Sewell’s Sharepoint

New technology is hugely important to the award winning Sewell Group, which prides itself on innovation, entrepreneurship and customer service. Staying true to its word, the Hull-based company has introduced a revolutionary new way of helping employees work together more efficiently using Hosted SharePoint, which is being implemented in partnership with KC.

Developed by Microsoft as a tool to enable effective teamwork, collaboration, document control and communication between colleagues and with clients, Hosted SharePoint is a webbased application, making it straightforward and inexpensive to install.

Sewell, which employs over 300 staff, has come a long way since 1876 when it was founded as a building company. It is now a growing multidisciplinary group involved in development, construction, facilities management and retail. And with success and change come the inevitable problems, as traditional ways of working become less appropriate.

According to Glen Poskitt, Sewell’s ICT manager, the introduction of Hosted SharePoint has opened up huge possibilities and has already had some startling results despite it not yet being fully rolled out. “Our problem was that out of approximately 70 computer users only 30 are office based. We needed an effective and secure solution to tackle the increasing difficulty in sharing essential paperwork.”

“We looked at third party portals, but this would have required a massive financial investment and huge internal changes.  Hosted SharePoint appeared to be the ideal and relatively inexpensive answer.”

Glen has started using SharePoint to deliver the company’s business management system, which is essential to the smooth running and performance of the Sewell Group.

“We have demonstrated through this that SharePoint has a lot more potential than the simple sharing of documents,” he said. Previously stored on all computers, documents relating to the business management system, which need regular updates, are now stored in one place and fully indexed on SharePoint.

These include risk assessments, time sheets, diary information and holiday forms. Glen continued: “these documents are database driven. Forms that would normally be filled in by hand are now completed on the computer and exported to spreadsheets. These everyday business activities are being streamlined and standardised. “Getting away from the difficulty of using multiple versions of documents is liberating and the time this saves is phenomenal. However, we like to get under the skin of things and explore all the possibilities, which is producing real results.

“Because the product is flexible, allowing the user complete control, it can be adapted to specifically suit our business needs. We can quickly connect people, keep people up to date and improve productivity, all in a very secure environment.”

Long-standing client BAE Systems is benefiting from increased efficiency as Sewell uses SharePoint to support maintenance and project work at the business’s site in Brough, East Yorkshire. This enables more effective handling of quotes, timesheets and other business-critical documents that need to be shared, viewed and updated by many different parties.

With Sewell currently leading a consortium of 20 companies bidding for the Building Schools for the Future contract, in Hull, SharePoint’s calendar function is currently proving its value in coordinating the diaries of more than 40 people. The programme even simplified Sewell’s annual headache of getting 1,000 Christmas cards signed by the right people.

SharePoint’s early performance at the Sewell Group is very encouraging and champions within the business are currently being recruited to carry out training with other staff. “As long as SharePoint is utilised properly it will definitely be a big win for us,” added Glen.

Ben O’Leary, Account Manager at KC said that the product was growing fast in popularity because it was cost effective to run and ongoing, comprehensive support was provided to customers. “It really is an economical method of transforming business processes and because SharePoint is a fully managed service you don’t need specialist IT skills within your business,” said Ben. “It won’t take up huge amounts of your time and there are no upfront set-up costs.”