Black and Veatch selects Documentum as corporate document management standard; largest U.S. engineering and design firm implements Documentum to increase competitive advantage in worldwide market.PLEASANTON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 6, 1994--Documentum Inc. Tuesday announced that Black and Veatch, the largest U.S. engineering design and construction firm, has selected Release 2.0 of the Documentum Enterprise Document Management System (EDMS (Electronic Document Management System or Enterprise Document Management System ) See document management. EDMS - Electronic Document Management System ) as its corporate document management standard. The system will be deployed across the 4,800+ person user base and used for business-critical applications such as design, procurement The fancy word for "purchasing." The procurement department within an organization manages all the major purchases. and proposals. "By 1996, Black and Veatch wants to generate all engineering designs, procurement, and services in a paperless, zero weight, electronic environment," said Gerry Hart Gerry Hart (born January 1, 1948 in Flin Flon, Manitoba) is a retired professional ice hockey player who played 730 games in the National Hockey League. He played for the Detroit Red Wings, New York Islanders, Quebec Nordiques, and St. Louis Blues. , project manager at Black and Veatch. "By having our information on line, Black and Veatch will be able to meet its goals of shortening response time to proposals, and reducing costly errors incurred throughout the design and construction phases -- enabling us to eliminate four to six months from our product life cycle. "We feel that Documentum's document management software will enable Black & Veatch to accomplish these goals, and give us the competitive advantage we need going into the future." "Our objective is to be a strategic asset to our engineering customers by providing a document management solution that leverages the intellectual capital within an organization," said Jeffrey A. Miller, president and chief executive officer of Documentum. "Our selection by Black and Veatch validates this strategy, and positions Documentum as a leading provider of document management solutions for the engineering market." Global access to information The Documentum EDMS is a family of open, client/server software products designed to handle business-critical collaborative documents and processes. Documentum's robust server manages the many data types and their associated work processes involved in producing complex documents such as engineering proposals (often thousands of pages long, each costing over a million dollars in labor alone), and the procurement of materials. Black and Veatch will use Documentum's EDMS to increase global access to information in order to significantly reduce the overall time spent creating future proposals by leveraging existing intellectual capital. "Our typical customer asks us not how we can save five or six million dollars, but how we can get up and running four to six months faster," explained Hart. "Documentum's software will allow all of our employees and partners global access, retrieval, and storage of information and procedures which are critical to the long-term success of our organization." Black and Veatch needed a system that could help pull together complex proposals using procedures and materials from the company's best practices. Documentum facilitates this by offering Docobjects -- reusable re·use tr.v. re·used, re·us·ing, re·us·es To use again, especially after salvaging or special treatment or processing. re·us , easily accessible document components of any data type, at any level of granularity The degree of modularity of a system. More granularity implies more flexibility in customizing a system, because there are more, smaller increments (granules) from which to choose. -- that enable the Virtual Document. Docobjects can range from text to tables to graphics, giving users the flexibility to incorporate all data types into a virtual document -- in which a unique document can be assembled at any time from any source. The ability to create Virtual Documents on demand enables Black and Veatch to leverage its corporate knowledge in order to accelerate the entire process, from proposal to construction. "By implementing Documentum across the organization, we will be able to increase the quality of the documents and reduce the review and approval time, ultimately eliminating months from our product life cycle," predicted Hart. The entire Documentum EDMS Release 2.0 includes: the Documentum Workspace, a graphical user environment; the Documentum Server, featuring library services and workflow; and the Documentum Toolkit, a set of APIs for building custom solutions. Configuration Black and Veatch will be configured con·fig·ure tr.v. con·fig·ured, con·fig·ur·ing, con·fig·ures To design, arrange, set up, or shape with a view to specific applications or uses: around the Docbase repository running on a UNIX server A medium to large-scale computer system in a network that runs under Unix. Unix servers are widely used as application servers and database servers and are available from a variety of vendors, including Sun, IBM, HP and others. from Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA[3]) is an American vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information-technology services, founded on 24 February 1982. . Users will access the system on Microsoft Windows See Windows. (operating system) Microsoft Windows - Microsoft's proprietary window system and user interface software released in 1985 to run on top of MS-DOS. Widely criticised for being too slow (hence "Windoze", "Microsloth Windows") on the machines available then. clients, running applications such as WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Black and Veatch runs TCP/IP TCP/IP in full Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol Standard Internet communications protocols that allow digital computers to communicate over long distances. and NFS (Network File System) The file sharing protocol in a Unix network. This de facto Unix standard, which is widely known as a "distributed file system," was developed by Sun. See file sharing protocol and WebNFS. NFS - Network File System as its network protocol. The future of document management According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Gerry Hart, the organization already has plans to extend Documentum's software beyond Black & Veatch. "We are actively expanding the use of Documentum to include all of our partners, such as materials vendors, service providers, and sub-contractors, in order to maintain the electronic flow of information, further reducing the time spent on each stage of the project." To Hart, this makes good business sense for everyone involved. "If our document management solution can be extended to include the individuals and organizations that need access to this information, the cost and time savings will have far-reaching implications not just for Black and Veatch, but for the entire industry." Black and Veatch Black and Veatch provides engineering, procurement and construction  The introduction to this article is vague. To comply with Wikipedia's guidelines, it should be improved. services to clients in a diverse number of industries:
power generation, process manufacturing The manufacturing industry that uses process control systems. See process control. , aviation, facilities, waste
water treatment and hazardous waste Hazardous wasteAny solid, liquid, or gaseous waste materials that, if improperly managed or disposed of, may pose substantial hazards to human health and the environment. Every industrial country in the world has had problems with managing hazardous wastes. handling and disposal. Established as a private partnership in 1915 in Kansas City Kansas City, two adjacent cities of the same name, one (1990 pop. 149,767), seat of Wyandotte co., NE Kansas (inc. 1859), the other (1990 pop. 435,146), Clay, Jackson, and Platte counties, NW Mo. (inc. 1850). , Mo., the firm has a staff of 4,800 employees in offices worldwide. Black and Veatch has completed more than 23,000 projects for some 5,000 different clients. At least 350 of these assignments have been for clients in more than 40 countries. About Documentum Headquartered in Pleasanton, Documentum sells the Documentum Enterprise Document Management System through a direct sales force, systems integrators and affiliated distributors in Canada and Europe. The company was founded in 1990 to offer a new class of enterprise document management applications that provide dramatic improvement in business-critical document processes. The Documentum EDMS is the first family of open, client/server software products that can be tailored to specific enterprise document applications. Documentum has more than 100 customer sites in pharmaceutical, manufacturing, regulatory and government applications around the world. Documentum is a registered Sun Microsystems Catalyst Program Third-Party Supplier. -0- Note to Editors: Documentum, Documentum Server, Documentum Workspace, Documentum Toolkit, Docbase and Docobject are trademarks of Documentum Inc. All other companies and products may be trademarks of the respective company with which they are associated. CONTACT: Documentum Inc., Pleasanton
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