Sasol Technology has implemented PSRemote, developed in SA, to collect project information from across the globe.
Sasol Technology, one of the major companies in the Sasol`s family of businesses, is responsible for research and development, technology and innovation, and engineering and project management for the Sasol Group. Hundreds of projects worth several billion dollars are managed by more than 50 project managers in Sasol Technology. People working on Sasol projects are spread over the major continents of the world.
In order to help manage this huge distributed workload, Sasol Technology turned to PSRemote, developed by Management Planning Systems. Before using PSRemote, it was a fairly elaborate process to keep projects up to date. It was not easy to consolidate information from hundreds of projects, some of which are multibillion-dollar programmes. With PSRemote Sasol Technolgy is now able to consolidate this information into concise management reports with full drill-down facilities - a feature required by Sasol executives. This monthly data collection, approval and reporting cycle is achieved with remarkably little effort using PSRemote.
According to Francois Retief, MD of Management Planning Systems (MPS): "PSRemote was specifically developed by MPS to simplify the collection data from people dispersed over a wide geographic area, and then to produce consolidated management reports clearly showing the status of each business or programme using coloured status robots. Using these customised reports, executives are able to click on an item and drill down into any level of detail."
On a regular basis, each project participant receives an e-mail allowing them to view and update project information for which they are responsible. "Almost any project data can be displayed and/or updated, such as costs, quantities, hours, percentages, comments, pick list values, etc," says Retief.
Participants receive valuable feedback in the form of coloured status robots. "For example, a yellow robot is immediately displayed when entering a quantity which is within 5% of the budget." Extensive validation rules ensue that only valid data is entered at the source.
PSRemote contains a fully customised workflow system controlling multi-level approvals, rejections, updates and reporting.
The exceptionally powerful report writer in Project Scheduler 8 is used for reporting. Sasol Technology is now able to automate the production of reports where consolidated and reliable project information can be viewed on a single page. Drill-down facilities allow the managers to easily view any discrepancy that requires management attention.
View http://www.mpsys.co.za/psremote.htm for more information.
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