Argent partners with Union Square

Argent, the property development company, has purchased 'Workspace', a web-based information-sharing portal from specialist construction software author, Union Square Software.

Argent is the property development company behind Brindleyplace in Birmingham, the rejuvenation of Piccadilly in Manchester, and the re-development of 67 acres at King's Cross in London.

The new Union Square software will allow Argent to safely store all business-critical information, and enable its employees to retrieve documents from any location around the world.

Workspace also has the added benefits of managing emails and integrating them into the corporate database like any other document and acting as a centralised contacts database, therefore reducing Argent's dependence on paper-based documentation.

Since its foundation in 1981, Argent has spent the past 25 years consistently developing its reputation as a leading practitioner of city centre regeneration.

By 2010 Argent will own, manage or develop GBP3.5bn of development.

Workspace was designed to help construction firms manage information effectively and avoid the problems that occur with traditional storage systems when valuable business correspondence is lost or misfiled.

The software provides construction organisations with a simple method of filing, archiving and retrieving all documents through a central software portal that can be accessed by any employee or external parties with access rights.

Argent's IT Manager, Filippo Popolo, comments, "Knowledge of crucial documents is often limited to the Project Managers directly responsible for them".

"Should other employees require this information and its owner is not available, it can theoretically take a considerable amount of time to locate or reference it".

Popolo continues, "We identified a need to address email audit trails which can occasionally be problematic due to staff editing and forwarding versions of the same original document".

"Workspace's central repository will mean only one easily retrievable version of any given document is utilized; consequently minimising search times and massively improving the visibility of correct information".

Popolo concludes, "Workspace met both of our principal needs - versatile document management and an intranet to improve our access to information, both on site and remotely, even via Blackberry".

"The advantages of managing our email inboxes and contact lists whilst reducing our dependency on paper documents and filing were very welcome supplementary benefits.".

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