Intranet Software Case Study – BEI
Background
Background BEI Associates, Inc. provides complete architectural and engineering services to a variety of clients in both the private and public sector worldwide. Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, BEI is recognized as one of Michigan’s largest and most diversified architectural engineering firms.
The Obstacles
Business for BEI requires many document revisions and approvals to be performed by numerous individuals. Normally, this process requires various courier services, and long waiting periods while documents get circulated for review. Additionally, contractors may want changes made to original designs, and these changes involve amending plans and returning them to the jobsite also via courier. BEI needed a medium through which they could post documents for review, and at a central location for immediate and remote access. In the past, there had been very few ways of collaborating remotely, coordinating with other companies, or delivering documents that wasn’t laborious or required a lot of time or resources.
Seeking a Solution
Searching for a way to expedite the process of sharing documents with external clients and personnel, Ronald McKay, Associate and Manager of Information Technologies at BEI decided to try Noodle: “For us it was easy and the set up was painless. I was able to upload our graphics and logo and put up some of our information. It is very easy to use, and that is key. It’s Web hosted and the reliability and up time has been very good.”
Project Management
BEI has found Noodle particularly useful in work on managing specific projects. One such project was the River East project in downtown Detroit. For this project, five different subcontractors needed to develop several city blocks close to the Detroit landmark Renaissance Center. The project required extensive collaboration between the subcontractors in order to create structures that worked and fit together. To make it successful, the Intranet site was used as a repository for CAD files. Sections were created for each subcontractor and access rights were assigned so that they had write access to their own Section and read access to the others. “It works very well for us to collaborate and post files,” states McKay. Project engineers would finish and upload documents to the Intranet so that another company could download and review it.
The cost of Noodle was also an important selling point for McKay: “Your pricing structure is very sound. The cost is enough that we can let the Intranet sit out there and the cost is absorbed in the project.”
According to McKay, “There are a lot of very cumbersome things that you have to do to in order to keep your Web sites and networks up but…Noodle’s file structure is good. I show it to other people; give a quick rundown of the basics and, boom, they’re up and running and can post files and that’s a very important thing. We’ve got our logo and some other goodies up, and I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. It was easy to do and it looks impressive.”
Marketing
BEI also uses their Intranet site as a marketing tool to secure new clients. When visiting a prospective client, an architect prepares in advance by creating a Section for the prospect on an Intranet site. The Section is created to reflect the nature of the project, and includes some of the potential client’s company information. During presentations, the architect gets online and accesses this Section to demonstrate what kind of medium is available to house the project. In this way, BEI offers an added value incentive to new clients. To people like McKay, it’s not just convenience: “It’s the time frames and factors; we have a bid issue on a Monday morning, and we’re in [the office] until Sunday night, and that’s what this industry is demanding”.
The Bottom Line
BEI found Noodle to be a timely solution for their unique needs.
- Quickly and easily installed
- Easy to use
- Cost Effective
- Filled an immediate void
- Reliable
- Great way to upload documents and collaborate on
them with other companies (Use as an Extranet)
- Has increased productivity and decreased project
execution time
- Makes a great marketing tool for project bids
Noodle Intranet solution has greatly eased BEI’s collaboration difficulties and provided a great place to post important documents for multiple people to view and edit, and, in addition, has enabled BEI to offer Noodle as a value-added service to expedite their service processes and offerings.