Fulcrum Business Solutions has implemented its largest ever EPM in a Box solution for the Corporate and Investment Banking division of one of the largest banking groups in South Africa. This bank supports a wide range of clients across Africa and the world through its banking, finance, trading, investment and advisory services.
To provide an effective service to its global community of clients, this bank employs 80 project managers and a project team consisting of 200 to 300 members (or resources) that were trained across the globe. The project office community members are located in diverse locations such as the UK, Brazil, Hong Kong and the Isle of Man, from where they connect to a central project management server in Johannesburg via Citrix technologies.
Developed by Fulcrum, EPM in a Box is a packaged enterprise project management (EPM) solution, based on Microsoft`s EPM software suite. It is designed to meet generic organisational project management requirements and is pre-configured with standard project management processes and best practices to provide customers with faster project launch times, lower costs and greater control.
"The power of EPM in a Box is that the configuration as is can be applied to any project management methodology or standards as it encapsulates best scheduling practices," says Adeline Cruywagen, project manager at Fulcrum. "It allows organisations to improve on their project delivery by ensuring all project management is centralised and run according to international best practices."
For this specific project, Fulcrum deployed EPM in a Box in its Prince 2 project environment with no modification and/or adjustment. Prince2 is a process-based project management approach that provides an easily tailored and scaleable method for the management of all types of projects. Each process is defined with its key inputs and outputs together with the specific objectives to be achieved and activities to be carried out.
Xhead = Global reach
To cater for this specific bank`s global reach, Fulcrum extended the capabilities of EPM in a Box by adding basic multi-currency functionality. Through using the inherent cost rate tables each resource can now be assigned his own home currency rate in one table and other major currency rates within the other cost rate tables. When project managers incorporate a resource into their project schedule that is from another location the correct rate can be achieved through switching to the correct cost rate table.
This allows for better control over each project`s costs without trying to continually work out what foreign resources cost according the latest exchange rates. All information in their Global Administration Portal, a repository of all resources and the associated rates, is imported into the EPM solution each evening to ensure all rates and resource data are always kept up to date.
"Another component Fulcrum designed and built for them is a strategic resource management (SRM) application that runs on top of the EPM system," notes Cruywagen. "The SRM allows strategic skill, capacity and project planning for future projects. The solution enables key users to analyse the supply and demand of resources and specific skills for the coming financial year.
One non-negotiable from their perspective was its implementation of Microsoft`s Sharepoint Portal environment. Fulcrum had to ensure EPM in a Box and Sharepoint were seamlessly integrated to ensure each region was able to operate independently without losing touch with the global organisation.
The roll-out occurred rapidly with the South African implementation starting in January 2006 and Fulcrum completing the roll-out through all regions by the end of May. EPM in a Box has replaced this banks` previous project management solution, PS8.
Xhead = Retaining ownership
"The bank insisted that they should retain ownership of the EPM solution after the implementation phase and Fulcrum therefore undertook the task of training the organisation`s users to independently run the software," adds Cruywagen. "Specifically, Fulcrum put users through a four-day Microsoft Project and Collaboration course, spending two days on each aspect, after which a test was written to assess users` competencies. An EPM administrator course was also run for the administrators of the system. If users did not pass the competence tests, they were denied access to the system until they could demonstrate the capabilities the bank required."
Although the primary training has been completed, Fulcrum continues to support their project managers via consulting services in case they experience any problems using the system. A large amount of documentation was created to provide additional adequate help resources for staff to refer to in order to ensure they utilise the system to its fullest capabilities.
"Further to this," adds Cruywagen, "this bank has also been greatly involved in the success of this implementation as they knew what they needed to do and how they wanted to get to the end result. The team from this well know bank included all the main knowledge areas needed throughout the business to make the project work in their environment. It really was a great team effort between client and vendor.
"The client opted for the EPM in a Box solution in order to put a basic project management standard in place as a foundation which could be enhanced over time as business requirements grew," concludes Cruywagen. "The scope of the project shows how flexible and versatile the EPM in a Box system can be while providing EPM best practices to its users."
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