York Saves With Content Management

Manufacturing firm York International Corp. based in York, Pa. has slashed time spent on administration and laid the foundation for a server consolidation push, thanks to a major overhaul of its content management system.

According to Tim Fives, York's manager of global content solutions, the company has saved cash and operating costs by replacing a mishmash of systems with a single document management system.

Case in point: It used to take 160 hours to process procurement forms, says Fives, a process which can now be done in as little as two hours. York has also cut the time spent setting up new employees for systems access. Whereas the old system took a full 30 days to process the necessary forms for new workers, the new system takes three to five days.

In addition to cutting task time, the evolution from multiple systems to a single Documentum system from EMC reduced the overall number of boxes dramatically. In the old days, York relied on a hodgepodge of technologies, which included 15 different systems for engineering forms alone, ranging from Xeroxs DocuShare to a slew of custom-built technologies.

Fives says there was little communication between its different forms systems. "Before, across the organization, we were using several different tools to accomplish business processes. None of these were integrated," he says.