Since its formation in 1976, Midas has grown to become the largest, independent property services group within the South West of England and one of the fastest growing companies of its kind in the UK. Current turnover stands at approximately £160 million.

When Midas decided to adopt collaborative working and electronic document management, the team decided that it should be for everyone and on all projects.

Most companies introduce a tool like Workspace to their own staff before thinking about "extraneting" it to include other companies. However, Midas has done it the other way round. "We started at project level, using it as an extranet, and are now following that by introducing Workspace company wide," said IT Manager David Beaton. Midas does a lot of work in the retail sector, where clients expect teams to use electronic methods. "This was the catalyst and provided a wake-up call for us to get into knowledge management and electronic document interchange."

Midas was already talking to Nottingham-based Union Square about introducing Workspace across the company when a project team requested a system for a new scheme. "Their key objective was collaboration with the design team," said Beaton. They wanted a central location for information and to improve the approval process. "We thought that we'd give it a go, although it wasn't quite what Workspace was aimed at."

It has worked well, and now Midas has placed an order with Union Square to extend the use of Workspace throughout all 300 of the company's IT users and its supply chain. "Workspace's extranet capabilities will be used to bind our supply chain more tightly into our workflows," concluded Beaton. 

www.unionsquaresoftware.com