5 Benefits of Improving PIM at your Practice
Deltek shows how improving your project information management processes will enhance document and email management for your practice.
How easy is it to find project information at your practice? Do you know if you are working from the latest document or drawing, viewing the right contract, or are completely up to date with email updates? If not, you will probably benefit from implementing project information management (PIM) processes and systems, empowering your team, improving accuracy, and reducing risk.
We’ve highlighted five of the key benefits of PIM below:
1. Take the Frustration out of Finding Project Information
If you were on the phone to a client or colleague and they asked you to locate a file or information about a project, how long would it take you? According to McKinsey, 19% of an employee’s time is spent looking for information. And a quarter of poorly filed documents will never be located (Granter). It’s clear that without project information management tools and processes in place, you and your team may be wasting valuable time trying to locate documentation and information.
With a PIM system, your project information is accessible from one secure location. You can find emails, documents and drawings in a matter of minutes.
When time is of the essence, your team will have all the necessary information at their fingertips!
“The main draw for us was the search functionality within the platform, allowing us to quickly find information. We also expect PIM to give us a clearer connection between the site and office teams, making up-to-date information readily available for the site teams.” — TSK Group
2. Tame Your Email Inbox
For many architecture practices, email is one of the primary ways they communicate and manage projects. In fact, according to McKinsey, employees spend nearly 30% of their day, almost a day and a half each week, managing email. That’s a lot of time that could have been spent in more productive and profitable ways.
With so much time spent managing project-related emails, implementing a solution that supports email management is crucial. Having a system in place will not only benefit in terms of increased efficiency and security but also with proper cataloging and storage, making emails easier to retrieve when needed. You’ll even have access to project emails for employees that are out of the office or who have left the practice.
Your time spent managing emails will be reduced from hours to minutes!
“PIM usually saves a couple of hours through automatic document transmittal alone. If we do this once or twice a week across five or six different sectors, we’re looking at roughly 24 hours a week saved. There are other time savings too, even email filing – if you save a minute every time you file an email, over 100 staff, 20 times a day, that adds up. This means our people can spend more time focused on the things they do best.”— DesignInc Sydney
3. Access the Most Current Information
Where are your project drawings, correspondence files and contracts stored? For most architecture practices, information is stored in multiple locations, which is not ideal.
With information held in multiple places, and in some cases duplicated physically and electronically, the risks from working from incorrect or outdated information are much higher. According to Tech Crunchies, 83% of workers struggle with version issues daily. Best case, this means time wasted confirming which information is correct; worst case, this has the potential to totally derail your project.
Practices with a PIM strategy and system in place can manage project information throughout the lifecycle of the project rather than waiting until the project is complete to start organising files.
“One of the biggest improvements we’ve seen is in the collaboration across our teams. We’ve standardised where templates and files are stored, everybody has access to the documents they need, and it’s easier for team members to pick up from where others have left off.” — HB Projects
4. Share Large Files Easily
Sharing drawing files across project teams, both in the office and on site, can be cumbersome due to the large file sizes. If you have a system in place to make drawing and design files available to your team wherever they are, the benefits range from increased efficiency and security to ensuring all internal and external team members are working with the latest versions.
If you are struggling with this, you are not alone. According to The Association for Intelligent Information Management, 92% of organisations believe that something needs to change and that they must modernise their information management strategy.
“We needed a system that can cope with the demands of our business both now and in the future. Data needs to be securely managed yet also easily accessible by multi-disciplinary teams.” — Britplas
5. Mitigate Risk and Reduce Liability
Are all your drawings, documents and emails secure? Can you easily find the information you might need to protect your practice during a dispute? Are you clear on what information needs to be retained and for how long? IDC found that 76% of companies experience significant business risks and/or compliance incidents because of broken document management processes and that effective document management processes could reduce costs by 30% and lower risk by 23%.
Your practice’s intellectual property is one of your greatest assets and it should be treated as such. That’s where PIM systems and processes come in.
“Previously, we worked in a shared network location, but it was difficult for our teams to work on the same files – there were risks around ensuring they were working on the correct version. But now, we have robust version control, which ensures accuracy and reduces risk.” — HB Projects
Are You Ready to Make Accessing your Project Information Easier?
With Deltek PIM, your team will be able to get up to speed on projects quickly and respond to clients faster – improving the client experience and helping to increase repeat work.
Originally posted on Deltek.com on 17 May 2022.