AUTFORCE Automation: Centralized File Management and Excellent Online Training

Compnay Profile

AUTFORCE Automations - GmbH is a leading software provider for industrial equipment. The company's core business areas include implementing of automation programs by SIEMENS®, bespoke programming solutions, and e-planning. Furthermore AUTFORCE offers training, consulting and support worldwide. The work and services of AUTFORCE Automation GmbH are characterized by high quality and punctuality. This is achieved through close cooperation between customers and the 30+ employees of the company. The company is based in the Lebring, Austria.

AUTFORCE's objective in each project undertaken is to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction. To reach and maintain this objective, it is necessary to stay in step or a step ahead of developments in the automation market.

Customer satisfaction is reached through:

• Close contact with customers during project execution
• Standardization of software components
• High technology, that is, the willingness and expertise to implement new developments and thus stay one step ahead
• Most importantly with the right set of employees, a pleasant working atmosphere where both and team work and independence can thrive, and performance-related pay.

AUTFORCE Automation GmbH decided that to reach the highest performance of its stated purpose, providing staff with a platform that allows employees complete access to the company's collective knowledge and information was essential. This platform should facilitate daily work, improve communication and increase the collective knowledge. The search for a suitable product was accompanied with some difficulties, because of certain technical requirements (ESXi, LDAP & Outlook integration). In addition, the new intranet should meet the following main goals:

• Easy retrieval of information;
• Central management of all documents;
• Mapping the workflow of the company;
• External access to shared areas;
• Portal for customers;
• Enterprise Wiki;
• Improvement of social interaction;
• Continuous update of corporate organization chart;
• Create E-learning in order to centralize administration of training and testing.

Solution and Implementation

The BizPace edition of Bitrix Intranet proved to be suitable for the implementation of the AUTforce intranet project.

Due to the technical requirements, the virtual machine from Bitrix provided great advantages and the implementation could be carried out very quickly. Some design changes in a Bitrix template were made, and in the e-learning module, the adjustments were more substantial. In addition, a bulletin board was modified with the assistance of the Bitrix technical support team to create an Enterprise Wiki, as this module was not available from Bitrix at the time of implementation.

		Familiarization of the employees with the intranet proceeded without problems. An appraisal of the orientation process among employees was offered by Oliver Hohnhold, CEO Autforce Automation GmbH: "Since the intranet has a training course included, only minimal training of the staff was required, and enrollment time for our staff was just 15 minutes."

Improvements Introduced by the Intranet

The most commonly used features of the intranet are the document library, records management, and e-learning module. The latter is particularly important for new employees, as they are able to complete online training in a centralized managed module and learn company procedures quickly and effectively. The success of such training can be tested by subsequent tests.

Additionally, now nearly all communications and information that is company-related passes through the portal to the employees. Through the visual corporate structure, all employees can be quickly found and contacted. The listings of birthdays and personnel changes improve the working environment and make social interaction easier. The instant indexing of new documents into search, and the search's instant suggestions make finding files among the huge document base much easier.

		"With the introduction of the Intranet solution, storage and retrieval of documents has been simplified. Specifically, modifying published documents became much easier. With the help of lists that can be configured to contain a variety of different data types in a single record, we were able to replace our old system of Excel files easily and achieve centralized management. Through user rights, now the viewing or modifying the content of the respective groups is assignable. " - said Oliver Hohnhold, CEO of AUTFORCE Automation.

Collective corporate knowledge is centralized through the wiki and be constantly expanded by the staff.

Technically, the Intranet is supported by an in-house administrator, and the content is maintained by individual employees. In the future, it will be put under the control of an intranet administrator. The new employee portal for AUTFORCE Automation GmbH was received by employees of the company positively and the objectives have been achieved.

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