Case Study: Muhimbi for European Investment Bank

Automating complex PDF operations for SharePoint and Nintex workflows within a 3,400-employee organization

The Company

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the European Union’s long-term lending institution, established in 1958. As a policy-driven bank, it aims to provide long-term lending to mobilize funding from the private and public sectors. In 2021, the European Investment Bank Group signed €94.89 billion in financing and employed more than 3,400 people.

The Challenge

EIB decided to undergo a massive cultural shift to adopt green policies and increase the number of remote employees. After adopting SharePoint, EIB replaced the manual paperwork with Nintex Workflow. It allows for creating documents, automatically sending them for approval, and converting them to PDFs after they’re electronically signed.

Additionally, PDF conversion had to allow for:

• Working with various document formats, including emails and images

• Merging multiple documents into one in a custom order and converting them to PDF

• Supporting a wide range of languages to ensure accurate PDF conversion

“We heard through the Nintex community online that Muhimbi’s PDF Converter for SharePoint integrates well with Nintex Workflow, so it seemed like a no-brainer to start using it,” said Chris Alman, Technical Project Manager at EIB. “Furthermore, our experiences with Muhimbi’s support were outstanding, so it was an easy choice.”

The Solution

After installing SharePoint, EIB replaced manual processes with Nintex Workflow and then got to work using Muhimbi to power document conversion.

According to Alman, “documents could be created, electronically transmitted for approval, and approved for PDF conversion after signing. We can now type the metadata and send it through Nintex Workflow and on to Muhimbi, where everything transfers when archived. It’s all much more convenient and efficient this way.”

In addition, Muhimbi’s PDF/A archiving functionality is helpful for EIB. Not only can its documents be automatically merged and converted into PDFs, but the way PDFs are archived (PDF/A format) ensures compliance with strict industry document retention standards.

The Results

“We started looking for a tool and found Muhimbi, and it was a straightforward software package to install and use: It did everything we needed it to do,” Alman said. “We had to use the free version for five months because our purchase process is pretty complicated, so it was great that it didn’t expire.”

After a series of proof of concepts, Muhimbi’s product eventually became the go-to PDF converter for several EIB departments, benefiting various workflows that rely on the PDF document format.

“I’d recommend that anyone using Nintex use Muhimbi’s PDF Converter for SharePoint,” Alman said. “The product is excellent, as is the support.”