Building Sustainable Internal Corporate Communications with HPP Architects

Tell us a little bit about HPP Architects, how you differentiate yourself in the market and what makes you unique.

HPP Architects is one of Europe’s leading architectural partnerships with a full range of architectural and master planning services. Since its foundation by Professor Hentrich, the fourth generation of HPP partnership today includes a global team of more than twenty-five nationalities and 450 architects, engineers, urban designers and specialists. Today, it comprises thirteen offices including eight regional offices in Germany and five international branches in Turkey, China and the Netherlands. HPP Architects have completed more than 1,200 buildings worldwide and we aspire to create architectural quality of lasting value beyond the here and now: timeless and yet clearly part of their time, innovative and equally grounded in history.

Did your company adopt a cloud infrastructure strategy prior to OpenAsset?

Our first cloud project was Office365. Based on this positive experience, it was easy for us to extend the cloud services with OpenAsset.

We continue to cover multiple typologies / building types across Western European markets, China and Turkey. We just entered the Western European market in 2021 with our new brand in Amsterdam. As we expand internationally, professionalization of data provision for employees is an internal goal that will help enable internal communication workflows. In addition to the image database, which is provided via OpenAsset, a digital HPP workspace is being configured, which in the future will bundle all digital tools provided by HPP in one place.

What led you to evaluate OpenAsset and how important was it to the business?

We use OpenAsset primarily as an image database. These were previously made available to employees via a drive. The search required precise information about the project, which often had to be provided in a centralized manner by the PR department. With the cloud-based solution, the images are now accessible from anywhere – no matter what location or time of day. Even if the PR department is unmanned. Through the assigned keywords, projects can be sorted and displayed (by typology, material, location, size, etc.) without having to have specific information on the correct project number or similar. Knowledge has been democratized for all employees across countries, and user access has been granted in a transparent manner.

What made you ultimately decide to go with OpenAsset?

The ability to extend the use of the platform to create additional documents off the back of the image database, such as employee resumes, presentations, or project data sheets was something that we found value in, and other providers could not offer.

How has OpenAsset impacted your business ever since?

The search for project images is largely carried out independently by employees themselves, enabling them to access the necessary information from anywhere at any time. The democratization of knowledge is a cornerstone of sustainable internal corporate communications at HPP Architects, and one building block towards that for us was OpenAsset.

From an operational perspective, we have digitized the provision of new projects (e.g. acquisition appointments via trade fairs for the partnership). This now runs via albums generated in OpenAsset and it has allowed us to increase operational efficiency and reduce time spent searching for the right assets.

Nowadays, our clients and partners who operate within the AEC industries find themselves in the context of increasing digital transformation and innovation. OpenAsset is one more step on our path to digitalization.

Rebekka Pottgüter

HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS