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Leading energy company iconUK energy company

Renewables company supports the UK’s net-zero transformation with cloud-based project management from OpenText™ Core Content Management

Leading energy company icon

About the UK energy company

As the UK’s leading land-based renewable energy developer, this company has a growing pipeline of more than 3GW in renewable capacity—including onshore wind, solar, and energy storage projects across the country.

Wind turbines generating power in a green landscape
  • Founded:
    1970s
  • Wind farms:
    10+

Summary

Challenges

  • Needed to prepare for divestment from parent company by deploying a new enterprise content management solution.
  • Had to migrate one million documents to the new platform within a strict deadline.

Solution

  • Selected a cloud-based content management solution.
  • Quickly and smoothly migrated one million documents by relying on professional services.
  • Delivered effective security and governance.

Results

  • Empowered teams to find information faster
  • Streamlined new user onboarding
  • Enabled deeper integration with Microsoft 365

Challenges

  • Renewables project documents needed to be effectively managed throughout multi-year lifecycles
  • One million records had to be moved off the parent company’s on-premises platform by a strict deadline
  • Needed to deploy a brand-new enterprise content management solution quickly and cost-effectively

This UK energy company has decades of experience bringing forward onshore wind, solar, and energy storage projects. Today, the company provides green energy solutions for thousands of UK households, businesses, and communities.

The head of IT at the UK energy company said, “Achieving net-zero emissions is a key target for the UK government, and realizing this goal demands long-term investment in renewables projects. To support the net-zero transition, we opened 11 onshore wind farms over the last two decades, and we now have more than 4GW in renewable capacity in our future pipeline.”

Bringing wind, solar, and energy storage projects to fruition requires the UK energy company to source, purchase, and develop land across the UK. Developing land can be a long and complex process that involves significant amounts of documentation—including land deeds, land use agreements, planning permissions, and more.

“We used to rely on an on-premises deployment of OpenText Content Management to help manage and retain legal and planning documentation for our renewables projects,” explained the Head of IT. “When our parent organization was acquired by a green investment fund, the new owners made a strategic decision to spin off the renewable energy arm of the business as a separate company.”

As a newly independent business, the UK energy company faced the challenge of rapidly enabling the digital capabilities it needed to continue its long-term green energy projects. Document management was a mission-critical requirement, and the company also needed to move over a million records to the new platform.

The head of IT commented, “Our key goals for our new business systems were speed, agility, and cost-efficiency. Wherever possible, we were keen to leverage cloud solutions to avoid the cost, complexity and lead time involved in provisioning on-premises IT systems.”

Digital folders connected in a workflow with checkmarks

Since we moved to OpenText Core Content Management, we haven’t looked back; it’s a perfect fit for our project management needs.

Head of IT
UK energy company

Solution

To rapidly enable enterprise-class document management capabilities, the UK energy company selected OpenText™ Core Content Management—a SaaS solution that enables the business to manage digital content securely in the cloud.

Products deployed

Services provided

Selecting a cloud-based content management solution

There was a hard deadline in place for the energy company to migrate its project data off the existing on-premises platform. With OpenText Core Content Management, the company gained the peace of mind that it could quickly and easily move its data to the cloud.

“OpenText Core Content Management is fully compatible with our parent company’s [OpenText] Content Management platform, which allowed us to avoid the risks involved in moving to a different vendor ecosystem,” said the head of IT. “We also liked the fact that OpenText Core Content Management is a cloud solution. By going with a SaaS offering, there was no need for us to purchase and set up a new IT environment—allowing us to move much faster.”

Moving quickly and smoothly to the cloud

Working with OpenText and partner QPES, the UK energy company completed its transition to the cloud on time and with minimal disruption of day-to-day operations.

The company’s head of IT added, “OpenText and QPES took our migration project and ran with it. The teams brought a strong understanding of the work that needed to be done, and it was clear from the start that they had considerable experience and expertise in projects of this kind. Whenever issues popped up, they helped us resolve them quickly and kept the project moving smoothly.”

Delivering effective security and governance

Today, the company uses OpenText Core Content Management to store and manage the documents that underpin its renewables projects. The SaaS solution empowers employees to manage the content lifecycle efficiently while providing the assurance of automated governance and protection for key records.

“Two of the big attractions of OpenText Core Content Management are its simplicity and flexibility,” said the head of IT. “We wanted to make it even easier and faster for our people to find, create, and work with business documents, so we really appreciate the clean modern interface and intuitive user experience we get with OpenText Core Content Management. The solution is just as easy to maintain as it is to use, which is a big plus for a lean IT team like ours.”

A person working on a computer in office table

We really appreciate the clean modern interface and intuitive user experience we get with OpenText Core Content Management. The solution is just as easy to maintain as it is to use, which is a big plus for a lean IT team like ours.

Head of IT
UK energy company

Results

After a successful collaboration with OpenText Professional Services and partner QPES, the UK energy company migrated more than one million records to OpenText Core Content Management. Equipped with a secure and streamlined cloud content management solution, the company is ready to drive renewables innovation.

Empowered teams to find information faster

On a wind farm project, it can take up to seven years from sourcing and purchasing the land to breaking ground. For the UK energy company, the ability to access documents created throughout the project lifecycle is crucial to keep development work moving forward.

“If you don’t have an effective approach to folder structures and metadata handling, then it can be very time-consuming to find documents you were working on even a few years ago,” stated the head of IT. “We configured OpenText Core Content Management to mirror the folder structure of the previous on-premises content management platform. That continuity makes it very straightforward for our teams to find the information they are looking for. Looking ahead, we plan to leverage workflow capabilities in OpenText Core Content Management to automate and streamline our document-related processes.”

Streamlined new user onboarding

By moving from an on-premises environment to the cloud, the company has dramatically accelerated its onboarding process for new employees.

“In the past, we needed to set up our employees with virtual private network access before they could access the ECM platform. With OpenText Core Content Management, that’s all changed, as we now use Microsoft multifactor authentication to deliver single-sign-on capabilities. Once our users sign into their laptop or desktop, they have immediate access to the content they need in OpenText Core Content Management. We onboarded some new team members recently, and the process really was seamless,” confirmed the head of IT.

Enabled deeper integration with Microsoft 365

As it sets out on its journey as an independent company, the UK energy company plans to use additional OpenText Core Content Management features to support the new business. In particular, the company aims to enable deeper integration between the OpenText solution and its Microsoft 365 apps.

“Microsoft Teams is an integral part of our content workflow,” said the head of IT. “At the moment, employees manually save documents to OpenText Core Content Management. In the future, we want to make the OpenText solution the point of origin for all content and use integration with Microsoft 365 to enable users to work with documents from Teams and other Microsoft apps.”

The head of IT concluded, “Since we moved to OpenText Core Content Management, we haven’t looked back; it’s a perfect fit for our project management needs. We’re very excited about all the new features on the horizon—and because we use a SaaS solution, we get instant access to updates and enhancements.”

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