Building an “Instant Access” Retrieval Solution for Vendor Documents with SharePoint

As a leading facility services provider, ABM oversees a large pool of documents relating to its business. The firm has standardized on SharePoint for document management and been very satisfied with its choice.

Introduction

When one of its financial institution (FI) customers required ABM to provide near-instant access to ABM’s vendor and subcontractor documents as part of its contract with the firm, ABM Process Manager Carolina Rodriguez and the IT team realized a special solution was needed.

The Challenge

ABM’s FI client wanted reassurance not only that ABM was managing vendor and subcontractor documents efficiently and securely, but also that the firm could produce those documents, via a computerized database, at a moment’s notice. This requirement was global and incorporated certificates of insurance, contracts, and all other documents relating to contractors, suppliers and other outside entities. ABM needed the tool to manage the vendors, crews and vendor on-boarding as well as provide the ability to track which vendors and crews worked at each client location.

At the time of the request ABM’s process analyst stored the targeted documents digitally in folders on the PC Desktop or in SharePoint. Unfortunately the collection wasn’t searchable or linked to any other solution and other personnel did not have access to the folders.

The Abel Solution

“SharePoint is an important platform for us, and although a lot of our internal documents were already structured in the way our client wanted, we did not have this capacity for outside vendor documents,” says Rodriguez.

Nonetheless, ABM knew the platform was the right choice for the specialized solution, so it turned to SharePoint consultant Abel Solutions to help build the system. Abel Solutions architected the solution with out of the box functionality using linked lists and document sets ultimately creating much more than just a document repository but a total preferred vendor management system

“Management had an idea for the layout and architecture, but Abel Solutions helped us refine it and simplify the design,” says Rodriguez. “The final product is a really simple interface where we list vendor, employee, client location and clients.”

Conclusion

Rodriguez says ABM is very pleased with the outcome of the project, and that the results have been dramatic. Where previously it took approximately two weeks to collect and confirm the presence of required vendor documents, now the company can retrieve them in a day. Furthermore, the new layout clearly indicates if key details, such as expiration dates, are missing.