Testimonial

As part of responding to invitations to tender, Guillaume Lefebvre, Director of Sales and Marketing at GTM TP Lyon (Vinci Construction France) uses Oodrive's iExtranet solution for managing and sharing large documents with all his colleagues and external partners.

Effective file exchange between the various people involved for a successful invitation to tender

GTM TP Lyon works on large civil engineering, highway and motorway infrastructure projects, as well as on projects for the construction of high-speed railway lines. "We work mainly on large civil engineering projects, via traditional invitations to tender or via requests for design and implementation", explains Guillaume Lefebvre.

These invitations to tender require a certain number of people involved to be mobilised, such as civil engineers, design consultants, architects, experts, landscape architects and other ad-hoc specialists. The sheer number of people involved results in the need to manage a significant number of companies, which are scattered far and wide across France.

"We have to design the project from A-Z within a very short space of time. We therefore need high-performance tools to bring all the various people involved in the project together and to exchange information efficiently", states Guillaume Lefebvre.

Sales managers at GTM TP Lyon have compared several solutions. As a result, the company turned to Oodrive's iExtranet solution, which it considered offered the best value for money. "iExtranet is the perfect match for all our requirements. This solution is easy to use and very similar to other IT environments; it is easy to integrate into projects, is pitched just at the right price and does not depend upon a number of users", he adds.

A SaaS solution for optimised information sharing on an international scale

Since summer 2008, GTM TP Lyon has been using Oodrive's iExtranet file sharing and collaborative working solution to resolve its internal file sharing and organisation issues as well as to work with partners of Vinci Construction and often even with new external partners. "Sharing such large files gave us problems when exchanging via conventional e-mail. Not only does iExtranet make it possible to share any type of large file, it also means that we are always working on the latest version of the document stored on the web platform", states Guillaume Lefebvre.

One of GTM TP Lyon's key requirements was to find a solution that was easy to use. The various users needed to be able to start working with it easily and quickly, whether they were expert or inexperienced computer users. They did not want to implement a complicated software package that would require them to train all the various users scattered far and wide. iExtranet fulfilled their expectations with its multilingual, straightforward and user-friendly interface, which was very similar to the interfaces that everyone was already familiar with.

"The main benefit with this solution in SaaS mode is that it can be accessed from anywhere. If one person is not in their office, all they need is an Internet connection to gain access to the Web platform using their user ID. In this job, we are not always sat behind our desks, so real-time access to information really saves a lot of time!", stresses Guillaume Lefebvre.

He also emphasises the possibility of sending files or folders by e-mail, which makes it possible to transfer very large documents without overloading colleagues' e-mail accounts. "We can send e-mails to people who are not necessarily involved in the project, without them having access to all the information stored on the iExtranet web platform. This functionality is useful for transmitting information simultaneously to various colleagues who have got different access rights. Furthermore, the administrator has full traceability of everything transmitted. By tracking the files shared, they can see whether the document has been consulted, when and by whom, which enables them to minimise delays on dealing with information", he concludes.