DIN
German standardization institute adopts innovative content management platform to modernize and improve content services at national, European and global level.
Standardization is a vital part of modern business. It supports efficiency and quality assurance in industry, technology, science and the public sector; helps safeguard people and property; and improves quality in almost every area of life.
That is why the work carried out by the German standardization institute, Deutsches Institut Normung (DIN), is so important. Founded in 1917, DIN is the independent platform for standardization in Germany and international organizations such as CEN, the European standards body, and ISO, the International Standards Organization. Its many committees look at different standards — from construction and buildings to information technology and acoustics. Each committee plays a significant role in helping innovations come to market by producing standards. A standard is a document that specifies requirements for products, services and processes — helping ensure the free movement of goods and encouraging exports.
Collaboration on the production of standards between DIN's roughly 36,000 experts is essential. The organization has always relied on a document management platform to facilitate that collaboration and ensure experts have access to the correct version of standards documentation.
The challenge
DIN's legacy document management system had been in use for about 25 years. While it had once been effective, the previous provider was no longer supporting its service. DIN's experts — taken from a broad cross-section of German industry — needed a system that better met their collaboration needs.
The previous system was antiquated and lacked key functionality, such as the automatic watermarking that is an essential element of standards. The management team decided it was time to find and implement a more modern content services platform.
Although a majority of DIN's experts were based in Germany, their work was often international in scope. Not only were they working on standards for the German market, but they also collaborated with colleagues at CEN and ISO, working to ensure German standards dovetailed with international standards. This made it essential for any new system to enable meaningful collaboration at a European and global level, just as it did at a national level, according to Claudia Altmann, business project manager at DIN.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for our experts to collaborate on standards, both in Germany but also internationally. We work closely with the European and global standards institutes, and everyone needs to be working with the same information," Altmann said. "We needed a much more modern content services platform that is scalable and flexible to meet our experts' requirements around easy and intuitive collaboration."
The solution
Because it was such an important and strategic technology implementation, DIN approached the vendor selection with the utmost thoroughness. Together with ISO, DIN undertook a rigorous selection process. Three leading content services platforms were assessed against a range of specific requirements and functionality. These included the automatic numbering of documents, automatically creating a document with a title page, creating a PDF from an original document and watermarking documents.
DIN also needed the new system to send out notifications to experts, containing a link to the most up-to-date standards document. This was particularly important as collaborators might be working on several different documents simultaneously and sending comments and feedback to the committee secretary. It is imperative to ensure that experts are working on the most recent version to avoid errors and extra work.
"We wanted to get users fully on board with the new system and hear their feedback as to its usability," Altmann said. "This included retaining some popular features from our previous system, but also assessing the new platform and what features and functionality people want to help with future improvements."
Hyland's Nuxeo Platform, a cloud-native and low-code enterprise content services system that is used by organizations worldwide to build content-based applications faster and smarter, was a clear winner.
We needed a modern content services platform that is scalable and flexible to meet our needs today and as they evolve in the future.
The implementation
Attempting an implementation of new technology during a global pandemic was not without its challenges. To aid the implementation, DIN was supported by Sword Group, an international consulting firm.
"Sword was an important partner in the implementation, with a strong understanding of how Nuxeo works and how that relates to our requirements, and a strong background working on similar implementations," said Matthias Wald, DIN's IT project coordinator. "The project was focused on delivering better experiences to our experts when working on standards documents, and we are well on the road to achieving that."
Sword helped build and refine the Nuxeo system within DIN, adding certain features and functionality that were most important to DIN.
The benefits
There are three national standards committees currently using the Nuxeo Platform within DIN as part of a pilot program that will precede a wider rollout. Initial user feedback has been positive, and DIN’s experts have found the new system to be intuitive and user-friendly, in addition to having the other features that DIN prioritized.
The new system is a highly scalable platform that DIN will use for worldwide collaboration. Altmann believes that the selection of Nuxeo Platform has already been an astute decision for DIN.