SWB Municipal Housing
Download Success StoryWhy SWB Städtische Wohnungsbau GmbH in Schönebeck is fully committed to ECM
“It’s Schön(ebeck) an der Elbe” is the slogan of the town of Schönebeck in Saxony-Anhalt. Situated directly on the Elbe, the town not only has attractive scenery to offer, but also builds and manages attractive apartments for its residents. As a wholly owned subsidiary of the municipality, SWB Städtische Wohnungsbau GmbH looks after and manages more than 4,000 apartments and other real estate properties in the catchment area of the idyllic Elbe community. The almost forty employees of the municipal company are supported by the windream ECM-system.
Heterogeneous
document structures
As a municipal housing construction company, SWB deals with everything that is important in the area of housing construction and the management of municipal real estate. This includes both the management and letting of properties. The majority of these properties are owned by the municipality. However, SWB also manages other properties that are not owned by the city.
It is obvious that the efficient management of properties with all the documents that arise in this area can only be managed with the support of an efficient IT infrastructure. After all, information of all kinds has to be managed, for example rental contracts, property and maintenance documents or utility bills.
Client-capable system
As SWB does not only manage its own real estate, the windream ECM-system, which SWB uses for managing the entire document stock, has been configured to be multi-client capable. This means that the respective “document jobs” – i.e. the classical activities in the field of information management – are mapped in separate companies, whose file structures are in turn managed in windream as electronic archives of the clients.
Digitally archived: Files from the fifties
One of the main tasks of the SWB clerks is to digitize old files from tenancies on a key date basis. Newly added and therefore already electronically created documents, on the other hand, are stored immediately and directly in windream. Although the digitization of old files requires a certain amount of time, significantly more time can be saved after the electronic capture, as the search for certain documents no longer requires a trip to the paper archive. The result: immediate retrieval of any documents without wasting time, much more space in the office as there is no need for paper filing, and structured document archiving without any susceptibility to errors due to possible misfiling of paper documents – an enormous gain in efficiency and time considering the fact that each employee looks after around 500 to 800 residential units. “In some cases, we even still have to deal with rental contracts on carbon paper from the fifties,” amuses Marco Lindner, responsible for the windream project at SWB, and adds: “Thanks to the electronic recording of all old files, our employees actually have the feeling that their offices have suddenly become much bigger, brighter and friendlier.” No wonder, because files and paper have finally become obsolete.
Key data
- Multi-client capable ECM system
- Mobile access to documents via tablet
- Efficient digitization of old files
- Standardized file and filing structures
- Quick and uncomplicated installation
Fast and uncomplicated with windream
The introduction of the windream ECM-system was very easy for Marco Lindner. In his opinion, this was also due to the good advice of the windream consultant. “If every software was as easy to implement as windream, we would be happy.” The installation of the system was carried out quickly and easily by an external IT service provider. After the productive introduction, all employees immediately got along with the new ECM-system, which is also due to the fact that every electronic file created in windream and to be managed looks identical. This makes the flood of information manageable at any time, which of course also directly benefits the customers and the tenants managed by SWB. Because an inquiry can be answered ad hoc without delay – an invaluable advantage of the digital file archive.
Mobile access via tablet
By using the windream ECM system, communication with tenants has also become much more “modern”. While, for example, handover protocols for apartment handovers used to be brought to the location as paper files or printouts, the seven employees who are entrusted with this task, among others, can now easily access the required documents via tablet PC. Access takes place online and directly via the user-friendly windream Web Portal. No more lugging around files
Planned:
Integration in specialist application
In the future, SWB wants to integrate windream into a specialized application which especially addresses users of the housing industry. This software will be linked to windream, so that SWB employees will work with the working environment of the specialized application as user interface, while the associated documents will automatically be stored in the windream ECM-system in an audit-proof way. The necessary individual programming and system-specific adaptation of the IT infrastructure is already being planned.