UNIT4 Business Software’s SaaS construction document collaboration solution Business Collaborator is being teamed up with Sypro Management’s NEC3 management platform, the two companies have announced today. The launch of the partnership has been timed to coincide with the annual NEC User Group conference at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London.
The ‘fit’ is straightforward. The BC solution did not include a contract administration module, while Sypro is a stand-alone NEC3 management tool that focused on contract changes without providing all the documents and drawings that might relate to a particular contractual process.
Previously in the keenly contested NEC battleground, BC lagged behind rival vendors such as 4Projects (post) and BIW (post) – both, since December 2010, official NEC licensed content partners – and others such as Asite and Aconex whose platforms offer contract administration support but without the endorsement of the NEC. Sypro’s direct rivals include MPS which has similarly sought document collaboration support through a partnership with Scandinavian SaaS provider Docia (post).
Sypro has also launched a free Sypro NEC Lite solution – as the name implies, a slightly less functional version of the full product, but which can still be used to manage Early Warnings, Programme Management and Acceptance, and General Communications.
(Disclosure: I have undertaken past consultancy projects for Sypro Management and Unit4 Collaboration.)
