'Workspace' from Union Square Software will improve methods of storing information and sharing knowledge between employees

Alexander and Law, a construction company specialising in luxury refurbishments, has placed an order valued at £30,000 for a Knowledge Management software portal from Union Square Software.

The 'Workspace' product will consolidate Alexander and Law's entire knowledge base into one central library system, enabling the company to easily keep track of its business-critical documents and greatly improve efficiency across the organisation.

Previously, Alexander and Law's information was not stored in a single structured system, and documentation was being filed in both hard-copy and electronic formats. With effective communication between the head office and worksites paramount to the daily running of the business, Alexander and Law realised that it required a new system whereby the company could easily manage its information centrally and enable documents to be readily archived and retrieved.

Alastair Alexander, finance director for Alexander and Law comments: "Documentation is everything in the construction industry, so that you can track the exchange of information on a contract and share it with all parties. It is also essential to maintain an audit trail of information, which means that 'best-practice' document management is now essential."

Alexander continues: "We have had cases where we have spent a lot of time looking for documents that have not been logged in a single, structured system, and therefore not readily retrievable. As a result, this created significant problems between office-based and on-site staff who often didn't have access to the same information at the same time. We needed to address this issue by revisiting our working processes and consolidating all information in a central software portal which could be accessed by all staff on a 24/7 basis." 

Union Square's Workspace software product is accessed via a web browser and allows Alexander and Law to create a framework enabling all company documentation and knowledge to be stored directly into a central repository for easy access. Workspace is now being used by Alexander and Law to manage all of its corporate data, including email, intranet and archiving. 

Alexander adds: "Emails were another big problem for us. We are not alone in this, emails are incredibly difficult to file and retrieve efficiently so some people print out a hard copy of emails, and scan them and file them electronically. Having to work with both hard-copy documentation and electronic versions means that it is very difficult to keep track of important information. Again this is where one central portal enabled us to track and retrieve emails."

Commenting on the decision to implement Workspace from Union Square, Alexander says: "Having assessed the market Workspace appealed to us over other products because of its broad functionality, cost of ownership and ease of use. Since the implementation of Workspace the feedback from employees has been very positive and we are already seeing the results in terms of 'best-practice' document management across the business."