Founded in 1947, Purcell is an award-winning architecture practice with expertise ranging across design, heritage consultancy, and master planning. Being the world’s largest team of heritage specialists, for 75 years Purcell has been pioneering sustainable solutions that revolve around conservation excellence and innovation design, spanning across the UK and the Asia Pacific region.
Prior to CMap PIM, Purcell was using an on-premise solution as their main document management solution.
The firm was facing challenges of maintaining expensive servers and physical infrastructure linked to their on-premises document control system. Having to rely on VPN to work remotely was also another struggle of Purcell. Downtime, poor connectivity, data latency, and lack of flexibility are a few associated issues.
Purcell was also using Microsoft 365 on a daily basis as a part of their information management workflows. However, their existing document management system was not natively integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem, causing difficulties in collaboration.
Throughout the search for a document management system, Purcell placed significant emphasis on software functionality, data history, and the end users’ experience on the platform. The practice was seeking a solution that provides intelligent document control workflows across all project stages. With data retention being one of the top priorities, Purcell also looked for a provider that can smoothly transfer their years’ worth of project data to the new system. Finally, considering the challenges of familiarising and training staff members with new processes, Purcell desired a solution that is highly user-friendly and navigable to maximise efficiency.
After deep research of the market for document management solutions, Purcell was drawn to CMap PIM because of its cloud-based nature. The firm believed moving to the cloud was not only the correct direction but also the definitive trajectory for the future.
With CMap PIM, project teams at Purcell will be able to collaborate on projects anytime, anywhere, and across any device, provided they have access to SharePoint.
CMap PIM also committed to providing a bespoke training schedule built for Purcell, which included numerous comprehensive training sessions designed for each specific teams. Along with that, CMap PIM also entirely managed the data conversion process from an on-premise solution onto SharePoint, whilst working with Purcell to define the “Purcell way of working” inside CMap PIM.
Being built on Microsoft 365, CMap PIM offers an intuitive user-experience that is a native and natural extension of Purcell’s existing Microsoft usage. Anyone who uses SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook on a daily basis would find CMap PIM simple and familiar to navigate.
In addition, by inheriting SharePoint’s robust scalability, CMap PIM can facilitate Purcell’s future enterprise growth. With SharePoint allowing for 2 million sites and 25TB storage per site, CMap PIM can support project teams of all sizes, from a few to thousands of project documents.
"As the world’s largest heritage architecture specialists we aim to stay ahead of the curve with technology across our entire business. We are always looking for ways to improve our business operations to continue providing an exemplar service to our clients. As a business committed to providing bespoke and local expertise across the UK and Asia Pacific, we needed a document management system that allowed us to be agile and flexible enough for us to work seamlessly together, despite being in different locations and time zones. After a lengthy review and testing process, CMap PIM came out a clear winner in terms of user experience and business functionality. We look forward to working with the CMap PIM team and being part of the continued development of the product."
Gary Dalton , MBCS, IT Partner
Speaking about recent Microsoft developments that allow CMap PIM to “scale for the future”, Marcus Roberts, Head of CMap Mail & PIM, commented:
“CMap PIM was always built with scalability and future-proof technology in mind, this regularly allows us to add ‘game-changing’ functionality to CMap PIM as Microsoft builds on their offering. Coming this year is Microsoft 365 and SharePoint back-up alongside Microsoft Archiving functionality, a great example of keeping your project information accessible and secure, whilst also reducing the costs to store for the required length of time.”