"Essentially, for us DocBanq is like a big network drive that extends across institutions and regions."
Dr Sam McClatchie, Senior Scientist

The South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) is a leading research and development organisation delivering innovation to the primary industry sector of South Australia.  SARDI conducts applied research and development to enhance the efficiency and economic contribution to:

• Field crop industries
• Horticultural industries
• Livestock industries
• Pastures and sustainable resources
• Fishing and aquaculture industries
• Natural resource management

The Challenge

Research projects undertaken by SARDI often involve stakeholders from different organisations, government agencies and universities.  Having a decentralised research team makes it difficult for scientists to easily access relevant material, submit reports, perform peer reviews or simply collaborate with other members on common subject matter.  Reliable backup of valuable material is also an issue.

In the past, project stakeholders have used e-mail as a method of distribution and collaboration however the inefficiencies associated with e-mail typically created an unacceptable overhead for the organisation.  While e-mail appears to be convenient, there is always a need to coordinate the collation of material received and sent, and very quickly the potential for confusion increases especially when multiple versions of documents are being distributed.  E-mail is also limited to relatively small file sizes which are easily exceeded in complex documents with colour figures.

Therefore it was perceived that an online document management system would be valuable to provide a common e-collaboration platform for all project stakeholders.

The Solution

To investigate the benefits of an e-collaboration platform, SARDI is currently piloting DocBanq for the Southwest Marine Region Project, one that requires the participation of range of individuals from a variety of organisations including universities, federal and state government departments and the private sector.

DocBanq, being a hosted solution, enables all of the project members direct secure access to the project collaboration area from wherever they are with the ability to submit and change material in a controlled way.  Using its exclusive thin-client web-based technology, DocBanq provides all users with a rich and responsive interface rather than the click/wait/refresh interface of other web-based solutions, and features such as version control and full-text searching make managing the project easier and finding information faster.

The Result

All contributors to the project can now work from a secure common e-collaboration workspace with a range of features to manage and find the wealth of documentation generated.

The simplicity of the user interface meant that users required very low levels of training.  The deployment of DocBanq using the Internet Explorer ActiveX control enabled most people to get immediate access, however in some cases IT assistance was required when the security policies of the organisation, or those configured on individual computers, did not allow the automatic use of the control.

"Essentially, for us DocBanq is like a big network drive that extends across institutions and regions," said Dr Sam McClatchie.

References to documents stored in DocBanq can be sent to users without the need to attach them to e-mail.  This eliminates the security issue of having documents attached to unencrypted e-mail and prevents the uncontrolled proliferation of document versions throughout multiple locations.  Instead of managing the collation of electronic documents from various participants, SARDI can now manage a DocBanq account with minimal overhead and provide enhanced capabilities to project team members and managers alike.

"DocBanq has made the development of a complex report transparent," concluded Dr McClachie.