Heembouw says goodbye to local drive and fully commits to Prostream
Heembouw is a leading player in the Dutch construction industry, known for their expertise in development, design, realisation and maintenance of commercial premises, offices and homes. With three offices in the Netherlands, this company has developed from a local family business to an award-winning company. They have switched company-wide from Docstream to Prostream, also saying goodbye to the local network drive. Heembouw now uses Prostream as their document management system, for all their projects. That applies to all documents, including models. In this case, you can read how they experienced that process.
About Heembouw
Founded in 1939, the company has grown into a versatile construction company. As a developing builder, they make places where people want to be. The human aspect plays a major role in their operations. With locations in Roelofarendsveen, Berkel en Rodenrijs and Breda, the company has a strong presence in the Dutch construction sector.
Challenges
Like many construction companies, Heembouw struggled with a fragmented document management landscape before implementing Prostream. This resulted in inefficiencies and loss of time by spreading project data across different platforms and storage locations. Think of local storage, network drives, mails, OneDrive and Sharepoint solutions. In addition, Heembouw was also using Docstream, but due to the lack of a preview and/or editing function in the programme, files were still too often downloaded and stored locally. The company was looking for a way to manage and streamline all project phases – from the commercial phase to aftercare – more efficiently, in a single software solution. Here, it was important that collaboration with external parties would also be supported.
We are going to work full speed in Prostream. That should work, with all the functionalities we now have in Prostream.
The solution
The choice for Prostream
Heembouw was already working with Docstream, Prostream’s predecessor. In 2019, when Heembouw started working with Docstream, the organisation attempted to manage all project data in Docstream. This still proved difficult in practice. Björn Bouwmeester, information analyst at Heembouw, says: “In some places in the organisation, this was picked up very well, in other places we were still a bit half-hearted.”
However, that was no reason for Heembouw to give up. “I think it was a big and courageous step, and that step has partly succeeded with Docstream. We have now used the migration from Docstream to Prostream to say we are now transferring all the data. We are now just going to put everything in Prostream. We set the local network drive to read-only for all project data, then we won’t be able to edit anything there. We are going to work full speed in Prostream. That should work, with all the functionalities we now have in Prostream.”
Implementation
Heembouw implemented Prostream carefully, based on thorough preparation and test sessions together with Pro4all. They ensured a smooth transition from their existing systems to Prostream, with special attention to user training and change management.
Frequently used features
Key features of Prostream that Heembouw uses are:
- The Microsoft Office integration for direct document editing;
- The document preview function;
- Collaboration in PDF documents, and comparing versions;
- The messaging module for efficient communication;
- And the BIM viewer, for the application of 3D on the construction site.
Results
Outcomes
With Prostream, Heembouw has successfully implemented a new way of working within their organisation. With all data transferred from Docstream to Prostream over a weekend in November 2023, Heembouw manages all its projects from commercial phase to aftercare entirely in Prostream. This results in increased efficiency and improved collaboration.
What does Heembouw have to say?
Björn Bouwmeester, information analyst at Heembouw: “You move to a modern look and feel with Prostream. You just have a lot of advantages. We never really feared whether we would be able to get the organisation on board. That is also apparent after going live, that everyone just gets going with Prostream very easily. They pick it up easily.”
Conclusion
Heembouw’s case study illustrates how Prostream plays a crucial role in improving document management and streamlining collaboration, both internally and externally. With the implementation of Prostream, Heembouw experienced a significant improvement in efficiency and collaboration. Digitising was step one, with Prostream, Heembouw can now start to accelerate.