With SWING PDF Converter, Gesamtmetall optimized the email archiving process and resolved a major pain-point for all its users
CUSTOMER
Gesamtmetall
INDUSTRY
Nonprofit Organization Management
SOFTWARE
COUNTRY
Germany
ASSOCIATION
6,300 companies
PARTNER
Customer
Gesamtmetall (Federation of German Employers’ Associations in the Metal and Electrical Engineering Industries) is the umbrella association of the regional employers’ associations in the German metal and electrical (M+E) industry. Founded in 1890, the association represents the common interests shared by Germany’s largest industrial sector. The association is headquartered in Berlin.
Challenge
Gesamtmetall used IBM Notes as its choice of email client for many years. It has been the company’s standard practice to archive business email correspondence using a document management system (DMS). However, as the years rolled by, the DMS failed to keep pace with Gesamtmetall’s changing user requirements. As a result, Gesamtmetall’s IT department started receiving an increasing number of user complaints, most of which were related to the inflexible nature of the DMS system and the lack of functions to map out archiving procedures.
For example, the existing DMS system was used to store emails as text files while the email attachments were stored as separate files in another folder. Due to the permissions structure of the DMS, any subsequent folder processing (e.g., renaming, moving, or deleting) was rendered impossible.
Equally problematic was the DMS’s inability to efficiently group multiple emails related to a specific business process. The only way to group such emails was to laboriously click through various folders and copy/paste files into a single location.
Since the existing DMS was no longer sustainable, Gesamtmetall embarked on a quest for a new solution.
Solution
Gesamtmetall evaluated several products and soon found that SWING PDF Converter was the one solution that provided answers to all its specific needs. PDF Converter provided the ability to export Notes emails to PDFs by simply clicking on the PDF Converter’s icon installed in the Notes client toolbar. A single email, multiple emails, or even entire folders could be selected and converted to individual PDF files or a collated PDF file, in one process.
“The PDF Converter could not be simpler to operate. With this tool, our users got a far more efficient, flexible way to archive their emails. All the employees gave PDF Converter the thumbs up right from the initial deployment stage.”
— Werner Meyer zu Ermgassen, Head of IT
When beginning an export, a user decides on the structure of categories, folders, and hierarchies, which later provides a means of navigating or sorting within the PDF file (e.g. by date, author, or subject line). Another major improvement PDF Converter provided was the ability to have email links and attachments included in newly created PDF files, which means that users no longer need to look for related documents in multiple locations.
To deploy PDF Converter to a few key users initially, Gesamtmetall turned to SWING Software’s business partner in Germany, acceptIT GmbH. Stefan Lage, the managing director at acceptIT, said, “SWING Software and acceptIT enjoy an enduring partnership. By deploying SWING PDF Converter, Gesamtmetall has joined the list of numerous other satisfied customers we assisted during the on-boarding process.”
Werner Meyer zu Ermgassen, the head of IT at Gesamtmetall, added, “It is rare for me to have employees come up to me and praise a product, which is exactly what happened with SWING PDF Converter. Our employees’ enthusiasm was evident even during the initial deployment phase, and so a decision was quickly made to acquire more user licenses for PDF Converter.”
Results
With SWING PDF Converter, Gesamtmetall optimized the email archiving process and resolved a major pain-point for all its users. The product has been deployed to all 50 of the company’s employees who can now reference customers, projects, or cases in seconds thanks to the flexible export options provided by PDF Converter.
Partner: acceptIT GmbH
acceptIT GmbH, headquartered in Paderborn, offers medium-sized companies a tailor-made modular IT service concept for their internet, intranet, and extranet needs. One area the company focuses on is that of integrated solutions centering on process and workflow management. As an IBM Gold Business Partner, acceptIT assists medium-sized companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with a flexible, expert approach.
Based on the many years of experience of its highly qualified, dedicated consultants and planners and its reliable, tried, trusted project methodology, acceptIT ensures that its customers get customized systems and that all its users are trained in current, state-of-the-art technology.
With more than 15 years of experience in data migration and compliance archiving, we will gladly share with you some of the best practices.
Like what you read? Don't forget to share this post!
Sign up to our Newsletter.
