The assmann gruppe keeps work simple with officeatwork Template Chooser for Teams in Microsoft Teams

At the assmann gruppe, a German architecture, engineering and consulting company, every day brings with it a flurry of communications. At any moment, company leaders like Thomas Zimmermann, Head of the Department of Project Management and Authorized Signatory at the assmann gruppe, can be mentoring younger colleagues via a Microsoft Teams meeting or sending a project report to a customer. Understandably, automation has become a focus for the company. “Finding ways to cut down manual, time-consuming tasks is one of our main goals,” says Zimmermann. “That’s one of the things we like about Microsoft 365—it provides lots of opportunities in that space.”

In addition to using Microsoft 365 tools like Power Automate to streamline work, the assmann gruppe engaged the help of officeatwork, a Gold competency member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to find a solution to one of its most repetitive, difficult tasks—finding the most current templates. “Our company has 300 templates, all with their own specific uses,” says Zimmermann. “We use an officeatwork product called Template Chooser that integrates with Teams to make finding and using the right template easy, which helps ensure a better, more quality-controlled process.”

Updating a time-consuming system with Template Chooser and Teams

The assmann gruppe rolled out Microsoft 365 to its entire workforce two years ago, and Teams became the marquee product, replacing face-to-face meetings and email-heavy collaboration with something more efficient. “Collaboration was somewhat unstructured in the past,” says Zimmermann. “We had high travel expenses due to lots of in-person meetings, which was also time-consuming.” Additionally, employees who travelled for work had trouble accessing the files they needed. “Locating the information we needed for meetings could be difficult if we didn’t have access to the file server,” says Zimmermann. “Microsoft Teams completely transformed that.”

Colleagues at the assmann gruppe also used Teams to transform how they collaborate on projects. “Previously, we had a very sequential workflow—only one person could work on a document at any given time,” says Zimmermann. “With Teams, we can work with greater efficiency because multiple people can collaborate simultaneously; for example, proofreading while a colleague adds content.”

But it was finding templates that presented a stubborn problem. “We were missing a template management option for our 300 templates,” says Zimmermann, who shares that for a simple letter, six or seven templates exist depending on the department or project involved. “Every time a colleague needed one of those templates, they had to stop and think about who they were representing,” he says. “With the officeatwork Template Chooser, the correct template is now available in the app where they’re working, and relevant information is automatically filled in.” For example, content like project names, customer logos, and reference images automatically populate a template selected via Template Chooser thanks to an add-in product called officeatwork Designer for Office and officeatwork Wizard for Office. By automatically populating information in a document, the officeatwork Template Chooser, Designer, and Wizard apps help reduce human error. “In the past, it was a lot of copying and pasting with every document,” says Patrick Nehm, Microsoft 365 Administrator at the assmann gruppe. “Now, mistakes are less likely because content appears automatically.”

Saving time, creating better customer communications, and preserving institutional knowledge

Ensuring that everyone has the latest templates creates a sense of consistency across the assmann gruppe. With up to 11 departments involved in any project, maintaining version consistency was always a challenge. “We used to send out updated versions of templates and hoped that people used them,” says Nehm. “But of course, people sometimes used the old templates.” Today, the latest version of any template is readily available, which guarantees that customers always experience a consistent look and feel from communications. “It’s important that documents all convey the same tone and branding,” adds Nehm. “It’s more professional.”

For Timm Braun, Civil Engineer in assmann gruppe’s Project Management Department, the Template Chooser for Teams is part of an overall transformation in how he and his colleagues work. “Teams has significantly simplified our collaboration,” he says, noting that the travel-heavy schedule of in-person meetings previously interfered with workflow and burned through resources, both in time and travel. “Today, 95 percent of our work can be done digitally using Teams, which saves enough time to fit more projects into our portfolio.”

And because every project brings with it new insights, the officeatwork Template Chooser apps help ensure that institutional knowledge doesn’t get lost. “With the officeatwork Template Chooser, important information that we gain on our various projects gets preserved in the templates we use,” says Braun, citing an example of closing loopholes in contracts. “It helps us avoid repeating errors.”

Eliminating repetitive tasks leads to an innovative partnership

The Microsoft partner behind the Template Chooser solution, officeatwork, created it to help businesses streamline their repetitive tasks. “We’ve made it our mission to remove repetitive, boring work,” says Martin Seifert, Chief Executive Officer of officeatwork. As Seifert puts it, the Template Chooser solution is designed to be an organization’s “template hub,” making it a perfect match for Teams, where the product is often used. “Teams helps remove one of the biggest time losses that people have, which is context switching,” explains Seifert, referring to time lost flipping between platforms. “Making the officeatwork Template Chooser solution available in Teams and within other Office applications benefits our customers by helping them save time.”

Since deploying the officeatwork Template Chooser solution, the assmann gruppe became a collaborator with officeatwork. “They helped us build a better product,” says Seifert, referring to suggestions made by Zimmermann and his team that ultimately shaped the Template Chooser product. “All of our suggestions were quickly responded to and implemented,” says Zimmermann. “It’s rare to find that level of support with a service provider.” officeatwork also helped alleviate other worries because its products are designed to work with Microsoft tools. “Microsoft 365 helps us deliver a highly secure platform that complies with standards like those set out by ISO9001,” says Nehm. “As soon as we saw that officeatwork’s products are integrated with the Microsoft product line, we no longer had any reservations,” says Nehm.

Supporting complex projects with an ultra-simple tool

The officeatwork Template Chooser solution turned out to be a great fit for a company that views digitization as a big opportunity. “The complexity of our projects is increasing,” reflects Nehm. “One way to address that is by simplifying our work and collaboration processes with tools like the officeatwork Template Chooser for Teams.” In terms of simplicity, the Template Chooser apps stand out both from a user and IT perspective. “Everyone understands how to use the Template Chooser,” says Nehm. “For users, it’s the easiest tool you can imagine.”

Find out more about the assmann gruppe on LinkedIn and XING.