Streamlined Data Entry
If the right data is missing or difficult to find, it can be difficult to execute work orders or complete workflows. The right EDMS can require completing certain fields and organizing relevant documents to ensure that the right information is in the right place at the right time.
A robust document management system will provide the capabilities and tools your team needs to modify documents and streamline updates or decision-making effectively. This includes mark-up tools like annotations, redactions, highlighting, stamps, and text boxes.
Intuitive System Organization
Like any filing cabinet or library, an EDMS must be effectively hierarchically structured, organized, and indexed to be useful. In Meridian's engineering document management system, your digital documents are available in a central repository. And they can be organized by any parameters you choose, including creation date, department, and more.
Easy Document Locating and Search
With an EDMS's hierarchical structure, metadata, search, and archival functionalities, finding the right information at the right time is easier than ever. These tools will help you track key milestones like creation dates, modifications, reviews, and approval statuses while effortlessly searching for and locating the files you need across folders and repositories.
The Benefits of an EDMS System
Better Cost Control
Many factors — including an aging asset infrastructure, reactive maintenance practices, and incomplete document and preventive maintenance (PM) information — can lead to skyrocketing maintenance costs and inefficiencies. This is unsustainable in today's lean environment. Accruent's engineering document management system, Meridian, can reduce these maintenance costs while also extending the asset lifecycle and ensuring a safer workplace.
Improved Data Integrity
By connecting to other relevant data sources such as CAD, CRM, CMMS, or EAM applications, engineering document management system software can maintain the integrity of your data and help create a single source of truth for your mission-critical information. This can resolve common pain points like out-of-date information, incomplete information, or incorrect active versions.
Decreased Document Search Time
A document management solution like Meridian makes information, documentation, and schematics easily accessible during any project or even an emergency by offering concurrent versions of documents and drawings. Meridian also maintains the integrity of data throughout the asset lifecycle and provides a comprehensive CAD software agnostic solution for engineering drawing document management, thereby creating a single source of truth for all important information.
By creating a single source of up-to-date information that removes silos and integrates with our EAM solution, Meridian has helped us reduce maintenance errors by 50% and save $20,000 annually in unnecessary rework."
— Willy Baten, Information Specialist, Real Estate & Infrastructure, Radboudumc
Fewer Costly Human Errors
Mistakes and redundancies caused by missing information or poor document control can cost time, efficiency, and productivity. A comprehensive EDMS will facilitate document search and offer automated document data completion and updates to reduce such mistakes and increase ROI.
Connected Employees and Departments
Meridian helps over 350,000 professionals keep their mission-critical documentation up to date. It also ensures that data is easily accessible by the right people while maximizing staff productivity, breaking down silos between departments, and supporting personnel safety.
This widely available, comprehensive information can close the skills gap and allow for better training and knowledge management within an organization.
By bridging the gap between maintenance and engineering and integrating with IBM Maximo, Sund & Bælt has improved efficiency of its entire maintenance operation. Our personnel find Meridian very easy to use. It's now indispensable to them."
— Kurt Lauvring, Project Manager, Sund & Baelt
Successful Preventive Maintenance
In asset-heavy industries and environments, preventive asset maintenance and maximized asset reliability are crucial to increased margins and effective job completion. Such reliability requires complete and easily accessible maintenance data. A powerful EDM system provides this data, allowing organizations to easily track, manage, and use all relevant asset documentation and maintenance data. This ultimately breaks down communication lifecycles, increases technician efficiency, and improves asset safety and compliance.
Increase Transparency
To increase processes and improve productivity, an EDMS can provide a 10,000-foot view of how documents are being used and how well your document-driven processes are working. Use this insight to reward employees, restructure processes, and drive ROI.
Reduced Storage and Archival Costs
Eliminate the need to dedicate physical space, employee bandwidth, and operational budgets to maintain file storage and organization.
Improved Security
Data breaches, document loss, and compliance concerns are real pain points, particularly in an unorganized digital, cloud-based environment. By controlling information access and offering consistent security updates, an EDMS can help your organization effectively address and sidestep such concerns.
Flexibility to Reallocate Budget
Immediately upon implementation, an EDMS can replace current paper archives, drastically reducing the time and budget spent managing paper records. In the long term, more effective search and automated document management can transform efficiency and release funds to other business-critical verticals.
Increased Efficiency Company-Wide
Data extraction, implementing workflows, invoicing, contracting — all these internal processes can be complicated and slow. An EDMS's automated data extraction, search capabilities, and workflow templates can reduce such bottlenecks, improving company-wide efficiency and uptime.
Who Can Use an EDMS?
An EDMS can be useful for many asset-heavy businesses, providing a single source of truth for engineering documentation that can reduce inefficiencies and improve decision-making.
Industries and Business Types That EDMS Can Help
An EDMS can be used in a range of asset or information-heavy industries. It's also an ideal tool for businesses that rely on paper-based operations (and notice the resulting inefficiencies or bottlenecks) or for those that have digital documents living in many disconnected systems or repositories (i.e., in Word documents, PDFs, Excel sheets, PowerPoints, emails, mobile documents, etc.)
Engineering Document Management System
Pain Points an EDMS Can Address
For professionals in these industries and situations, an EDMS can help resolve common pain points, including:
- Out-of-control physical/outsourced document storage costs
- Consistent data-related delays and inefficiencies
- Frustrating document search, updating, and retrieval processes
- Siloed and disconnected information makes it difficult to make data-driven decisions
- Security concerns and vulnerabilities
- Low disaster recovery capabilities
- Human error
How Does an Engineering Document Management System Work to Resolve Concerns?
An EDMS can also be an essential component of broader digital transformation. It can inform strategies and processes such as preventive maintenance and business process automation that will modernize your built environment.
By centralizing disparate information and providing a simple tool for searching documents, completing work orders, maintaining compliance, and more, an EDMS can help users across industries and verticals to:
- Secure their documents against security threats and compliance concerns
- Convert paper documents and consolidate disparate information
- Share all relevant information with the right people at the right time
- Simplify document organization and standardization while adding context and enhancements to imported information
- Consolidate and connect information for big-picture insight and operational improvements
Who Should Manage Your EDMS?
Initially, your IT department can spearhead your EDMS initiatives and work to import data and standardize information across devices and team members. That said, implementation can often be complex – and Accruent experts are certainly here to help you begin, scale and standardize the process.
For ongoing maintenance, you can also consider hiring an electronic document controller to oversee the daily document management process. More specifically, this person will:
- Perform quality and compliance reviews to ensure document completeness, accuracy, and authenticity
- Distribute documents and drawings to ensure full compliance with control procedures and requirements
- Create, enforce, and maintain document control procedures and work instructions to ensure consistency and accuracy across the organization
- Update and process documents to make sure that all relevant personnel have access to the latest, most complete drawings, specification logs, and binders
- Accurately number, sort, file, and store all relevant electronic and hard copy documents needed in your organization
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