Oliver Sauter, Head of IT, Tropa Holding Limited
A company’s data is precious capital. Therefore, it is vital that this is as easily accessible for employees and company management as possible and is retained for the long term.
Tropa Holding Limited provides IT services for the Kraus & Naimer Group, which manufactures around 4.3 million electrical switchgears annually and comprises six factories and 18 Group-owned sales companies worldwide.
When working with customers, numerous documents are created, which the company must retain for many years. Previously these documents were stored on dozens of file shares in an unstructured manner.
Around 600 of the 900 employees at Kraus & Naimer work with the computer and require quick and easy access to company data such as offers, invoices, contracts, delivery notes, and certifications.
Tropa Holding Limited, therefore, was looking for a uniform and central file repository in which the company could collect the data and make it easily accessible.
In 2013, Tropa Holding Limited came across inxire Digital Content, a platform for enterprise content management and social collaboration. The system created by inxire unites document management and archiving with social features such as follow, share or comment.
inxire Digital Content, based on industry standards such as Java, XML, and the Oracle database, allows large amounts of structured and unstructured data to be stored and managed in a single secure and scalable system. It offers all necessary functions for document management.
“The product demonstration of inxire Digital Content immediately convinced us. Therefore, we decided to use the system globally for structuring our data,” explains Zlatko Baumberger, the technical manager at Tropa Holding Limited. This is how a platform for metadata-controlled archiving in combination with document monitoring and collaboration was created.
In the first stage, Tropa Holding Limited filed all of the archive documents created in their ERP system in the inxire software - customer-based and separated according to country, company and department. The new system quickly led to the success that they were hoping for. Within seconds, the employees could now find the files they were looking for.
“Everyone was so excited that they soon wanted even more,” says Zlatko Baumberger. “They felt that it was not just offers, invoices and delivery notes that should be filed in the system, but also all SAP outputs and customer emails.”
The management of Tropa Holding Limited also explicitly wanted to file all content that was relevant for business solely within the new enterprise content management system.
New features for even more efficiency and data security
In 2015, Tropa Holding Limited decided to introduce a digital system for the direction and archiving of quality management documents for the first time. The inxire software already used also covered all requirements for this. In the so-called QM Net, employees now create their quality management documents, upload files, images or video clips and integrate these if necessary.
The set release workflow, a sophisticated authorization concept and the archiving of documents with their release information ensures complete traceability throughout the entire document life cycle.
In 2017, Tropa Holding Limited successfully introduced Communities. Through this, the inxire software brings together groups with similar interests, responsibilities and organizational properties. 60 Communities covering the most diverse areas, such as tool inspection, building services, certificates or templates can now be found in the platform.
The content of the Communities can be shared or followed. The visibility of information as well as data access is also automatically regulated through the classification of the Community. Even administrators can only view a file if they are authorized to do so. This important protection mechanism allows the management and secure storage of documents that need to be protected, for example, for an audit or in relation to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Zlatko Baumberger,
Technical manager,
Tropa Holding Limited
“The inxire software is the central port of call for all of the Kraus & Naimer corporate knowledge. The employees can immediately find any information they need for their work. Confidential data can also be managed securely and, in terms of data storage, the system automatically complies with all of the legal requirements.”
inxire Digital Content is now a fixed component of the working world at Kraus & Naimer. All SAP outputs are automatically sent to the digital platform without user interaction. Using the inxire API, Tropa Holding Limited has also developed their own application for input/output management.
All content can be found using full text search, regardless of the file format. The employees access the data using an intuitive and modern web interface. The APIs integrated into the system also allow alternative forms of access. The platform at Kraus & Naimer is also available as a network drive through the WebDAV connection.
Zlatko Baumberger sees a huge benefit in terms of data protection: “Through the possibility to encrypt files, the employees’ trust in the system has grown massively. Everyone now inputs much more information than before, as they know that unauthorized persons do not have access to it.”
In total, an estimated 150 to 200 million documents will have been filed in inxire Digital Content by the end of 2018. This is how Tropa Holding Limited transforms the company data of the Kraus & Naimer Group into knowledge with an economic benefit.
Margit Olbrich
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Kerstin Rösner
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Frank Closheim
Head of Product Management,
inxire GmbH
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Dave Long
Chief Architect,
inxire GmbH
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Angelika Schön
Producer,
arsEdition GmbH
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Benjamin Brändle
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Ulrich Beerhorst
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BEIT Systemhaus GmbH
“Using a solution by inxire, we can now ensure that customers and the sales forces are always supplied with up-to-date information.”
Herbert Kronlechner
Director of the Office of Information and Organization,
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"inxire has supplied us with a first-class editing system and provided optimum consultation. In this manner, they have proven to be the ideal partner for us for redesigning the city portal and preparing the way for eGovernment."
Uwe Deller
Director of Communications,
General Motors European Development
"As a central knowledge pool, our new platform offers us the possibility of tracking down all requested information in a quick and secure manner. With the solution inxire, which was tailored to meet our specifications, we are able to work very efficiently, pan-departmentally and across international borders."
Frank Closheim
Head of Product Management,
inxire GmbH
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Gerd Armbruster
Head of Division of Information Technology,
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Frank Closheim
Head of Product Management,
inxire GmbH
“Netcall uses several components of inxire Digital for its document and customer relationship management solutions, which many customers in Great Britain use.”
Frank Closheim
Head of Product Management,
inxire GmbH
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Toni Schnell
Managing Director,
inxire GmbH
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Frank Closheim
Head of Product Management,
inxire GmbH
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Birgit Schüssler
Head of Quality Management & Projects
inxire GmbH
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Frank Closheim
Head of Product Management,
inxire GmbH
“The British provider for financial advice and services uses inxire Digital Platform as the basis for complaints management and archiving.”
Christian Hahn
Project manager,
TÜV Austria
“With functions such as full text search, keyword assignment, classification and complete document life cycles, we can now really make optimal use of the potential of our data pool.”
Oliver Sauter
Head of IT,
Tropa Holding Limited
“The use of inxire Digital Content means an enormous time saving. It allows the employees to access all of the important documents quickly and securely. They can concentrate their full, undivided attention on their work and focus their resources on the development of the business.”
Toni Schnell
Managing Director,
inxire GmbH
“inxire supports the German Federal Armed Forces in the digitalization of their information systems. As a registry of regulations in management information systems or Digital Publishing in the commando cyber and information space, several inxire product components are being used successfully.”