The Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor) has selected local Enterprise Project Management (EPM) specialist Fulcrum IT to facilitate its implementation of Microsoft Project 2002. The EPM tool has significantly enhanced the company`s approach to project and programme management.
Armscor is an established leader within the development of defence-related product and services industry. The company`s primary aim is that the South African National Defence Force should be provided with solutions to all their requirements, with the emphasis on technical excellence and value for money.
Following a complete revamp of its IT infrastructure across the board, Armscor decided to compliment this change with an upgrade of its Microsoft Project and Central environment and implement Microsoft Project TM 2002.
"The Armscor project involved extensive custom development. The company had specific security requirements regarding the use of Microsoft Project and the protection of financial, costing and resourcing data within those schedules. It was Fulcrum`s role to develop a security model that was mapped on top of Armscor`s environment with a customised toolbar. Fulcrum mapped the tool set or scheduling framework (how to set up a sound schedule using Microsoft project taking it through the entire lifecycle of a project from conception right through to closing up) onto Armscor` Project Based Business Management System," explains Lyzette Lourens, manager: training and support services.
"From there on we then developed and customised the training material to suit their requirements exactly, in very close consultation with the client. We went through the whole cycle of organising a training manual that is completely organised according to their requirements, including components of their methodology. There was a great deal of conceptual information involved," adds Lourens.
Pierre Meiring, Senior Manager: Command and Control Division Acquisition Department at Armscor, says both parties learnt a great deal from the project. Although the company is a project management organisation, it is not involved in project management in the classical sense because it does not actually execute the projects. Due to this non-conventional approach, the Corporation looked towards implementing a tool that could compliment its structure, new infrastructure, processes and procedures.
Security has always been a crucial consideration and the new system presents added control and significant improvements with the upgrade to MSP 2002. Although the project is still in the early stages of roll out, says Meiring, it has already offered up value in a few areas, namely:
a. Improvement of web access application, fully compliant with Windows Authentication security, offers greater control of security in terms of functionality and data
b. Have the ability to implement extremely complex security model for an average of 600 registered users who will, by the time the system has been fully implemented, work on approximately 2000 projects.
c. Major improvement within document management
d. One can administer the system whilst in operation
"We were in the market for a tool that will help us particularly with the monitoring of projects and programmes, and because we have a corporate contract with Microsoft, we decided to go this route. From a functionality point of view, Armscor looked at the capability to monitor the execution of a large number of projects at a macro-level. At the same time, we want to ensure the ability to retrieve management info regarding resource usage, but not in the classical sense. We wanted to get an idea, across the spectrum, of the several hundred projects we are responsible for and the manpower that would be involved," says Meiring.
"Our experience with Fulcrum IT is that they have been a partner from the beginning, willing to understand our environment and help determine the best possible solution. Fulcrum`s in-depth analysis and combination of real insight and knowledge provided substantial value, especially from a business sense. We spent a great deal of effort on determining and documenting our requirements and functionality that we wanted, and mapping it to the product," adds Meiring.
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