Constructware

Integration of Online Document Viewing, Annotation and Collaboration with ASP solution of Constructware Inc.

The Business Challenge

Constructware is a hosted communication and collaboration solution that streamlines design and project management among team members throughout the design, construction and facility lifecycle. Their centralized toolset enables all parties to communicate and collaborate anytime, anywhere, offering the flexibility to optimize, standardize and automate their entire business processes. As a leading application service provider (ASP) serving the construction industry in the US, Constructware has a hosted, centralized Application Service Provider (ASP) model. The users of Constructware had a strong need to view and annotate the data stored in a secured document repository. To move ahead of the competition, Constructware also added online design review process as part of their services. The online collaboration capabilities of eReview fit the needs of both the web based viewing and annotation as well as that of online collaboration. Because of its powerful APIs and its features, eReview was chosen over a competitor product that Constructware dropped when they chose eReview.

Being a large player and a service provider in the construction industry, Constructware had invested in developing an online solution for users to manage their design documents. Because this document management solution was developed by Constructware, there was a strong need of a web based system that has application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate with that. Constructware, not only needed a web-based viewer, but was also starting to offer online collaboration services to their users. This would mean going to different vendors for their viewing needs and for collaboration needs. And all these have to be tightly integrated, without compromising the security of the content. In eReview, they found all these capabilities in one product. The seamless integration of eReview with the solution gave Constructware a head start from their competitors.

• A system that can serve customers with variety of IT experience: Easy-to-use, interface
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• Tighter integration with Constructware’s solution
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• A web-based view, markup and collaboration system without compromising on the security of the content
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• Constructware also required document upload facility within a viewing system that integrates tightly with their document management system
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• Quality of the document viewing, both in the stand-alone viewing interface, as well in collaborative sessions was of paramount importance.
• Constructware did not want to compromise on the quality of design documents, hence required a very high quality viewer
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• Zero-client system to serve customers on the Internet
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• The solution had to be compatible to Multiple environments