Drees & Sommer is the leading German company in the field of development and project management and integrated consulting for all types of construction projects. An international player, since its foundation in the year 1970, Drees & Sommer has completed some 1,000 construction projects of all sizes with a total volume of DM 60 billion - both on schedule and within budget.

The 570 employees of the seven German office and six international offices are currently managing a project volume of some DM 30 billion. In 1999, sales of the Drees & Sommer Group totaled DM 180 million (group sales without foreign sales and internal sales DM 140 million).

Drees & Sommer's motto is as simple as it is successful:

"Our professional management services save our clients time and money. At the same time they create added value in terms of real-estate quality, benefit and utilization."

The development of Drees & Sommer from critical path analysis to complex management services is described in their History (please see their homepage under: www.dreso.com and click on "English" to change to the international version).

The basis for their success is their Organization into independent units with a common strategy and development approach. They have agreed to a corporate philosophy with their employees and documented it in their Philosophy-statement. They firmly believe that if they are in the right position and given encouragement and guidance, every employee can deliver excellent performance as an independent personality. Their partnership between the company and employees is far superior to other structures in terms of strength and flexibility. This partnership is characterized by fair and open relationships, initiative, and employee identification with their business approach. Their corporate philosophy is designed to achieve the following aims:

• Definition of principles according to which they measure themselves.
• Orientation for employees joining them from companies with other corporate cultures or starting their careers with them.
• Information for customers and business associates on the principles underlying their business relationship.

People @ Drees & Sommer

1.	Client Profile - Drees & Sommer Case
	1	Who is in charge of Cybozu Implementation?
		Name: Mr. Johannes Sauer Title: Leiter EDV Primary Function: Product selection and actual implementation
	2	How did Drees & Sommer find out about Cybozu?
		Mr. Sauer explained, "I searched several news-groups and internet-sites and downloaded every trial-software for team-management I could find. They had to work without exchange/outlook for security reasons, they had to show one team at a time, and they needed to synchronize with our handhelds. Cybozu turned out to be the best working solution, extremely easy to install and even as a demo fulfilling all our needs."
	3	Has Drees & Sommer employed other groupware applications before?
		"InterMail PostOffice SQL-Server." Mr. Sauer answered. He also added "Our knowledge management solution which won several awards in Germany is based on an SQL-Server which holds all our documents. If someone is looking for information, he or she gets related documents and the link to the author. At this point the investigator can decide whether he or she wants to contact the author by phone, fax or E-Mail for further information. With Cybozu he or she sees if the author is in and if not, where to contact him."
	4	How had Drees & Sommer been meeting information sharing needs before implementing Cybozu products?
		"We had an in-out-list based on a filemaker "C" database, and everyone had to mark his absences two times: first in his paper-scheduler, second in the database. " Mr. Sauer described.

2.	Implementation Issues & Reasons to Choose Cybozu
	1	Any problems during the roll out?
		Mr. Sauer mentioned "Our regular dealer in Germany did not even know the product, so in the beginning our management had objections against buying over the internet. It turned out to be no problem. When implemented, some people complained about the English interface, but again it was no problem to customize it and turn the html-pages into localized German ones."
	2	Why did you make the final decision to implement Cybozu products?
		Mr. Sauer listed the following reasons as the basis for the final decision: Easy installation Stable working environment Easy usage Good layout Easy customization No interference with other software Very fair price for the Scheduler Acceptable price for Cybozu Sync

3.	System Setup Details - Drees & Sommer Case
	1	Which Cybozu Office products are implemented?
		Cybozu Scheduler 3 for 50 Users Cybozu Address Book 3 for 50 Users Cybozu Sync 3
	2	Number of Users using Cybozu products?
		"22 engineers using their handhelds and 5 secretaries in the Munchen office ", Mr. Sauer said.
	3	What kind of the server machine & Network configuration are used to run Cybozu products?
		"The server is" Mr. Sauer described, "HP NetServer LH3 with 256MB RAM, running under NT4 SP3 and IIS 2.0." He also added "TCP/IP 10Mbits" for their local network configuration.
	4	Do you have a full-time administrator for Cybozu products?
		"No", Mr. Sauer answered, "I'm the network-administrator and I installed the Cybozu products in case of need. Since then, it has been a set -and-forget-solution (we make backups, of course)."

4.	End User Response
	1	Any feedback from the actual end users?
		Mr. Sauer explained "Some of them wanted to go on with the palm-desktop-calendar, which they were used to. This problem was solved by letting them synchronize to Cybozu on one desktop-PC and to their Desktop-Calendar on another." He also emphasized "Most were simply overwhelmed by the easy handling."
	2	How are the end users are using Cybozu Office everyday?
		According to Mr. Sauer, "'Our engineers mark all times of absence in their handheld scheduler. Whenever they get back in the office, they synchronize with Cybozu. Our secretaries can tell everyone who calls, where the engineers are at the moment and whether they can be contacted."
	3	Do you offer any training?
		Mr. Sauer stated "After installing, I explained the whole thing in 5 minutes. Since then there have been less than 10 questions."

5.	Overall Evaluation of Cybozu products by Drees & Sommer
	1	What are the strengths & weaknesses of Cybozu products?
		[Strength] "As already answered," Mr. Sauer pointed out, "Easy install, stable working, easy to use, good layout, easy customizing, no interference with other software, very fair price for the Scheduler and acceptable price for Cybozu Sync" are some of the strengths they found in Cybozu Products. [Weakness] He addressed the followings as weakness: The date-format could not be localized for Germany (fixed in Share360) A volume license for Cybozu Sync would be nice (fixed in Share360)
	2	Overall satisfaction?
		"We are very content" Mr. Sauer said, "There are so many applications for handhelds, and I just could not believe that there are so few which meet our needs. Before finding Cybozu I was thinking about hiring a programmer."

You can go to the homepage of Drees & Sommer from here.