft Global Strategic Accounts EU account team, which manages institutions across Europe.
As an early adopter of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, the agency’s team has deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to take advantage of enhanced workflow management capabilities. It started with the Microsoft Office 2003 suite, but has migrated to the 2007 Office system, including Microsoft Office Groove® 2007.
The agency’s IT team worked on the implementation with Getronics to build the collaboration infrastructure based on SharePoint Server, the core of the system. In 2008, the complete solution is expected to make use of Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006 for integration with other systems, mainly those operated by national authorities in EU member states.
External and internal development team members are using the Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2005. The initial phase was ready in about six weeks due to the partner’s experience in delivering complex information management projects.
“We didn’t have the budget to custom develop a huge quality management system,” says Zutt. “We needed a solution that was largely out of the box, but capable of customisation, and Getronics handled that work and successfully transferred knowledge to our own staff. We have developed an excellent business partnership with Getronics and Microsoft.”
Because the interaction between the agency’s units and the external parties is pre-defined, a focus was put on content registration and daily work procedures. As a result, custom workflow implementation, content types, and integration with the local e-mail messaging and scanning solution were essential.
The ECM solution will be fully rolled out by early 2008. But the agency already plans to invest in Microsoft portfolio management software and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 to add even more advanced tools and collaboration features for its key work programme initiatives.
Benefits
The agency is now far more efficient, and its workflows are far more transparent to external stakeholders. Information workers are between 50 and 100 per cent more productive by working through the portal because of its transparency, ease of use, and seamless connectivity to external organisations and people. The number of parallel meetings, working parties, and task forces organised by the agency has jumped by 100 per cent since mid 2006.
User-Centric Tool Boosts Staff Productivity by More Than 50 Per Cent
User-centric tools are helping employees work smarter. “The highly scalable and flexible system is responsive to the needs of business rather than IT people,” says Zutt. “Due to the ease of use, no formal training whatsoever is needed for working within the currently running agency online collaboration space because it is so simple to find your way into the system.”
Zutt says that information workers are now between 50 and 100 per cent more productive than before by working through the portal instead of sending faxes and using e-mail messaging. By holding virtual meetings and cutting down on business travel, the agency will also soon improve its carbon footprint and save money on unnecessary journeys.
Units and Task Forces Boost Activity by 100 Per Cent
Before implementing the portal, the agency’s workflow processes were largely based on face-to-face meetings or e-mail messaging, which created huge versioning and archiving challenges for an organisation with a pan-European mandate.
“Before mid 2006, our key people in our business units were travelling daily between the agency sites of Valenciennes and Lilles and further afield to conferences in 27 EU member states, with bags full of all the important reference documents and e-mails,” says Zutt. “This had a major impact on productivity overall and was affecting our ability to make progress with new specifications and draft legislation.
“Within three months of implementing the Microsoft ECM tool, the number of parallel task forces and meetings had jumped by 100 per cent because of the new collaboration environment. Despite this, our costs have not risen. Our 95 people are now working with several thousand different people who assist in handling the mandates to develop technical specifications.”
Closer Collaboration with External Experts
The typical product development process involves five key stages, starting with the Commission mandating the agency to perform a task. The unit in charge decides the most appropriate treatment. The next steps are to organise and consult external experts, consolidate expert contributions into a recommendation, and finally send it to the Commission for feedback.
Zutt says: “The key challenge that the 2007 Microsoft Office system helps us to meet is making it easier to work with the external parties. The solution will also help us with collaboration, process automation, quality tools and robust project, portfolio, and performance management. The beauty of the 2007 Microsoft Office system design is that it is so easy to handle. It puts power right into the hands of business people and helps us to solve many more process management problems.”
Information Workers Get Common Platform for Intranet, Extranet, and Internet
The agency’s information workers will benefit from a common platform for their intranet, extranet, and Internet systems. They will gain streamlined access to information, helping them to prioritise time and task management, visualise and search for data, and manage business performance.
Zutt says: “Productivity will increase because the common platform connects people and information, and cross-agency teamwork will improve. It will become easier to share information with the public, adopt efficient processes, comply with regulations, and mesh together resources and strategy.”
Microsoft Office System
The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.
For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Getronics products and services, call or visit the Web site at:
www.getronics.com
For more information about European Railway Agency products and services, call +33 327 096-500 or visit the Web site at: www.era.europa.eu
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published July 2007
