By industry...
AEC companies are no stranger to hearing about the Golden Thread of information. It is already a critical part of your day-to-day. There is not a lot of room for misinterpretation or information, or trial and error.
Post-Grenfell, the tragedy that shook the AEC industry to its core, maintaining accurate document and information management is vital.
Without a Single Source of Truth, projects are likely to go over time and over budget. According to Geneca, 80% of project professionals spend at least half of their time on rework, with poor communication costing companies $62 million a year on average.
Arcadis’ 2020 Global Construction Disputes Report uncovered that the average global cost of construction disputes in 2020 was $30.7 million and lasted around 15-months.
The overall volume of disputes increased in the last 12-months and poorly drafted or incomplete, unsubstantiated claims were the number one cause for construction disputes.
In Mail Manager’s own research, we found that two-thirds of respondents experienced some form of legal dispute since the beginning of the pandemic, and of these, timeline changes, payment issues and project scope changes were the most common cause.
Plus, in most of these cases the information they needed to win the disputes was evidence of correspondence, contract management and project information.
You don't realise how valuable an email is until you need to find it.
By ensuring a Single Source of Truth in your construction, architecture or engineering firm, you can significantly reduce the risk of rework and project disputes and have confidence that your projects have been completed following all safety protocols.
For financial service and accounting firms, email is the letter of today. Where formal correspondence between your firm and your clients used to take place via a letter, now, most of this critical information is shared via email.
Two things that have stayed the same over the years, however, is the need for filing and securing this information, and the need to continually innovate.
It would not be uncommon for your firm to use email for client information, internal announcements, HR correspondence and project work.
Managing your emails, however, is made more challenging by the sheer number of emails being sent and received daily. This risk only increases with the number of people you employ.
Plus, you have a number of legacy systems and processes that make it difficult to compete with new competitors. A recent survey by AIIM found that 91% of executives from 48 banks and insurance companies believe their information management strategy needs to be modernised to meet modern problems, and a further 93% agreed that digitising and standardising business inputs is a key bottleneck for their digital transformation.
Pair this with the finding that 58% of unstructured data and information is stored in legacy business systems, it’s clear that financial and accounting firms have a huge issue with information being held in silos which is having a direct impact on your firm’s ability to gain momentum in your digital transformation endeavours.
With a Single Source of Truth, your firm can better manage project and client risk, increase the visibility of sensitive correspondence across all business systems, ensure complete records management to fulfil your data retention policies, as well as improve your business efficiencies and reduce your overhead time.
Client-specific information needs to be organised, stored and accessible for your team to work effectively. I’m sure you’ve been in situations where your office manager or admin team have received information from your clients directly but haven’t had the chance to pass it onto your accounts team to process with the rest of the information. With a Single Source of Truth, you can ensure that all information is complete, and in one central, secure location.
You can guarantee that you will always be prepared for your firm’s next audit with all the information in your firm to hand, in a logical way. Plus, you can save overhead costs by ensuring your team are no longer spending hours scouring through scanned documents or emails trying to find one single transaction, and you can eliminate human error in your reporting.
By implementing a Single Source of Truth, your firm can make better, more valuable decisions for your clients as all the information about the client including previous correspondence and key information is just the click of a button away.
When you work in a legal services firm, time and knowledge are everything. You have massive amounts of information, a lot of it confidential, on your clients, the law, courts and regulators that can interpret the law, and much, much more.
Particularly since the start of the pandemic, law firms now more than ever are investing in technology. In fact, Acritas Sharplegal’s survey found that 84% of partners expected their firms to increase investments in technology. Plus, Thomson Reuters have found that the focus on clear, proper recording and management of timekeeping, billings and collections, and changing work practices to better support clients’ needs are here to stay.
But with all these changes in processes and masses of information comes one glaring problem... How can you keep track of all this information?
With a Single Source of Truth, your firm can keep track of every detail, fact, case precedent and legal argument that could ever become useful in a case. Both client-specific knowledge as well as legal knowledge all needs to be organised, stored and accessible for it to be any use. But the main issue is that you store your information in silos.
Implementing a Single Source of Truth in your firm will guarantee that you have all your knowledge and information to hand for when you need it. You can keep all your client information up to date and correct, and minimises risks associated with having outdated information.
The property industry is made up of lots of different divisions such as residential, rural, commercial, investment management and property management.
While all these divisions work in different ways and systems, and split over different offices and locations, they all have one thing in common... Everyone has their own way of filing information and as a result, struggles with compliance.
At present, 75% of IRPM members believe that technology will change the way they work moving forward, but they don’t feel prepared enough to deal with these changes. But, 84% feel that technology can be used to improve on-site safety.
With a Single Source of Truth, property firms can regain control of their company’s business-critical information and transform the way they deliver projects, without causing much disruption to the way you and your teams currently work.
There are four key benefits property firms can realise from a Single Source of Truth. First, you can reduce business risks by never losing track of critical correspondence again. All your documentation will be up to date, so you can reduce the risk of financial fines, and gain visibility over all critical communications on a project.
Second, you can eliminate time wasted on searching for information that’s stored away in staff’s email inboxes as everyone will have access to the same information instantaneously.
Third, improve project deliverability by empowering project teams to make decisions with the correct information to hand, including scope changes, approvals and other key project information.
Finally, a Single Source of Truth supports collaboration. You can provide your project teams with visibility of everything related to their project, rather than just what’s in their inbox.
Three of the main issues being faced by businesses in the Oil & Gas industry are improving collaboration, developing a high-performing culture and reducing costs to remain competitive.
But, these problems are made more difficult by complex global projects, high levels of operational risk, a talent shortage and an ageing workforce. Most of your project information is buried in emails, and there are a number of digital technologies that industries like the AEC use to boost their productivity and performance that you can learn from.
A study by McKinsey found that by reducing development time along, companies in your industry have the potential to deliver 15-30% in cost savings. By implementing a Single Source of Truth, you can significantly improve your project productivity. Data is key to achieving this.
At present, the majority of data in oil and gas companies is recorded manually in multiple paper records, spreadsheets or email chains, meaning teams are working in siloes and use different data management practices.
So, your teams spend a lot of their time finding and validating data manually, creating project delays and impacting decision making. In just time saving alone, a Single Source of Truth could save more than $145 million annually.