Schneider Geomatics Improves Company Communication with Deltek PIM

MANAGING PROJECTS FLAWLESSLY AND EFFICIENTLY

Schneider Geomatics is an engineering firm that uses the latest innovations in technology to design, map and manage natural and man-made resources. Its safe work environment is leading the industry and their engineers are some of the best in the business.

The firm works in many industries including higher education, commercial, residential, energy and water utilities. They offer design, survey and engineering expertise to make sure every project is a success. Matt Bouwie, Director of Finance at Schneider Geomatics, attributes the company’s strength to three core things: communication, technology and relationships.

“Communication is key because when working with different clients, and different phases of projects, we want to make sure that we’re staying on top and communicating throughout the life of the project,” Matt explains. “We also believe in staying up to date with the latest technology that helps execute our projects flawlessly and efficiently. Regarding relationships, Schneider Geomatics has been around for over 60 years, so a lot of our clients have been with us for decades—we believe in building that.”

Schneider Geomatics also has a positive impact on the wider community. In addition to donating meals to the elderly every week, the company sponsors Teenworks, a program that helps teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds learn career skills. “Every year we do mock interviews for about 20 kids that come to our office, and we ask them some different questions and give them that recruiting experience,” Matt tells us. “And the best part is we've actually hired a few of those kids for summer internships.”

CLOUD OPENS THE NEXT CHAPTER FOR BETTER INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION

To maintain strong communication, technology and relationships, Schneider Geomatics needed to change its way of working. “When everybody moved to hybrid or remote working, we had some issues with our offline storage and lost emails,” explains Matt. “Recovering those emails from personal inboxes was difficult. So, moving forward we don't want to lose that data—we want it in the cloud.”

To accomplish this, Matt looked for a system that could store emails and project information in a cloud environment. And he found Deltek Project Information Management (PIM), a single source of truth for emails, documents and drawings.

“I discovered PIM, got on a webinar and reached out to Deltek,” says Matt. “They scheduled a meeting, and I told them what we were looking for and the issues we were having. We then scheduled a project timeline to roll it out based on our needs.”

“Deltek walked us through the process, how long each step was going to take and the information they needed from us,” adds Matt. “And it rolled out pretty smoothly—the whole thing took about seven or eight weeks.”

ONE SOURCE OF TRUTH FOR PROJECT INFORMATION

Since adopting Deltek PIM, Schneider Geomatics has seen benefits beyond simply managing email. “What we like about PIM is it's in the cloud and it's always going to be there. And it doesn't just manage emails,” Matt explains. “We have engineers that have all these specs and different things that are high quality that you can save in PIM.”

“Those enhancements were something we didn't have as we were just using standard drives or inboxes,” adds Matt. Deltek PIM allows users to automatically connect to the document store from within Microsoft Outlook, making it easy to access, manage and share emails, reducing the risk of losing critical project information.

PIM has also made it easier for Schneider Geomatics’ employees to access and find the documents they need, whether they have been on a specific project since the beginning or whether they had to jump in part way through.

“It’s made the ability to search for these things better,” says Matt. “Now, as our team sends emails, all they have to do is associate it to a project or you could associate it to multiple projects, and it's all within one place so we don't have to go to a certain directory.”

BETTER COLLABORATION AND HAPPIER PEOPLE

Deltek PIM is helping the team at Schneider Geomatics collaborate more productively across all of its projects as Matt explains: “PIM makes collaboration a lot easier within all our projects. Especially when we’re working on a lot of different things with campuses, whether it's the University of Purdue or some of the high schools.”

PIM is also contributing to more seamless ways of working and creating a better work environment for employees across the board.

“Deltek PIM has increased our utilization,” says Matt. “It's also made our employees a lot happier, specifically on the engineering side, because they feel comfortable as they use PIM and publish work, their files won’t just disappear like they had before.”

A BRIGHTER FUTURE WITH DELTEK

Schneider Geomatics is taking an active role in using Deltek to help shape its future, getting involved with more solutions and upgrading the ones already in place. Schneider Geomatics recently joined the Deltek Vantagepoint early adopter program to help test new features and functionality and provide feedback to the product management teams on their experience.

“We're part of the testing of Deltek Vantagepoint 6.0,” Matt explains. “So, we're trying to insert ourselves a little bit more into what’s coming out and test it before it arrives.”

With Deltek PIM and Vantagepoint successfully implemented and integrated, the company is already looking for ways it can benefit from other Deltek solutions. “One thing we’re excited about for the future is Deltek Talent Management,” Matt shares. “We utilize a lot of different things that the Talent Management tool puts into one—and it integrates with Deltek Vantagepoint. Dashboards are also becoming more enhanced, so we're looking forward to all those enhancements in 2023.”

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