You’re an engineering writer sending your technical manual back to the product team to be reviewed. You’re a land analyst filing your report in the system so that you can access it later when presenting it to your colleagues. You’re in the IT department, safeguarding company documents that everyone has access to. You’re on a team of accountants, balancing the budget for the next well project and summoning a mountain of files to study, share, and approve.

In a modern energy company, every department has to sync up in order to power the homes and businesses that rely on them. Interdepartmental business processes are tricky, but they don’t have to be. Every one of your teams’ needs are different, so you need a toolset that can deal with many different needs at once.

Store information, files, and records in a central hub

Accounting transactions, invoices, spreadsheets, checks, BLM forms, quarterly reports. All of these need to be organized and stored efficiently in a standalone document storage solution. If you’re an energy supplier, utilities company, or work in new energy, you need the capability to capture and scan documents in the field. The Contentverse app has that ability, taking a picture of the document you need and uploading it along with your comments.

What about document control – keeping files in the right place on the server, making sure no one sees them who shouldn’t or edits the file if they haven’t been OK’d to do so. That type of control is a key feature in Control. You can set security permissions for specific files and groups of files. That document or folder will only be available to its department members, or its department heads. You can also set individual or group permissions. Departments have an easier time working together when everything is in its place.

Search for documents for your department

You may only need documents specific to the human resources department. Or you are looking for one individual document. How about a system where that’s not only possible but easier and more powerful than using your file explorer? When a document is added to Contentverse, you will fill out fields which then attach metadata tags to it. In addition to the usual properties of a file like creation date and owner, it can have these customized tags such as invoice number, customer, location, or well name. You can also automate a new document with a specific tag to be processed immediately.

Once the document is in Contentverse, you can find it later. Search by document number, document name, property, and any other customized fields your department has created. Or even search the content of the document. You can use the quick find to do just that – do a fast keyword search for something you need now. Use the advanced search to browse the hit list at your own pace, using more elaborate search parameters to narrow in on your targets.

Business process automation for sharing files between departments

Up until now, we’ve kept the departments separate. The real purpose is to help everyone at your electricity utilities company work together more easily. Procedural policy can be followed to the letter when you store your documents jointly and automate those procedures.

For instance, when you have to complete compliance reports for the EPA, file permits, or compile files for the FERC, and you need information from logistics, your accounting department, legal, and liaisons to on-site contractors. You can put the templates or initial forms and instructions into a Contentverse document and then add that doc to a workflow. It will be sent to the next person for editing, additional documentation, approval, or to be sent back for correction. The process can be set up to remind a user with notifications that they have an unfulfilled task. They can also check their to-do list for this info.

Since documents in Contentverse are made of a series of related files, a single document can hold all of the information necessary to manage a complex task. Folders can be structured into groups by date, department, contractor, order number, or whatever shape best fits your needs. Then, access can be granted selectively.

Mingling with other teams and keeping the sensitive files under your hat go hand-in-hand where energy service and products are concerned. You can easily do both with Contentverse. Departments can safeguard their content, share workflows with their neighbors, and finesse those nuanced aspects of a large job that require care. Interdepartmental cooperation is a lot easier than you think.