Fulcrum Business Solutions announces the launch of its Microsoft Project 2003-based enterprise management solution, EPM in a Box, at a joint-event with Microsoft.
EPM in a Box was developed by Fulcrum Business Solutions as a packaged enterprise project management solution carefully designed to meet generic organisational project management requirements.
In his opening address, Scott Beattie, Solution Specialist for EPM at Microsoft, explained: "There are a number of generic project management processes and best practices that are leveraged in the large majority of EPM deployments. Fulcrum has developed EPM in a Box with these in mind and by leveraging their extensive implementation experience, has delivered a full EPM solution that provides organisations with a quick solution to maximise bottom line impact on project delivery without making a huge investment upfront."
EPM in a Box was designed for small, medium and large enterprises, providing them with visibility into their work portfolio, the solution they require to make well-informed decisions, optimise resources and establish repeatable processes. It is unique among project management systems because it ensures widespread participation through familiar integrated tools like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Internet Explorer - adding an additional benefit of reduced training needs.
In her demonstration of the EPM in a Box solution, Lyzette Lourens, Senior Consultant at Fulcrum Business Solutions, showed how EPM in a Box allows organisations to place themselves on a quick win path to increased project performance, by leveraging the project management best practices configured in the Microsoft EPM toolset.
Lourens demonstrated a number of the benefits and solution elements of EPM in a Box, including:
Configured security model: EPM in a Box has already been configured to map the use of the tool to the roles of the project manager, team members, executives and resource managers, ensuring access only to information relevant to them. All that is required is to map the organisation`s user base to the roles.
Configured enterprise global template: To aid standardisation of project data across an organisation, a number of calculated fields, custom value lists, views, tables, filters and calendars have already been built into the configuration of EPM in a Box.
Enterprise resource pool: EPM in a Box contains a set of generic resources mapped to skills requirements. By adding the organisation`s own resources, it can quickly get to grips with a number of important resource management issues common in most companies.
Project views and reports: EPM in a Box has built-in views and reports ensuring project managers spend their time working on projects, not compiling reports.
Risk and issues register: Leveraging Windows SharePoint Services, the project manager can raise and categorise risks and issues, as well as assign access and responsibility to individuals to resolve.
Project lifecycle template: EPM in a Box contains a scheduling best practice project template to assist project managers in creating a work breakdown structure to the correct level of detail.
Pauline Smith, MD of Fulcrum Business Solutions, explains the company`s strategic intent with the launch of EPM in a Box. "In five years of working with organisations to develop the most robust and effective enterprise-wide project management solutions, we have collected a wealth of best practices, methodologies, add-on tools, optimal processes and lessons learned. EPM in a Box is our contribution to enterprises, enabling them to leverage, offering them the power of a true enterprise-level solution, at a cost that is affordable. The concept of packaging the learnings gives us a unique opportunity to deploy a solution in a number of weeks! Customer feedback on the pilots we have completed have been extremely encouraging. There is no doubt that EPM in a Box fills a gap currently existing in the South African EPM market."
"It is the innovation shown by Fulcrum, in developing a solution like EPM in a Box, leveraging the Microsoft EPM tool set, PMBok-based project lifecycle methodologies and years of implementation experience, that makes Fulcrum Business Solutions one of the leading Microsoft EPM partners in the South African market," concludes Beattie.
For a demonstration on how EPM in a Box can provide a quick win path to project success in your organisation, contact Estelle van den Bergh, sales and marketing executive at Fulcrum Business Solutions, on (012) 349 1590 or evdb@fulcrumgroup.co.za.
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Fulcrum Business Solutions is a certified Microsoft business partner focused on delivering enterprise project management (EPM) solutions and other related offerings to large corporate organisations with formal project management offices, to small businesses with single project managers.
In addition, Fulcrum is a certified K2.Net Workflow partner, with the skills and experience to integrate EPM and workflow solutions.
Fulcrum`s mission is to extend EPM to the business management arena and deliver a spectrum of project solutions and services to obtain project excellence. The opportunity for integration of core business applications and project management services represents the next wave in the business.
Fulcrum is undoubtedly the premier EPM player in the South African market, based both on the completeness of the offering as well as the number and size of implementations to date.
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