Esbjerg Municipality & WorkPoint ESDH
From Data Silos and Proprietary ‘ESDH’ Solutions to Simplified, Cloudbased Case Management and Process Automation in Microsoft 365
A comprehensive process and close collaboration between WorkPoint, Esbjerg Municipality and WorkPoint Partner, Fellowmind, culminated on October 7, 2024, when Esbjerg Municipality officially launched their new cloud-based ‘ESDH’ solution (Electronic case and document management system). The innovative solution aims to help Esbjerg Municipality achieve their ambitious case and document strategy, taking municipal ‘ESDH’ to new heights and aligning with the municipality's vision of creating 'Energy in Everyday Life.'
Key benefits of Esbjerg Municipality’s new ESDH solution:
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A unified and user-friendly case and document management system within the familiar and intuitive Microsoft environment.
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Improved journaling with automated workflows for systematic and accurate ‘KLE’ tagging / data classification.
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Enhanced data security and better utilization of ESDH data.
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Seamless integration with the municipality’s existing system landscape.
Greater ESDH ambitions catalyzed a shift from traditional approaches to municipal case and document management
Two 'ESDH' contracts that had reached their expiration date and were facing a new, extensive tender process, combined with Esbjerg Municipality's ambition to do more with their ‘ESDH’ in the future, provided a unique opportunity for the municipality to challenge the way they had previously thought about and handled their cases, documents and journaling. Challenging the ‘status quo’ marked the beginning of a transformative journey towards an innovative, more secure, and unified approach to municipal case management.
The time had come to look for a different way to do it, so we adopted a case and document strategy that aimed for better utilization of our ESDH data in everyday life; we wanted better integration with our Office suite, and we wanted to maintain control over the security of our ESDH data.
One integrated case and document management system – Within Microsoft 365
Following a lengthy selection process, WorkPoint and Fellowmind, with the 'WorkPoint ESDH' solution, were deemed best suited to support Esbjerg Municipality's new and ambitious case and document strategy and meet the specific needs of the municipality for customized workflows.
WorkPoint is able to bring case and document management into the Office suite. It allows us to do some of the things that we want to work with and support the business processes with in terms of case and document management.
Better user adoption and seamless user experience
The fact that the new solution exists within the familiar Microsoft environment and is not an entirely new IT system for users to adapt to has, according to Dana Hjorth Widenborg, who is responsible for the user-centric implementation of WorkPoint ESDH in Esbjerg Municipality, had significant advantages in terms of user adoption:
[The fact that] there's already something well-known we can build on makes the user adoption better and easier. And what makes it seem even more familiar is that they're used to working in Teams and working directly in Outlook.
In addition to a familiar and intuitive IT environment, WorkPoint ESDH and the built-in 'WorkPoint Express' function ensure a seamless user experience. Emails, documents, and other relevant information can easily be recorded in the WorkPoint ESDH solution directly from, for example, Outlook – while the users can continue working uninterrupted in their preferred Microsoft applications. Since WorkPoint ESDH "resides" within the users' familiar work programs and is thus accessible where the users are, neither the user nor the data needs to be moved between different systems and interfaces.
A lot of our administrative users are happy that they can use WorkPoint Express while sitting in their Outlook or huge data sheets in Excel - without having to move from one system to another.
Seamless integrations with existing systems
Another significant feature of the WorkPoint ESDH solution, which aims to ensure that Esbjerg Municipality succeeds with more value-creating case and document management in the future, is the solution's ability to integrate with the municipality's many other professional systems in their existing system landscape. Integrations and interfaces have therefore been a major focus in the close collaboration between the parties throughout the development process of the specifically tailored solution.
A big part of developing the system has been the integrations to different professional systems. Of course, this is very difficult, but it's also where the system starts to add value. It's when you can establish these good and deep integrations with other systems and get data in and out in meaningful ways
Besides integrating with the municipality's existing systems, new Microsoft 365 initiatives and improvements are continuously integrated into WorkPoint ESDH, ensuring that the solution is always up-to-date with the latest Microsoft 365 functionalities. In addition, the solution's open API provides the opportunity to expand with integrations to potential new systems in the future, including the deployment of artificial intelligence, which according to Esben Fovrskov is a unique opportunity WorkPoint ESDH brings:
We expect a lot from being able to open up the platform and data to other tools, such as AI. It gives us some unique opportunities compared to other solutions.
Great potential and high expectations for the new ESDH solution
Despite the limited time Esbjerg Municipality has been using WorkPoint ESDH, the many potentials of the solution are already very clear to the municipality, making expectations correspondingly high. Among the benefits already highlighted, Esbjerg Municipality also expects to be able to generally improve, streamline and simplify workflows with WorkPoint ESDH.
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