Professional Consultancy Services

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 “We initially used Box, but the user interface really wasn’t filtered very well,” said Troy Adams, VDA’s Director of Business Technology. “It was just very clunky and difficult to use. One of the challenges was that Box sync would often stop syncing without any error messages, so data wouldn’t be getting backed up into the cloud. Things were very disjointed.” “We do a lot of inspection work in New York and there’s a lot of code compliance involved,” Adams added. “If we perform an inspection and find violations, we need to be able to track those and make sure that they are resolved. That means we need to be able to send reminders out to specific people.” Without a reliable system in place to access up-to-date info and job history in the field, VDA employees took longer to complete each inspection. As VDA expanded its territory beyond the northeast, they also needed a better system to make complicated state and local codes more searchable and create task checklists to make sure they were in full compliance.

Challenges:

• Document searchability was clunky and unreliable

• Up-to-date information wasn’t reaching the cloud

• Compliance updates and tasks need to reach the right parties  

When Adams sought support from Box, he was met with indifference and unhelpful responses. In contrast, M-Files demonstrated a strong commitment to understanding VDA’s business needs from the start of their engagement in December 2016.

With M-Files, VDA implemented customized vault applications, including one integrated with AutoCAD and another tailored for complex document generation. The platform’s flexibility and the responsive support team allowed VDA to build solutions tailored to their workflows.

VDA also integrated M-Files with Salesforce to streamline opportunity management. M-Files automates proposal generation and document approvals, while Salesforce handles customer interactions and project tracking. This integration has enhanced efficiency and resulted in annual cost savings of approximately $100,000.

Adams believes that M-Files had an immediate and significant impact on the business, largely due to two key features: templates and metadata-driven search. “In just the first 6–8 months, we saved over $75,000 in labor costs simply by using templates,” he noted.

Since then, the company has continued to save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by streamlining processes. With the addition of a data collection application that integrates with M-Files, the benefits go beyond saving man-hours,it's also about leveraging valuable data.

“When we first adopted M-Files, our plan was to use it solely for managing documents,” Adams explained. “But the platform offers so much more. We're continuously expanding and enhancing our systems, working with M-Files partners to drive greater efficiency and uncover new opportunities.”