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| PricewaterhouseCoopers is using Saviom to optimally manage more than 4000 consultants around Australia. |
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| Fujitsu Australia is efficiently utilizing its service engineers on the field with Saviom. |
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Fujitsu's experience with Saviom
Imagine. You have over 200 engineers, working across 8 states and territories. Resources have different skills, expertise, preferences and availability, and resources are allocated by shifts in a job. And all this is maintained on a few excel spreadsheets.
This was the challenge faced by Fujitsu, one of Australia’s leading IT and communications companies. We sat down with Ros Johnston, from Fujitsu’s Project Services team, who was in charge of ensuring the implementation of the Saviom System across the country.
The Challenge
When asked what were the problems and pains they were facing that lead Fujitsu to seek out a solution. What we found was that there was difficulty in managing a dynamic area of business where all the critical resource information was spreadsheet based – which is not uncommon for many large companies.
“It wasn’t possible to have multiple people updating spreadsheets,” mentioned Ros, outlining how this inherently impacted the efficiency of resource management. Additionally, managers found it very hard to manage a high number of resources over multiple lines of service, and the fact that they didn’t have a national view on all the resources didn’t help.
“There was no visual representation of available resources. No repository for a resource database, no central database of resources and associated information, location, email addresses, skill information, training and accreditations” said Ros. In addition, the lack of real time, accurate and centralised information affected their ability to resource effectively.
The Decision and the Doing
There wasn’t much debate over the fact that they needed a tool, but why did they choose Saviom?
“Various reasons. It is feature rich and provided an immediate off the shelf solution for us with minimal customisation. Even though we are only using a small part of the overall functionality, we’ve resolved our problems. We can also use the other functionalities in the future as well”. Ros also focused on the fact that it was a cost effective solution that further added to the benefits of purchasing Saviom.
Initially, Saviom didn’t fulfill all the requirements Fujitsu required for their business. For example Fujitsu had an engineer database that worked twenty-four hours, seven days a week, where resourcing occurred on a shift by shift basis. “We also had specific occupational health and safety requirements with regard to rest breaks that had to be catered for”.
Saviom not only customized the product for Fujitsu’s requirements as is standard for all its clients, but further developed new features for their client. “Some new features such as the new dashboard were added just for us to help manage our ever changing resource requirements”.
Fujitsu aimed to implement their resource management solution as quickly as possible. “We did it in three months! We began with a pilot in NSW, ran the pilot for month for all of NSW. We then brought on board Queensland as the second pilot, and used them as a sanity check to ensure we hadn’t missed anything. Once we’d ironed out our process issues then we moved onto the next big state, Victoria”.
Fujitsu were careful not to put all their eggs in one basket, hence initially piloted Saviom with one customers project only, and maintained their old spreadsheets in parallel. They ran reports from their spreadsheets and from Saviom every day until they had assurance that it worked. “We then continually increased the projects until they were all running through Saviom” added Ros.
The Outcome?
When asked, has it fixed the problem?
“Yes it has – it’s certainly streamlined our resource management. It’s provided a national view for everyone to look at. I can now obtain critical information at the click of a mouse.” Fujitsu is excited that they have finally been able to eliminate the individual State spreadsheets they were using to maintain their database of skills and resources.
However Fujitsu aren’t done yet.
“There’s more we want to do. We want to interface to SAP, and there’s a whole bunch of things we can do. SAVIOM has really given us the freedom to make further improvements.”
So are they a happy customer?
“All the users really like it and have been really positive about it, I think because it’s taken away a lot of their pain”.
In short: Yes, Fujitsu are a happy customer.
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Automating your Project Management Process Ever felt that your project management processes and methodology can add to project overhead, delays and cost overrun if not implemented properly? What if it could all be reduced without compromising the effectiveness of the process or methodology?
In current environment, project management methodologies such as PRINCE2, PMBok or homegrown are often implemented manually using myriads of documents. Manual processes can often carry big administrative overhead. And I’m sure, we’ve all experienced projects that suffer from a lack of visibility over the status, budget and resources, as information is buried and lost inside the documents. Furthermore, more often than not, the information produced isn’t even a real-time version of the truth! And finally, the lack of flexibility
and scalability within methodologies and processes creates unnecessary difficulties that we could definitely do without. The result?
Budget over run. Time delay. Inefficient utilisation of resources. Poorer quality of work.
Why not automate your project management process?
What does that mean?
Conceptually, its quite simple. You shift from having to manage everything yourself on your computer and in your head, to a software database or tool that does most of the managing for you. Surprisingly enough, for many companies, automated management means using excel sheets, word documents and using a project schedule. However, automation goes far beyond that!
Standardise the project process
Within the same organisation, business unit, and sometimes even in the same project team, managers will use different terminology, methodologies, processes and templates. Hence it is critical that we standardise the process for each project, and if possible the organisation. Standardisation reduces overhead, as it allows for the streamlining of how projects should be done.
Standardisation through automation involves having a set mechanism to capture and present all relevant information. This can be achieved through a series of forms that cover all the necessary areas of a project and its processes. Each form can comprise of a set of fields so that all relevant information is captured in a standardised manner. This means managers don’t have to invest hours into reinventing wheel on what information to include, which processes should be implemented, and what template to use to present information.
Capture information in the smallest possible unit
In a project we need to capture information on risks, issues, tasks, resources, lessons, deliverables etc. Quite often these are done qualitatively in unstructured text, where a manager will need to manually update this information. Furthermore, if needing to present the information in another format, he or she will then have to copy and paste information, which then is manipulated and rewritten.
By automating the process of capturing of relevant information, it is best to capture it in its smallest unit possible. Why? This allows the information to be sliced and diced. It is crucial that both qualitative & quantitative information is captured in its basic form in all areas, allowing information to be presented in easy to read tables, graphs and diagrams.
Automated workflow to manage information
One of the largest sources of overhead is due to the fact that the workflow is manual; hence hours are spent emailing and following up on the status and health on various aspects of the project and its budget. Even then it becomes difficult to gain visibility on the true status of the work being done.
Automated workflow means that all elements of the project, i.e. schedule, risk, issues, documents budget, tasks etc are maintained centrally. Thus they can be constantly updated and passed to one another by workers and project managers, maintaining version control, all while it is tracked centrally. Why is this so great? You don’t have to spend hours trying to find out the status & health of their work! And if such an efficient method of tracking isn’t enough, this process also ensures real time information, improving the integrity of the data multiple times over!
Customisable views for different roles & responsibilities
As a project manager, you’re aware that your boss doesn’t want to see the status on each task, and your workers don’t want to see a high-level status reports. It is essential that all stakeholders are only provided with the information that is relevant to them. However this is a painstaking process.
Having a tool that offers customized views that only display relevant information to stakeholders them is necessary to avoid confusion. For example, a worker just wants to know their tasks and do their timesheets, hence that all he or she should see and be able to access. Alternatively, an executive only wants to see high-level reports on project health, status and budget. However you and other managers want to detailed status, what employees are performing well, where budget variances are arising, what the critical path is, but also have your own tasks and action items. Hence customisable views create correct visibility at all levels, maintaining accountability and avoiding confusion!
Automated reporting from single source of information
Often, project reports are produced by collecting similar data from multiple sources and different points in time. The problem? You will end up receiving confilicting information with multiple versions of the truth. Manual reporting often ends up compromising accuracy and fails to provide a real time picture: both are required to make crucial decisions for a project. Furthermore, manually producing the reports can be a slow and frustrating process.
Automated reporting will source its information from a single source: This means data only needs to be recorded once, and hence reports contain the one truth. Tracking the status of all elements of the project (i.e. risk, tasks, resources etc) should be automated, hence you don’t have to spend hours following up on the status & health of everyone’s work! Instead at a click of a button you can produce reports showing you how your costs & budget, time & schedule and employees are tracking. Furthermore you can slice and dice the data however you wish to view it!
But automating is too much effort, too expensive, and will take too much time!
Unfortunately, often we as manager will make decisions for the short term, how will an investment in automating project management process affect my P & L? Saviom provides an automation tool that will be implemented within weeks, is easy to use and budget friendly.
Saviom’s automation tool will bring process and resource efficiency that will equate the initial outlay costs, within a matter of months. Risks avoided and issues dealt with create money savings that may potentially otherwise be disastrous. The benefits aren’t just directly monetary either. By maintaining your projects on time and budget, you will improve your brand & quality image amongst clients, and a feeling of success amongst employees. Saviom’s automation creates a more visible project and transparent work culture. Finally more efficient work structures, and visible achievable goals are empowering for employees, improving their job satisfaction.
And at the end of the day what can be more important than optimising efficiency in processes, accountability in your employees, integrity in your data and visibility over your projects?
Saviom is the answer to automation
What we have discussed is the foundation on which Saviom was built. This is just an insight into what Saviom is capable of.
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