Asset Management with Office 365
Summary
The NEDA Vermögensverwaltung mbH (an asset management company) uses the Microsoft cloud solution Office 365 for the development of its real estate projects. Based on SharePoint Online Axtrion created virtual project rooms to realize project-oriented document management system with centralized storage and a process control over communication and collaboration with the external partners.
Field of Business
With nearly 20 years of experience in the field NEDA Vermögensverwaltung mbH with headquarter in North Rhine-Westphalia focuses on the design and construction of real estate projects for businesses. NaDa provides services specifically in the areas of acquisition, consulting, project development (among other things construction, rental, contracting, financing), investment, holdings and asset development.
Motivation
In the real estate project development a number of different studies, entrepreneurial decisions, planning and other preliminary measures are necessary. These activities are carried out by various institutions on behalf of NeDa. The coordination and control of the parties involved as well as the collection of partial results proved increasingly difficult over time. By using various communication channels and applications such as the use of private drop boxes, the distribution of data via hard copy and recordable discs (CD), etc. have led to recurring and similar problems in the coordination and approval process. In addition, there was no version control for the documentation resulting in the lack of traceability of communication in the coordination and approval process.
Project Realisation
The aim of the project was to optimize the communication and the document sharing between the project partners. The solution was realised by introducing the project specific work spaces for different project partners using Microsoft Office 365. Axtrion configured project workspaces in SharePoint Online and created a security concept for access by its members. The authentication now works for non-Office 365 customers via the Active Directory by NEDA which manages the external project partners and they are given access permissions depending on their role in certain projects. In addition automatic document versioning is available in the SharePoint Online system with the help of which the changes within the documents (change management) are easier to follow. All data are automatically mirrored 5-fold in the Microsoft data centres, so that NeDa does not have to worry about managing the company data backup anymore.
For optimum support of communication between the partners involved in Neda projects Axtrion introduced a centrally operating Exchange Online server and videoconferencing system “Skype for Business” based on Office 365 and connected the mobile devices to this system. The use of these new technologies led to an acceleration and optimization of coordination processes.
Benefits
By using Office 365 Neda has achieved the following benefits:
- Effective and legally compliant email archiving using Exchange Online
- Simple and secure document management / document sharing with project partners with specific access permissions according to their project roles
- Document backup and versioning
- Business continuity and recovery in case of disaster (Disaster Recovery)
- Optimized communication between project partners through the use of videoconferencing system, Skype for Business’
- Mobile Data Access by connection of Smartphones and Tablets to Exchange Online and SharePoint Online (Emails and Office documents are available on mobile devices)
