Oil company integrates service and information management

Apex Oil Company, a provider of wholesale distribution, storage, and transportation of petroleum products across the U.S., has integrated the M-Files information management platform with its enterprise service management solution Cherwell to streamline user experience and create improved document management company-wide.

The integration between M-Files and Cherwell uses a connector created by Prevolution, an M-Files partner with experience in enterprise service management that also supported Apex Oil throughout the project. According to the companies, the M-Files information management solution employs a unique approach that integrates well with Cherwell’s enterprise service management platform because it classifies and organizes documents and other information with metadata and relationships rather than storing them in traditional folders, sites or libraries. This allows documents to be directly associated with objects and data managed in Cherwell, such as customers, incidents, projects, and IT assets, enabling them to be accessed in context, directly within the Cherwell user interface. In addition, using the Intelligent Metadata Layer (IML), M-Files provides access to documents and information in other systems and repositories within the organization, such as file shares and SharePoint sites, as well as CRM, ERP, and legacy ECM systems without requiring data migration.

“We chose M-Files because it provides this great concept of organizing documents with metadata versus storing them in folders,” said Gary Fleming, director of information services at Apex Oil. “Instead of thinking about where to store a document, you simply define what it is, and then you’re able to easily find that document by searching for it using metadata or the content of the document itself. Or better, you don’t even have to search for it because it's directly related to the object you are working with in Cherwell.”

By integrating Cherwell with M-Files, Cherwell users benefit from unified access to all relevant documents and other information in context, without having to worry about where they're located or stored. This creates a single point of truth for Cherwell users, in addition to providing version control and ensuring that duplicate documents are eliminated. For Apex Oil, it also provided improved security and compliance because it was able to establish precise access rights to specific documents based on their class or type, which had the added benefit of shifting the management of access rights to the owners of the documents since they are the ones who classify them.

More information can be found at www.m-files.com, www.prevolution.de, and http://apexoil.com.