Architecture & Access

Architecture & Access are a specialist consulting firm who aim to create safe and accessible community facilities, workplaces and homes for people with disabilities. The business started over 20 years ago, and now employs 40 staff, with offices based in Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne. Architecture & Access work predominantly with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) on home modifications, as well as working with the Transport Accident Commission, larger housing projects for specialist disability accommodation, and private clients.

Architecture & Access provide trusted advice to architects, designers, government and businesses regarding requirements under current anti-discrimination laws, work health and safety legislation and building control regulations.

Prior to Mail Manager, Architecture & Access were using a project management system for their projects which the firm felt was limiting as it did not have any interface within Outlook. They then graduated to their current practice management system, which does many things very well, but Chris Porter, Director at Architecture & Access, found that instead of filing emails by project, his staff would avoid it and emails would sit in personal Outlook folders instead. There was minimal visibility on who was contacting which clients, and if any issues were to arise, he had no access to those emails.

Chris commented: “All of my staff would comment about how many clicks it would take to file an email. And so, what happens is that instead of the emails being uploaded into the project management system, it would just sit in someone’s Outlook file and sit there forever. So, we had no idea when someone has been communicating with a client, or if someone was on holiday and a client called up, we wouldn’t have access to the emails.”

Chris was referred to Mail Manager by a colleague of his who had been using our software for a few years and described it as invaluable to his firm. Today, Architecture & Access have been using Mail Manager for 12-months. Emails are now getting loaded into the projects, which means that Chris and anyone else in the business can go into a project at any point in time and see what discussions have been had, and easily find email trails and conversations.

The intuitive nature of the search function was a huge selling point for Chris, who explained: “The search function in Mail Manager is easy. You can just scroll down, and you’ve got the text visible straight away, and can use keywords to search. Our previous system needed about seven or eight clicks with three different tabs, as well as typing in all the information to find the right email. With Mail Manager, you don’t often need to put in any keywords, it picks up what project or folder it should go into. I think the other thing that we find is that documentation, like where we’ve received lots of drawings and attachments, is far easier to find down the track. It’s money well spent.”

When asked why he chose to implement Mail Manager, Chris commented: “The key was to be able to file emails very quickly because there are hundreds every day. It saves us a lot of time and we’re able to get documentation stored in a central repository that anyone can access. And the search functions ability to be able to go back and find correspondence easily. It’s a godsend and paid for itself overnight.”

“With Mail Manager, I have a lot more confidence about what’s going on from a business owner’s perspective. You’ve got confidence that information is actually being saved and you can check it very quickly. It helps us run the whole business smoothly.”