The Business Case for a Digital PMO (Project Management Office)
Among the many changes in the software industry, the consideration of information technology from a return-on-investment (ROI) perspective is fairly dramatic. Decades ago, IT was considered a necessary overhead expense. Now businesses regard software as a critical part of their infrastructure and competitive advantage. In fact, companies that do not leverage IT as a key part of their business strategy to cut costs and increase productivity, may ultimately cease to exist.
The key to increasing productivity is reducing the amount of time it takes a person to repeat some “thing”, compared to achieving the same results using the current approach.
Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Process
Project management is a central strategic process in businesses. It takes time, resources and money to manage projects, the results of project management are difficult to separate from the results of the project as a whole. However, project management itself lends both tangible and intangible benefits to an organization.
One of the major tangible benefits of project management is budgetary savings. The difference between coming in under budget or having an overrun is a function of workforce efficiency and project management. The freeing up of resources or money saved, not only increases the project’s ROI, but allows the project manager to reallocate that money or resources within their portfolio.
Project management is also concerned with managing time (scheduling) and meeting milestones and deadlines. Completing a project on time can be as important as completing it on budget. Projects that take too long to complete cost money in terms of overtime wages, lost productivity and time spent modifying schedules and timelines.
Intangible benefits are much more difficult to quantify financially. An intangible benefit of project management is its effect on teamwork within an organization — a productive, collaborative workforce is a fundamental part of a successful business’s organizational culture.
PMO Reporting is often an unproductive and un-engaging process
A Project Management Office (PMO) is a group or department within a business, agency or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization. The PMO strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects and is responsible for reporting across the organization’s project portfolio.
PMO’s are continuously striving to improve projects and portfolio communication to executives and stakeholders for improved decision making. The PMO’s goal is to connect every member of a project team to a common set of strategies, goals and actions. PMO monthly reporting can be time consuming, requiring a lot of effort and reports are quickly out of date. Added to that, the information is often linear, static and unengaging.
Is Management by Exception (MBE) the way forward for the PMO?
We’re hearing of many more PMO’s using the MBE process as best-practice in weekly project and risk management reporting. In many cases an organizations management by exception policy can prove to be very effective in focusing attention and resources on those activities in the project review that needed to be addressed because they were detrimental to the organization.
The PMO’s Digital Challenge — To communicate project exceptions and complexity in an engaging way
The real challenge for the PMO is to provide project stakeholder with engaging regular reports, across the project portfolio, including multiple data attributes and real-time project risks and exceptions. Project stakeholders are now demanding a digital solution, with collaboration across the portfolio to discuss the reviews with the ability to dig-deeper into individual projects. Stakeholders believe that this process improvement will lead to more insight and better decision-making across the portfolio.
The Digital PMO, business case in numbers
Over and above the discussed stakeholder benefits, a digital PMO reporting solution will also provide productivity benefits as detailed below:
Case Study
Digital PMO: With a team of 50 people involved in the daily Project Reporting process, each costing an average of £450 per day — approximately 15% of man hours, which is the FTE of just over 7 people, will be saved, rising to 20% (FTE of 10 people) if a digital solution is utilized in a more collaborative way across the organization going forward. This equates to a huge saving of almost £750,000 rising to £1,000,000!
Tangible benefits — Time & money saved, productivity increased
• Reduced commercial meeting time — less physical meetings required. More information can be presented in multiple data driven views making meetings more efficient and more productive.
• Reduced report updating — data input is automated and live data is constantly updated, saving a lot of time in monthly reporting.
• Single fixed taxonomy — collaborators are working within fixed classification of content, eliminating the ability to confuse or change shared data.
• Reduced report checking and reviewing — data can be viewed and edited from any device, anywhere and in real-time, never using out-of-date information again.
• Reduced spreadsheet report copying and distribution — less project admin as everyone is in the same digital space and so is their data.
• Improved data quality and accountability via visibility — project managers are more accountable and therefore more responsible for the quality and accuracy of their data.
Intangible benefits
• Visualising data more easily — ability to report time and relationships across projects and portfolios and identify trends, enabling stakeholders to see the entire business picture.
• More agile and collaborative — reduction in number of multiple spreadsheets and manual updating providing more transparent and simple communication.
• Enhanced decision making and communication — reduction in emails and missed communication as information is in one place.
• Innovation and value creation — improved sharing, learning and insights to facilitate innovation and value creation in new and existing projects.
• Reduced functional, department, organizational and cross project meetings — everyone is on the same page.
• Supports integrated Project Management — linking to other systems — data is automated and real time, right first time, reducing transcription errors and duplication.
• Increased enterprise knowledge — secure and retain enterprise knowledge through collaboration and by centralising content.
• Compliance and accountability — audit trail is maintained at project, programme and portfolio level helping to reduce the portfolio risk profile and creating transparency.
• Better shared information — sharing and searching for information across the project portfolio is quicker and easier.
• Consolidated view — visualise key information in one place; costs, milestones, comments, risks
Summary
Stakeholder benefits: Greater visibility and transparency across the business, more meaningful insight and improved decision making, more efficient and productive meetings.
Project Managers: Time and money saved, greater ROI, increased productivity and more efficiency across the portfolio. A more productive and collaborative workforce creating shared content.
About SharpCloud
SharpCloud is software for visual business and has a powerful digital PMO use-case. Providing a visual way of efficiently organising and presenting projects and portfolios to support effective decision making and achieve optimum outcomes.
SharpCloud is different to traditional data visualisation tools, each SharpCloud story combines structured data — spreadsheet or automated feeds — and unstructured collateral — docs, videos, ppt, SharePoint docs — with the ability to visualise time and relationships across your business process.
SharpCloud will disrupt linear discussions on strategic topics based on slide-decks, spreadsheets and email.
Project Management SharpCloud story here: https://goo.gl/diLjNQ
SharpCloud Overview video: https://youtu.be/_R2fRtU57kA
Sign up for a FREE trial: https://my.sharpcloud.com/signup
Visit www.sharpcloud.com, contact us at hello@sharpcloud.com
