Design Firm Raises Per-Employee Revenue by 25 Percent with Collaboration Solution

Microsoft Customer Solution Manufacturing Industry Case Study
Design Firm Raises Per-Employee Revenue by 25 Percent with Collaboration Solution Overview "With ProjectWise and Office SharePoint Server, we've Country or Region: United States Industry: Professional services been able to increase utilization and raise the revenue per employee by approximately 25 percent."Customer Profile David Davidson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Barge Waggoner Sumner & Cannon, Inc. Founded in 1955, Barge Waggoner Sumner & Cannon, Inc. is a 400-person engineering, planning, and design firm with 11 offices in the southeastern United Multidiscipline design and engineering firm Barge Waggoner States. Sumner & Cannon, Inc. needed to collaborate more efficiently Business Situation across its 11 offices in the eastern United States. The firm deployed Barge Waggoner needed to collaborate across geographically dispersed offices but ProjectWise collaboration software for engineering content faced challenges regarding document management, content publishing, and design review and version control, information access, and ®lost productivity as employees moved integrated it with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, to among offices. manage business processes and additional information in its Solution distributed environment. The firm deployed ProjectWise collaboration software and integrated it with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server Now, employees travel less thanks to improved file version control 2007 for document and process that negates the need for in-person information sharing; make management. better use of expertise from around the company; and find the right Benefits information quicker, regardless of its location in the corporate IT „ 25 percent more revenue per employee „ 8 project hours saved daily environment. The firm makes better use of its people's time and „ ~15 percent of project costs saved knowledge and has increased revenue per employee by „ Reduced employee travel „ Less project rework approximately 25 percent annually by raising the productivity of every person.

"The average project Situation throughout the system. Paula Harris, Founded in 1955 in Nashville, Tennessee, as Corporate Marketing Director for Barge team is composed of 10 a civil surveying firm, Barge Waggoner Waggoner, says, "Too often, we had version-to 25 people. At 20 Sumner & Cannon, Inc. has since expanded control issues. We would waste money and to 11 offices in three states. The firm offers effort editing or printing outdated minutes saved per day engineering (civil, structural, environmental, documents-work that had to be redone once per person, that's up to transportation, aviation, mechanical, and the mistake was caught." Redoing work is electrical), architecture, planning, landscape very costly because the time spent comes out 8 hours of productivity architecture, and surveying services. It of the company's profit margin-clients only gained per day per peaked at over 500 employees, but since pay to have the work done once. Efficient 2000, it has responded to market pressure change management is also important project team." and a shrinking technical talent pool by because clients often ask for new features as Joe Croser, Global Marketing Director of completing more projects with fewer projects progress, and deadlines require that Platform Technology, Bentley Systems resources; as employees left or retired, it did collaboration happen in as close to real time not hire replacements. To support its as possible. decreased headcount of 400 people, the company made technology investments to The company tried to eliminate the help increase productivity. With fewer drawbacks of sharing files across the WAN by employees-but the same amount of work- temporarily relocating employees to the the company needed to address several offices where their projects were based, but issues that made productive collaboration often those employees were not fully utilized difficult. while they were there, and the offices that had loaned them lost 100 percent of their Difficulties Sharing Files Across Offices time during the projects. In addition, the Architects and engineers at Barge Waggoner employees who traveled lost productivity to require a managed environment for their travel time, and while waiting for IT s... [download for more]