Workspace Mini delivers reduced price and implementation time to SMEs

Monday, 11 May 2009

Workspace Mini - Union Square promises to half the cost of enterprise portal technology for small and medium sized contractors

Union Square Software, a leading supplier of enterprise document management software to the UK construction industry, has announced the launch of Workspace Mini to help small and medium sized companies take advantage of cost and efficiency savings enjoyed by larger contractors.

Workspace Mini is set to revolutionise the approach that small and medium sized contractors take to managing data and documents and therefore risk and efficiency.  This will be a massive boost to smaller companies looking to cut costs, gain quality accreditations and drive efficiency through smarter working methods.  The new product will represent unparalleled value to any small or medium sized business looking to improve working methods associated with document control, email management, customer relationship management or supply chain integration.

Will Yandell, Commercial Director at Union Square Software, explains the thinking behind the new product: "Given current market conditions all companies have to respond - if you want to prosper you have to find ways to deliver greater value.   Eighteen months ago when the market first showed signs of decline we began looking at how we could deliver more for less and so started investigating how  Workspace could be made available at a fraction of the price and at reduced effort in terms of implementation.  We think we have achieved this with Workspace Mini.  Our experience over the last decade in delivering enterprise, document and data management systems to more than 30,000 users including many larger contractors such as Osborne, VolkerFitzpatrick, Haymills and John Paul Construction has taught us that for this type of business having a product that can infinitely flex is important. 

However, as more than 90% of contractors in the UK have 50 or less members of staff Yandell thinks that the associated costs and effort required in implementing a fully integrated system is holding back the sector as a whole from making significant efficiency gains.

Yandell continues: "Our experience with smaller contractors is that whilst they both need and want robust and reliable world class integrated systems, there are some typical factors that generally get in the way of progress.   Firstly, they cannot always afford the same tastes that their larger counterparts enjoy and secondly the management commitment in time required to execute the implementation is often not available and so as often as not the organisation carries on as before without making significant changes to working practices.   We have addressed both these issues in Workspace Mini.  Firstly we have reduced the scope of functionality available (smaller businesses don't need all the flexibility of the product's older brother, it just does not make sense that a business with 25 staff needs all the same "stuff" as a company with 500). Secondly we have drawn significantly on our experiences elsewhere and constructed a template representing what we believe to be "best practice" from within the sector."

Yandell believes that this combination of "trimming back" the scope of available functionality and more importantly delivering a pre-configured system based upon a common set of requirements removes significant costs from of the overall project. 

"We will be able to reduce overall implementation costs by as much as 50% and that puts world class document and data management in the hands of the smaller contractor.   Furthermore, because the system is preconfigured it also removes the need for the management team to think too hard about how the system should be structured. Simple things like production of work package enquiries and processes for managing and archiving email or how an RFI should be processed have all been thought about in advance of the system arriving, so all the company has to do is attend the public courses and away you go!"

Union Square Software

Union Square have developed Workspace to provide members of the construction supply chain; architects, engineers, main contractors and sub-contractors with…

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