Partner insights from certified WorkPoint Partner, EDH Technology
EDH Technology is a Danish company with three core solutions for project management, document management, and invoice management. They help companies overcome common challenges – automating invoice and document management processes, by bringing structure in a sea of unstructured data.
Traian Valentin Deloiu is a Business Developer with the responsibility of identifying and adjusting business activities based on market needs. After seeing the potential of metadata into project- and document management systems and a growing interest in metadata-based solutions, he and EDH Technology partnered with WorkPoint to deliver out-of-the-box solutions to help companies manage their projects more efficiently and effectively.
With a major interest in metadata and its advantages in business, we asked Traian to share his insights into the topic.
What is metadata?
From Netflix suggestions, Google search results, to song recommendations on Spotify, and even how Windows/OS is saving data on your desktop — metadata is an essential part of structuring and understanding digital information.
It’s true, metadata is everywhere. Behind every email, file, document, and project – there are sets of metadata that help you understand and structure the information. For example, the title of a file, where the file it’s archived and in what project phase, the document type, and much more.
What's the company's benefit of using the EDH Project Management system?
For companies with massive sets of data and information, metadata helps you to manage all project documentation faster, to quickly filter, structure, and make sense of documents, cases, and project information — minimising the use of human resources and without the need for immense computing power.
Inefficiency increases as information grows
From my estimate, three in five companies are still doing business like ten years ago. People search in seemingly endless folder structures, do manual entries, and surprisingly still use software for storing files with no secure sharing or version control.
Many project managers work with Outlook; communicating with customers and getting new documents, project modifications, and requests through email. Typically, they save the documents wherever they see fit — either in their massive folder structure or the first place they find.
But with some companies running 10 projects at a time and every project having a different development phase, this way of working becomes increasingly inefficient as documents and project numbers grow. Finding information and knowing which project it belongs to becomes a full-time job.
Companies today want a simple way of managing files in seconds without losing track of what’s going on, and finding the right information at the right time. That’s why – with EDH Technology and Workpoint - Project Managers can minimise the team effort and maximise efficiency while having a fast overview of the entire project lifecycle. Additionally, the EDH Project Management System allows them to identify project management risks in time, as well as share and find information in seconds.
How is metadata used in business?
WorkPoint is built on Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, and uses metadata in its project module to help you structure and navigate all business-related files and projects. For example, if you get an email, WorkPoint allows you to save the email using a metadata card directly in the right project folder.
So instead of downloading files to your computer desktop and assigning it to a complex folder structure, all project data is securely stored in one place — with instant access. And by viewing its metadata card, you can see the latest information related to the file and project.
In most cases, even in construction, many roles other than the Project Manager handle projects. With many people working on projects, it helps to have a dashboard to assess performance and know how far along the project is.
Unifying your projects to a platform like WorkPoint with a version control overview, you can see what modifications have been made, how they impacted costs based on customer requirements, what stage the project is in and the responsibilities of each role, and more.
And because you have metadata within the project, you have easy access to core information of any file and document related to that project. So instead of going through twenty pages of files while reading and identifying all new requirements manually, you can do it quickly.
The power of metadata
After posting an article on the importance of metadata, we noticed there is a tremendous interest in the topic that didn’t exist before. It seems that companies are starting to wake up to the possibilities of metadata to streamline their document and project management.
And that’s also why we have decided to partner with WorkPoint — because with EDH Technology and WorkPoint we can offer the power of metadata to all our clients that rely on and want to capitalise on their Microsoft investment.