NAL Resources

Finding an ECM solution to meet its needs proved challenging. NAL experimented with an enterprise solution but found it slow, cumbersome, and ill-suited for a mid-sized company. A minor tweak to the system could require two weeks of work by developers. “We are such a small company that we don’t have the type of team needed to support a large-scale solution. It just wasn’t feasible. There is not much out there that really helps with a company of our size and our specific needs,” explained Haddow.

Flexible, centralized solution for instant access to content

NAL turned to its trusted system integration partner, Concerta Consulting, for guidance. Drawing on its unique expertise in both ECM and the oil and gas industry, Concerta recommended a solution that would meet NAL’s needs and size—OpenText eDOCS, a light-footprint, highly flexible ECM solution to securely manage information throughout the content lifecycle, while remaining easily accessible to users in other applications.

Troy Olson, Senior System Integration Consultant at Concerta, explained why the OpenText solution was the right choice: “One of the things that makes OpenText eDOCS so attractive to a company like NAL is the ease of integrating with other line of business systems. The API is very robust. It allows us as a partner to build these really valuable integration points between other systems. Business users can use document management in the applications where they live and breathe.”

Deploying OpenText eDOCS required the migration of content into the new solution—a daunting task made easier with a content migration solution from OpenText partner SeeUnity. Olson described the scope: “There were probably close to five million documents that we had to move from the old system. In order to accomplish that, we leveraged an add-on for eDOCS, the SeeUnity Velocity tool. It was a huge part of this whole project. At times, we were moving 20,000 documents an hour, which is really remarkable from a migration perspective.” Haddow added, “The reconciliation of documents was absolutely phenomenal. It was seamless.”

NAL has rolled out OpenText eDOCS to departments such as Accounting, Joint Ventures, and Land. From supplier invoices to geological surveys, all documents are stored securely in a single centralized repository and can be found quickly by staff without having to leave their own familiar applications. User acceptance of the new solution exceeded expectations, said Haddow. “The adoption has been extremely fast compared to other systems. People love OpenText eDOCS. In fact, a lot of employees use eDOCS without even knowing it.” Concerta’s Olson explained, “They just click a button and the system gets the document and displays it on the screen. Some staff don’t even know they are using a document management system because we have automated and integrated their systems, such as Qbyte, Coupa, and ServiceNow, with OpenText eDOCS. For example, Coupa is an AP workflow system. Because it is a hosted cloud environment, we want all invoices managed in our environment. They come into eDOCS via an integration piece, which works really well.”

Quickly and securely capture, govern, and find content

The solution’s centralized repository and enhanced search capabilities have allowed staff to manage and find the information they need quickly and easily, whether monitoring an investor’s well portfolio or managing an expiring land lease. Haddow noted, “From accountants to engineers, NAL employees are able to make their decisions much quicker. They have critical documents at their fingertips faster than they ever did before. For example, our Land staff are getting information, such as lease agreements, directly from their partners via email or DocuSign. They can load it right into the repository rather than waiting for it to come through mail and then be scanned and sent up. We are almost in real-time—as content comes into the company, it goes into OpenText eDOCS very, very quickly. Definitely, all of our groups are benefiting from the speed with which information is getting into the system now.”

NAL Resources also benefits from the knowledge that its critical content is stored securely with eDOCS’ document-level security, which protects and encrypts data while in transit and at rest and can prevent users from seeing specific metadata values or accessing documents that use them. “The system is protected and secure. No one can accidentally delete a file or do anything inadvertently to any of the documents (like accidentally delete in a shared file system). They have to route changes through us unless we give them the capability. Then, we have the ability to tighten what they are allowed to do, and what they aren’t allowed to do. I am quite confident with the security,” said Haddow.

Meeting business needs now and in the future

Speed and security were critical factors as NAL employees made the transition to working from home during the COVID-19 shutdown. Haddow reported, “The majority of our staff are working from home, and there have not been any issues with OpenText eDOCS at all.” She added, “In fact, now there is discussion to let staff stay at home to work if they prefer and not come back to the office. That is absolutely amazing.”

As NAL continues to look for opportunities to streamline and automate, Haddow and her team are building on the savings and productivity gained with eDOCS: “The number of hours we used to spend getting content into the old system can now go to much higher value tasks, such as creating a new business process for a group, automating it, and thus getting information into the system that we never had before. Those are projects we can now turn around very quickly. That is what OpenText eDOCS has done for us—it is helping us get to the next step in critical information exchanges. We can help NAL meet its business goals more quickly because eDOCS is so easy.”