Case Study | KPMG Denmark

SharePoint Client Technology Increases Total Emails & Documents Electronically Stored on Engagements

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"Having offline access while on client engagements has increased the total number of documents our staff store in SharePoint. They now use SharePoint to manage all of their working papers, rather than just for document archiving at the end of client engagements. It's a huge benefit."

Susan Nordfoss
Chief Knowledge Officer
KPMG Denmark

Application
Professional staff at KPMG Denmark use the Colligo Contributor Client to gain instant offline access to their SharePoint sites while on client engagements, and they use the Colligo Contributor Add-in for Microsoft® Office Outlook® to support email archiving in SharePoint.

Business Challenge
KPMG Denmark was an early adopter of Microsoft SharePoint, used initially in 2002 as the corporate intranet. The first step was to make all resources available to support their four main processes: development, sales, production, and administration available on the intranet.

By 2004, the firm began to use SharePoint to manage client engagements. “Initially we chose SharePoint as the platform to help us improve knowledge management (KM) and work processes at KPMG,” commented Susan Nordfoss, Chief Knowledge Officer at KPMG Denmark. “ A few years later, we were ready to move on, and we made it possible for our professional staff to do their client work in SharePoint. At the same time we integrated SharePoint with our company ERP system and Microsoft Outlook as part of the initial KM strategy at KPMG Denmark. Today, we have over 80,000 SharePoint sites. We use BizTalk and web services to manage the integration between the ERP system and SharePoint.”

Offline access for professionals was a major challenge for KPMG. “Our professionals spend 65 to 70 percent of their time on client work – and many hours at client offices with no access or secure line to the KPMG network,” said Nordfoss. “As a result, documents were not being added to SharePoint until they were finalized. Working documents would stay on laptops and later be archived to SharePoint. Our staff were not leveraging the collaboration capabilities of SharePoint.” To solve these challenges, KPMG needed to give professionals instant access to SharePoint whether they were online or offline.

The firm also wanted to use SharePoint for email management, so client emails related to engagements could be stored in the same location as working papers. “We had originally developed an in-house Outlook add-in that allowed professional staff to store client emails on their SharePoint engagement sites, but this approach was not so well adopted by our staff,” added Nordfoss. “In addition to email naming issues, professionals had to open the browser to add metadata in SharePoint after emails were added to sites.” The firm wanted an Outlook add-in to drag-and-drop emails into SharePoint and capture metadata in the process, eliminating the need to leave the Outlook interface.

Solution: Colligo Contributor
To address these requirements, KPMG Denmark selected Colligo Contributor, an easy-to-deploy .NET client application that extends the functionality of SharePoint to desktops. It increases productivity and adoption by enabling professionals to instantly and securely access, modify, and create SharePoint content online and offline through a rich client interface. The software includes two user interface options: a standalone desktop client and an Outlook add-in.

“The biggest advantage of deploying the Colligo Contributor Add-in for Outlook is that it has significantly increased the number of emails that our staff are managing in SharePoint,” said Susan Nordfoss. “Now professionals can simply drag-and-drop emails to SharePoint document libraries and at the same time, they can add custom process metadata – all within Outlook. This has been a huge benefit for the firm.”

In addition to streamlining email capture, the Colligo Contributor Add-in for Outlook enables professional staff at KPMG to access and modify content in SharePoint from within the Microsoft Outlook interface. Emails and attachments can easily be moved into and out of SharePoint libraries with a simple drag-and-drop. In addition, Outlook rules can be used to automatically move emails to SharePoint when sent or received.

KPMG Denmark also uses the Colligo Contributor Client, a standalone desktop application that enhances productivity by enabling professional staff to securely update and create SharePoint documents, forms, list items, and metadata - online and offline, whether connected at the office or disconnected at client engagements. Changes are cached when offline and automatically synchronized in the background when online. One KPMG user commented: “Contributor is a very, very nice solution that solves all my offline and email archiving problems.”

“Professional staff at KPMG like Contributor so much that many use it as their primary interface to SharePoint both when inside and outside the office,” commented Nordfoss. “Having offline access while on client engagements has increased the total number of documents our staff store in SharePoint. Now, it is easier to use SharePoint to manage all of their working papers, rather than just for document archiving at the end of client engagements. It’s a huge benefit that SharePoint is now being used for collaboration on working documents – it means engagement sites are kept up to date. This improves compliance.”

In addition to increasing the total number of emails and working papers stored in SharePoint, Colligo Contributor has provided efficiency benefits for the firm. “By making it easier to capture and access content and metadata, Colligo Contributor has increased the adoption of SharePoint as a tool for engagement management,” said Nordfoss. “By providing rich offline access and easy email drag-and-drop capabilities, Contributor has increased professional staff productivity and improved their ability to deliver superior services to our clients.”

Results
After deploying Colligo Contributor, KPMG Denmark was able to:

• Drive SharePoint adoption among professional staff by enabling rich offline access
• Improve professional productivity with instant access to cached data (eliminating latency)
• Increase the number of emails and working papers managed in SharePoint
• Enhance the use of SharePoint for engagement management, improving compliance
• Deliver superior customer service with instant access to relevant documents and resources while on engagements at the client sites

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