J.R. Filanc Construction Company Inc. is a general engineering contractor that specializes in water delivery and water treatment facilities. Since the company is involved with constructing, renovating and expanding that infrastructure, it has more than half its workforce in the field at any given time.

Filanc was using couriers to move the paper but, given the high cost and inefficiency, the company wanted something better. Filanc wanted to harness the power and compatibility of Microsoft SharePoint in its solution. In the end it chose Nuance’s eCopy software for its tight integration with SharePoint.

“We are heavy SharePoint users, and nothing else on the market measures up to eCopy when it comes to working with paper and electronic documents in SharePoint environments,” said Rob Slaughter, information technology director at Filanc.

Each Filanc department has its own SharePoint page. eCopy transforms the paperwork into a machine-readable form and brings it into the appropriate departments. For example, Filanc’s project managers use eCopy software on their laptops to check out, annotate and return documents, all from the field. The updated documents get version control from SharePoint. In the office, scanned documents show up on the eCopy desktop toolbar, where employees can view, annotate, forward and file them. The documents become searchable PDFs that can be incorporated into business processes and workflows.

This functionality, Slaughter said, was essential to Filanc’s established business practices. “eCopy has minimized the touches of a document that is moving from hardcopy to a SharePoint library to a business workflow,” he said. “It has helped us make valuable corporate information more accessible – and not just in the office but also at our job sites.”
 
Besides being attractive to construction firms that use SharePoint, eCopy software also appeals to firms that want to tame the paper tiger without losing valuable and familiar business intelligence and processes. The software gets the paper into computer-friendly formats by enabling document scanning from desktop scanners or multifunction peripherals. From there, the scanned documents can be merged with existing electronic files into single PDF files. Documents from any number of network storage areas can be merged as well, the vendor said.

Once saved in eCopy, documents can be viewed, edited, marked up, signed electronically and annotated with highlighters, whiteout and notes; users can insert headers and footers as well. After saving files, users can distribute them and integrate them with back-office functions. (eCopy software also has built in connections to collaboration software such as EMC Documentum, Autonomy iManage WorkSite and Open Text eDOCS DM.)

*** Read about Odebrecht Group’s use of Sword’s online document management software or return to the introduction to document imaging systems for heavy/highway construction