Hotel building and refurbishment company Vascroft has
rolled out Lotus Notes to support flexible working
arrangements.
Mitesh Vekaria, Vascroft's chief executive, said the system was
already improving employee productivity by allowing mobile working,
better calendaring and document management.
"Remote accessibility means that staff do n0t have to come back
to the office to check e-mail when they have been on site. It is
much more flexible and allows us to make more efficient use of our
staff resources."
With the help of services company Lan 2 Lan, Vascroft migrated
from its existing system to an IBM Lotus Domino server. After
evaluating both products, Vascroft felt that Lotus' document and
knowledge management features better suited the firm's needs.
Phase one of the project included roll-out of Lotus Sametime,
which allows Vascroft to use instant messaging to improve internal
collaboration and reduce duplication of work.
With the tool, Vascroft can search its environment to see if
similar documents have been created before or locate people who
have authored similar documents for best practice.
Vascroft is currently piloting use of Blackberry mobile e-mail
devices on the Lotus platform, which is allowing staff to record
details of estimates on corporate systems while in the field.
The company was able to install Lotus Notes at its new
headquarters and benefit from a new hardware infrastructure. The
system cost about £100,000, Vekaria said.