Köster GmbH Simplifies Collaboration by Centralizing Data Management

Family-owned for nearly a century, Köster GmbH is a German construction company operating over 20 branches around the country. As one of Germany’s leading construction companies, Köster puts quality first, working with an abundance of subcontractors and external partners to bring complex projects to life. And since collaboration is at the heart of every project, the firm needed a way to easily share files, manage permissions, and keep field teams updated in real time. 

In 2017, Köster brought on Egnyte to upgrade its file-sharing and data management system–and they haven’t looked back.

Challenge: Project teams struggle to access critical information

For Köster, taking on ambitious projects means partnering with architects, subcontractors, and other specialty firms to get the job done. Before Egnyte, sharing data among these partners was a headache. “We had a very nasty file transfer protocol,” explains Köster Systems Admin Pascal Folsche. “Users wanted to be able to click a link and get the information they needed, but that wasn’t possible. The data had to be manually copied to managers, who then had to double-check that they deleted the data afterward, which rarely happened.” 

Additionally, passing contracts and addenda back and forth between subcontractors was time-consuming and wasteful. “Before Egnyte, I would print the documents, fill them out by hand, and scan them again, only to throw the paper away,” says Tanja Kube, a Construction Manager at Köster’s Frankfurt branch. 

The team knew they needed a better, faster, and more secure way to work, so they looked to Egnyte. 

Solution: A Unified platform for centralized data, lifecycle automation, and field mobility

• Centralizing Data for Total Visibility. In the beginning, Köster chose Egnyte because of its Storage Sync functionality. Instead of relying on disparate local servers alone, project teams were able to sync every file in the cloud, centralizing their departmental and project data into one accessible, secure ecosystem. “With Egnyte, you can share data from everywhere. That was a great advantage,” says Folsche. 
  
  And from a visibility standpoint, “Egnyte is really essential,” explains Folsche. Instead of a time-consuming and obscure permissioning process, individual users can share, grant, and revoke permissions with the click of a button. “You can see the permissions on an individual file or folder from anywhere, and you can see group members. It’s very transparent for everybody.
   
• Automating the Entire Project Lifecycle. Using Egnyte’s developer tools, Köster built a custom, in-house API that feeds information about events, users, and project stages into a single SQL database. This central repository provides a complete overview of the business and powers a sophisticated automation engine that streamlines the entire project lifecycle.
  
  When a new project is created, the system automatically copies a template folder to the correct department and renames it. From there, scripts manage permissions dynamically through Active Directory (AD) groups that are synchronized with Egnyte. This automation is driven by the project’s status in other business systems. For active projects, the scripts grant access to owners defined in the company's CRM. Once a project is marked as "won," permissions are seamlessly transitioned to new stakeholders defined in a custom project management application, and the former CRM-based users are automatically revoked. The system also ensures department heads always have oversight by adding them to the project’s owner group.
  
  This end-to-end process makes project data management a breeze. "The scripts I created do everything automatically," explains Folsche. "Five minutes and the project is online.” And once a project is complete, it’s easily archived in one click.
   
• Enhancing Productivity on the Construction Site. For Steffen Mathes at Wayss & Freytag, whose team is working with Köster on a joint venture for the German power grid, Egnyte’s mobile app is a big time saver in the field. “I like the mobile app a lot because when we’re at the site, Egnyte’s cloud infrastructure enables us to pull up the documents we need,” he says. Also of critical importance during on-site work is Egnyte’s PDF Editor. As Udo Blei, Foreman and Head of Works Council at Köster’s Berlin Branch, says, “The PDF Editor is great for quality control at the construction site, especially during dimensional and reinforcement checks. I can enter deviations from the target right on the construction plans using an iPad stylus, insert a photo and handwritten text on the plan to indicate visual defects, or check off inspected positions and add text by hand to note any deviations. I use this function almost every day.” Kube adds that the PDF Editor is also great for making easy document edits on the go: “Egnyte's PDF Editor is the most important function when used with my iPad and Apple Pencil. I do almost all my annotations with PDF Editor, whether on plans or filling out a completion notice to the client on their template. When requesting addenda or individual services from subcontractors, I write my additions directly on the quote and can then email it super quickly.”

Benefits: File management and collaboration made simple

Folsche says one of the biggest benefits of Egnyte has been giving Köster’s IT department a bird’s eye view of who has access to what. “They don’t have permissions to specific files and folders themselves, but they can see who does. That’s great.” And because Egnyte’s desktop app looks like a familiar drive in Windows File Explorer, scaling Egnyte usage across Köster’s 20+ branches has been simple. 

The team has also benefitted from Egnyte’s integrations with Microsoft Teams and Outlook. With Outlook in particular, searching for files has also become much easier. “We have an Outlook plug-in where you can drag and drop emails into Egnyte’s folder structure–and in the background, metadata is written to the file in Egnyte and stored in a project folder. We can search for those files from the advanced search menu, and we can even search for metadata,” explains Folsche.

Having one go-to data management partner is also a plus, says Folsche. “My favorite thing about Egnyte is the simplicity. It’s just nice to work with, and the support is great. Our support team is really fast and always comes up with good solutions.” 

To streamline collaboration even more, the Köster team has also adopted Egnyte Sign, an electronic signature product, after finding it better suited to their needs than DocuSign. “So far, it’s been a great help for us. It does everything we need,” says Folsche. 

Later on, the team plans to explore integrating Egnyte’s AI-powered search capabilities into their workflows, as well as Egnyte’s Document Comparison tool, which will enable them to quickly uncover easy-to-miss yet potentially critical differences between versions of lengthy documents. For now though, Folsche says the visibility and speed Egnyte brings is exactly what the team needs. “Knowing the exact details of each project as soon as it comes across our desk–of course, that’s a big deal for us.”