Fulcrum Business Solutions, together with Microsoft and co-sponsors K2.net and ProSight, hosted a corporate golf day at the prestigious Pearl Valley Golf Estate in Franschoek on 4 November 2005. The event was focused on the issue of IT governance and raised the questions of whether organisations were aware of their internal state of governance.
Scott Beattie, a solutions specialist with Microsoft was there to present on the question of what IT governance was, a process or a technology.
He maintained in his presentation that IT governance was the process of making decisions about IT. As obvious as this premise sounds, it appears that more often than not, organisations have no formal process when making a decision about IT. Scott maintains that organisations need to ensure that IT investments are optimised and aligned with business strategies; this would guarantee that investments could deliver value within acceptable risk boundaries.
He identified some key objectives driving IT governance as IT value and alignment, risk management, ROI accountability and performance measurement.
He went on to say that better IT governance is about making strategic business investments. About deciding which projects will get an organisation where it needs to go, which projects make most sense or which projects won`t provide a return to equal the investment.
Better IT governance means projects will help meet business goals, better IT governance means the CEO, COO, CIO will be confident in explaining to the board of directors why investments were made, and what the results are going to be.
The current trend is toward IT governance to better align with business, and Gartner stated in a recent report that by 2006, more than 50% of IS organisations will have adopted a mix of project portfolio management application services for managing team collaboration, allocating resources, and tracking utilisation and costs.
Successful projects enable successful business initiatives. This is obvious when one considers that for a project to be deemed "successful", it must be executed on time, within budget, within specifications. These projects may include anything from the introduction of a new product, a new marketing campaign, consolidation of distribution centres, opening a new plant locally or abroad, installation of a new customer support centre or a merger of two divisions.
It is clear now that business success is linked with successful project execution, and the technology components of these business projects can be linked to enterprise project managements` ability to provide better execution. This is true for all types of projects whether they are IT or not. This means that there is a need for tools, practices and a framework, to ensure accurate execution of business project, and this is suitably provided by EPM.
Enterprise project management (EPM) has rapidly become a technology adopted by many organisations to manage the execution of both large and small projects, as well as portfolios of complex project offices.
EPM has proven its capacity to effectively manage a project through the project execution phase with strong capabilities to track project progress, costs and resources. However, the execution phase of a project is simply one step in a business process running from the inception of an idea to the delivery of final business benefit.
In conclusion, Beattie maintained that where there is a need for a project or set of projects to be successfully executed, there is an opportunity for EPM.
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Fulcrum Business Solutions offers a complete spectrum of project solutions and services to obtain project excellence. Fulcrum is a dedicated Microsoft enterprise project management (EPM) solution provider whose core business strength is offering both large corporations and small businesses project management solutions that will enhance an enterprise`s project successes, resource utilisation, productivity and team collaboration.
Fulcrum Business Solutions is undoubtedly the premier enterprise project management player in the South African market, based on both the completeness of the offering as well as the number and size of implementations to date.
In addition, Fulcrum is a leading K2.Net Workflow partner through implementing leading edge workflow software solutions that significantly increase business productivity by automating business processes and creating an integrated workflow environment. With the skills and experience to integrate enterprise project management and workflow solutions, Fulcrum is geared to succeed within almost any environment.
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