First National Bank's (FNB) CFO and Support business unit has overcome project-based issues to effectively control resources and progress measurement from project inception to conclusion, with the implementation of Post Vision Technology's Project Portfolio Office (PPO) offering.
PPO is a web-based, enterprise capable application designed, developed and supported in South Africa, to assist organisations across various industries to manage projects and project portfolios.
In 2004, the CFO and Support department, solely responsible for the finance function within FNB, was given the mandate to create the organisation's new financial warehouse incorporating all data for financial and management reporting purposes. A dedicated project team of 15 people was created to execute the programme of 12 individual projects. The total man hours on all projects exceeded 36 000 man hours with an overall budget of more than R14 million.
The programme had an extremely high profile and needed to report regularly to a steering committee consisting of numerous CFOs within the group. In addition, progress, risk, cost and issues had to be communicated to the organisation's executives on a regular basis. The programme had a very tight deadline due to its alignment to the organisation's financial year end.
Says Peter Fallows, project owner, "At the time the project was going nowhere fast, mandate was lacking, the business case therefore needed to be reaffirmed and an executive sponsor identified. As a result decision making was ineffective and there was an over reliance on process to cover this and other deficiencies. There was no formal project management methodology or tool with which the project could be managed.
"Essentially, we needed a simple yet functionally rich Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solution that could be installed quickly and used by the entire project team with minimal training, to get the projects up and running as swiftly and effectively as possible."
Given that the project incorporated business, financial, IT development, training and communication elements with users from multiple departments, the application also needed to be flexible enough to address all project and user types.
"We opted for the PPO offering because it is cost effective, simple to use and allowed for a quick turnaround time on installation, implementation and training," explains Fallows. "Additionally, minimal hardware was required to run the application which enabled the department to install it on a high-end desktop. Existing project plans were quickly migrated onto the application and the entire implementation was handled by Post Vision, freeing up the project team to focus on their project tasks."
PPO contributed to the successful completion of the initial project, and the business unit is now using the application for the implementation of other projects and the maintenance of their existing applications. Every project that is executed includes resources from other departments within the organisation and thus the number of users fluctuates depending on the number and the extent of the projects.
"FNB's use of PPO has allowed us to create focus, visibility and accountability, tracking the history and progress of tasks and issues by resource on a daily basis. It has also enabled more efficient interaction between functional areas.
"We were impressed by its ease of deployment, bug-free functionality and value for money the proposition offered. Post Vision Technology has enhanced the product offering to increase usability and responded positively to our suggested enhancements. We will continue to use PPO for further projects," says Fallows.
Says Guy Jelley, CEO of Post Vision Technology: "PPO was developed from an in-depth understanding of the problems specific to project environments taking into account the best practices promoted by the leading research organisations in this field. It becomes a simple communication portal for all information pertaining to projects and portfolios.
"PPO brings together all the basic project management functions and disciplines into a simple and easy to use application which will allow an organisation to ensure that its projects are successful," he concludes.
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