Executive summary
Constructware is a hosted communication and collaboration solution
that streamlines design and project management among team members
throughout the design, construction and facility lifecycle. Their
centralized toolset enables all parties to communicate and collaborate
anytime, anywhere, offering the flexibility to optimize, standardize
and automate their entire business processes.
As a leading application service provider (ASP) serving the construction
industry in the US, Constructware has a hosted, centralized Application
Service Provider (ASP) model. The users of Constructware had a strong
need to view and annotate the data stored in a secured document
repository.
To move ahead of the competition, Constructware also added online
design review process as part of their services. The online collaboration
capabilities of eReview fit the needs of both the web based viewing
and annotation as well as that of online collaboration. Because
of its powerful APIs and its features, eReview was chosen over a
competitor product that Constructware dropped when they chose eReview.
Challenges
Being a large player and a service provider in the construction
industry, Constructware had invested in developing an online solution
for users to manage their design documents. Because this document
management solution was developed by Constructware, there was a
strong need of a web based system that has application programming
interfaces (APIs) to integrate with that. Constructware, not only
needed a web-based viewer, but was also starting to offer online
collaboration services to their users. This would mean going to
different vendors for their viewing needs and for collaboration
needs. And all these have to be tightly integrated, without compromising
the security of the content.
In eReview, they found all these capabilities in one product. The
seamless integration of eReview with the solution gave Constructware
a head start from their competitors.
Some of the technical and business challenges
were:
- A system that can serve customers with variety
of IT experience: Easy-to-use, interface
- Tighter integration with Constructware’s solution
- A web-based view, markup and collaboration system
without compromising on the security of the content.
- Constructware also required document upload facility
within a viewing system that integrates tightly with their document
management system.
- Quality of the document viewing, both in the
stand-alone viewing interface, as well in collaborative sessions
was of paramount importance. Constructware did not want to compromise
on the quality of design documents, hence required a very high
quality viewer.
- Zero-client system to serve customers on the
Internet.
- Multiple environments
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