PPM Turns Business Activities Into eProjects
Recently, a market shift has given vendors such as eProject many opportunities to expand these PPM methodologies into activities outside of IT by changing some of their business processes into project-controlled initiatives. This shift, primarily in the midmarket, is generating new business opportunities for large PPM software vendors. However, the challenge today for many PPM vendors has been in transitioning complex project features and process workflows into customizable features that all business users can understand and use without a steep learning curve.
Solution providers should pay close attention to PPM vendors that have done just that. For example, eProject uses templates to organize workspaces, making it easy for any user to understand the software because it divides features based on activities and roles. It has a resource capacity capability that identifies and tracks resource availability, including allocation schedules—a set of reports that helps managers track user availability. When allocating resources, a simple bar chart indicates the degree of availability for each member, highlighting in red any over-allocation. However, eProject can improve some of its resource properties such as user expertise based on project experience. Although this is a difficult metric to quantify, it is useful because it links user knowledge with activities.
Midmarket companies now are experiencing the benefit of project cost reductions and project-controlled efficiencies across many technical departments and are using PPM methodologies to manage engineering projects in research and development. PPM is even being used on general company operations and facilities management.
Since eProject is task-based, users must follow assignments depicted in a Gantt chart. When developing a Gantt chart, subject matter experts provide project managers with specific duties and task sequences for users to complete.
When tasks have dependencies that require collaboration among multiple users, it is up to project managers to notify users through e-mail. Because many activities are sometimes performed outside of eProject, project managers must consistently update their project status. To expedite updates, project managers can take advantage of eProject&'s workflow capabilities by giving users forms for each task and connecting those form answers with specific task schedules.
EProject also provides document management and collaboration features. The collaboration features allow multiple users to share documents, communicate in realtime and track each other&'s activities. The software arrives with calendaring features that display tasks. Communication between users is primarily via built-in forums and polls. The product also has a news area component, where users can send news announcements through e-mail to multiple users at once.
The software also can perform issue and cost tracking over time and provide reporting of user activities, including all project metrics and cost projections. A new Microsoft Project integration capability allows eProject to transfer custom fields between the two products.
A new eProject initiative called Solutions In A Box now will allow solution providers to build template-based workflows for their customers. These solutions can be a best practice or an industry-specific methodology that help customers improve their businesses. This program is a kick-off for eProject to build a partner program based on partner contribution.
Some other solutions being offered are IT governance, Project Management Office and Sarbanes Oxley. EProject offers a 15 percent to 40 percent margin, depending on program and partner level.
The company has an extensive online lead-generation program and provides some partners with leads based on their level of expertise in the vertical industry, project management process or geographic location of the lead. Sales training and best practices also are provided to all partners. The hosted solution subscription costs $39.50 per user per month
