The Johns Practice is a progressive, 20 strong architectural
practice based in Newmarket, Suffolk.

“Organice partner PH-media have a very strong relationship with the
practice having supplied TIMEminder for several years
and have an in-depth knowledge of the architectural
market.”
Gary Johns

The Practice has a proactive approach to I.T. and could clearly see the benefits of a document management system for a busy architectural practice.

Prior to obtaining Organice, the Practice operated a traditional hard copy split file for each project, which contained all incoming and outgoing mail, and print-outs of e-mails sent & received. Drawings, letters & specifications created by the Practice were also stored electronically.

The following weaknesses were identified with this system;

• Due to the volume of correspondence, including print-outs of e-mails, retrieving information quickly and efficiently was becoming more difficult.
• The volume of filing was also putting pressure on available space within the office.

The Practice primarily wanted an I.T. solution which would provide a solution to these problems, namely:

• The ability to electronically centralize all documents relating to a project to include incoming and outgoing mail (hard copies), e-mail, specifications and drawings.
• The ability to “Google” search keywords to retrieve information, or to summarize information - for example grouping together all quotations received by a particular company during a particular project work stage.

The Practice researched a number of Electronic data management solutions on the market and chose Organice for the following reasons;

• The software is Microsoft based, meaning the system would not be redundant in five years & upgrades and development of the system would continue as technologies improve.
• Most other solutions did not integrate with Autodesk Autocad. Organice also integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products such as Outlook and Office.
• The method of attaching metadata to each document allowed a great deal of customization which tailored the software to Architectural procedures and our methods of working.

Results of Implementing Organice
In our estimation we believe Organice saves each fee earner on average a day a month in the retrieval of information. Furthermore the filing of information is now far more consistent & robust.

Another major benefit of Organice which has proven to be extremely useful is the self population of drawing title-block information, namely; client name, project title, revision and drawing name/number. All of this information is retrieved from the metadata attached to the project and document. This functionality saves time and improves consistency.

We are also extremely excited about the upgrade, due for release soon, which will automatically generate drawing issue sheets, again improving both time and consistency.
Gary Johns, Partner