HOCHTIEF AG - Turning Vision into Value

Learn how a global construction enterprise executed a large scale Digital Asset Management project.

At HOCHTIEF AG, one of the leading international construction service providers offering integrated solutions at every link in the life cycle of infrastructure projects, real estate and facilities, a full featured Digital Asset Management solution replaced an existing multimedia database, that had reached its capacity limits after seven years of operation.

Actually the implementation of celum IMAGINE took the existing multimedia database to the next level: mmdb 2.0.

Benefits of eDAM

For HOCHTIEF AG the benefit of a Digital Asset Management system lies within its support for sales, marketing and communication activities through a state-of-the-art, expandable and central object database.

Comfortable search functions as in Google for images and documents in a central, continuously updated database, direct access to mmdb from all MS Office tools, the information about newly added data (subscription function) and extreme user-friendliness, intuition-based surface were other key criteria.

HOCHTIEF AG was able to avoid superfluous e-mail attachments as just the links to individual compilations of objects and web galleries were inserted into e-mails.

Free access for all

All media objects the Digital Asset Management system handles can be used by any company and department across the HOCHTIEF group for free as HOCHTIEF AG holds the copyrights of every item itself. This means that all photos taken within the framework of professional shootings in an individual division can be used group wide and are therefore available to all employees having access to the mmdb. Still the up-to-date material has to be distributed quickly.

The centralized Digital Asset Media Management system enables a uniform external presentation that leads to an improved image of the HOCHTIEF AG.

In particular the optical presentation of a company contributes to an improved image by its publicity. The mmdb is the source for high-quality photo- and data-material for a wide range of purposes.

Implementation

The implementation of celum IMAGINE at HOCHTIEF AG took eight months starting in February 2007.

With the first two months both software and hardware were installed and configured. Existing data needed to be integrated into the newly prepared materials. At that time the system administrators were trained.

In April 2007 the software/hardware combination was tested and special customizing activities were conducted. Now it was time to train the Corporate Divisions’ administrators and a test-rollout of the MS Office plugins started.

From May 2007 onwards existing contents were complemented with new and historic material. Additionally a video service was set up.

In September 2007 the system went live. OfficeConnect, which is mainly used for Powerpoint management, was rolled out to 9.000 users in just 3 days.

Move to standard software

After several years of an in-house development of HOCHTIEFS AG own “mmdb”, the existing system has been replaced by celum IMAGINE in 2007.

Christopher D. J. Butterfield considers this switch to a generally established standard software as, “the best thing to do".

Its impact on how to use, work on, share and provide images, documents, presentations, audio and video files was huge. Its simplicity, intuition-based surface and open interfaces promote the international know-how transfer in a corporate network”.