Case Studies
Microsoft Project Server and Project Online Case Studies
South Gloucestershire Council SGC uses Microsoft Project Online to deliver more projects with greater efficiency.
South Gloucestershire Council wanted to increase the capacity of its Environment & Community Services project managers by eliminating manual processes and giving its teams more time to play to their strengths. Switching to Microsoft Project Online, the council has achieved total visibility of its project portfolio, resulting in better strategic decision-making and faster issue resolution.
The Go Ahead Group The Go-Ahead Group uses Microsoft Project Online to create a mature, Next-Generation Project Management Office.
The Go-Ahead Group, the UK’s leading transport provider for rail and bus services, needed next-generation project management capabilities to help power its project work with customers, employees, governments, local communities and strategic partners. With Microsoft Project Online, the IT Division has created a corporate solution which is helping to streamline project management, improve portfolio visibility and enhance project and budgetary reporting.
Nuffield Heath Transforming project management to make the nation fitter and healthier through investing in Project Online.
To further its vision for a healthier nation, Nuffield Health saw an opportunity to drive improved efficiency and success across the business by centralising its project management function and investing in Microsoft Project Online as a catalyst for change.
Scania Automotive giant Scania boosts European project management efficiency.
Project leaders across automotive giant Scania’s European businesses have been empowered with a special new Project and Portfolio Management solution since moving to Microsoft Project Online - a move that has resulted in three times more successfully completed projects.
Charter Court Financial Services One of the UK’s fastest growing specialist mortgage banks achieves state-of-the-art project management transformation with Microsoft Project Online.
In order to support terrific business growth, Charter Court needed to enhance and transform its project management function. Microsoft Project Online offered the next-generation project management capabilities it needed to gain greater visibility over an evergrowing and complex account portfolio, improve information sharing across the business, enhance reporting and empower advanced decision-making.
Arm Leading tech company improves productivity and introduces scalability to match its growing project portfolio management needs.
Leading chip developer Arm had an aging on-premises Microsoft Project Server solution that reduced productivity and couldn’t scale to meet the company’s rapid growth. Adopting Microsoft Project Online, the company increased its project portfolio insights and met the needs of a workforce that recently doubled in size.
Intelbras Brazilian Electronics Manufacturer Accelerates Business with Better Project Reporting
A major telecommunications company in Brazil, Intelbras S/A operates in hyper-competitive markets. To help project teams be even more efficient, Intelbras upgraded to Microsoft Project Server 2013. Project managers can produce reports in minutes versus weeks, which accelerates the pace of business. All project data is accessible in one place, and employees can communicate more fluidly with the email and instant messaging capabilities built into Project Server.
Revlon IT Department of Global Cosmetics Company Cuts Time in Meetings by up to 30 Percent
Revlon, a global cosmetics and personal care company, wanted to improve the way that IT developers and project managers plan and execute work. The company deployed the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack to simplify data exchange between software solutions and provide developers and project managerswith the ability to share data to make project decisions. Now developers can create detailed tasks and record time against them in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN. Project managers can see all of this data in Microsoft Project Server 2010. These employees have cut time spent in meetings by up to 30 percent and improved productivity by up to 5 percent. Revlon also improved risk management, expects to gain financial benefits from capitalizing project work, and can increase the responsibility of technical team leads.
Volvo Group Increases Project Visibility and Control While Saving Employees Time
The Volvo Group is a leading supplier of commercial and consumer transport solutions and customer financial services. Volvo IT, which provides solutions to the Group to manage its projects, wanted to improve employee efficiency by extending current resource management, time reporting, portfolio management, and other project management processes. The Volvo Group implemented Microsoft Project Server 2010 and made customizations to adapt to various internal processes and software applications. The Group is using Project Server 2010 to improve capacity planning to build its long-term strengths. Because of the customizations and the rich but simple user interface of the Microsoft Project Web App technology, the Volvo Group has cut the time spent entering project data by 40 percent. It also has improved project visibility and control, and can now provide more transparent resource management.
Microsoft IT – Cuts Costs, Gains Greater Consistency with Project Planning Software
Microsoft IT, which manages technology resources for the global software company, wanted to improve the consistency of decision-making processes across planning governance bodies. Assisted by Microsoft Services consultants, Microsoft IT implemented Microsoft Project Server 2010. It used Project Server 2010 to plan its fiscal year 2011 new-program budgets and will expand that scope. It is also building workflows, dashboards, and other customizations using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and complementary technologies. With Project Server 2010, Microsoft IT is consolidating its toolset to reallocate training budgets and cut support costs. It is also improving the quality and visibility of its IT project portfolio planning, more effectively tracking benefits through projects’ life cycles, and establishing a single source of truth for reporting on project management data.
Marquette University – University Identifies IT Project Priorities, Delivers Results to CIO and VP of Finance
Marquette University – a large Jesuit university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—wanted to expand its project management practices. Although Marquette successfully managed projects inside and outside the IT department, it wanted to better track and prioritize potential projects and improve its resource management. Marquette implemented Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010, which the university uses to maintain an integrated database of potential and existing projects and to prioritize projects based on business rules. With the solution, the university has improved its resource management, and it uses dashboards to communicate business intelligence to internal customers and senior management. Demand for project management services across the university is increasing due to the effectiveness of its project management processes and tools.
Microsoft Project Development Group – Microsoft uses Its Own Product to Manage Development
The Microsoft Project Development Group, which develops project management solutions for the global software company, needed to manage the complex development effort for its new product, Microsoft Project 2010. The group decided to use prerelease versions of its own software to plan and track all of its engineering activities. The Project Development Group used Project 2010 to choose and plan a portfolio of potential software features, allocate resources to these feature development efforts, and track progress against changing goals. With Project 2010 features, the group increased end users’ participation in planning, time tracking, and status reporting. It also gained timely data and rich analysis tools—resulting in effective portfolio management that elevated product quality—along with a transparent, accountable planning process that improved the experience for workers.
Schlumberger – IPM Bolsters Project Management with Enterprise Solution
Integrated Project Management (IPM), a division of oilfield services provider Schlumberger, has experienced rapid growth. Its challenge was to support this growth and provide a uniform and high level of project management, global sharing of best practices, and a central source of information for projects. To meet these needs, IPM created Avance – an enterprise project management and collaboration solution based on Microsoft technologies. Avance gives IPM project managers a centralized repository for their project-related information, providing “one version of the truth” for users from any level in the organization. It enables staff to address project-related issues quickly and effectively—for example, a purchase order reconciliation process went from days of manual labor to minutes when done in Avance. The solution is scalable to meet the division’s growing needs.
Attenda – Managed Services Firm Uses Collaborative Framework to Gain Efficiency, Cut Costs
Attenda is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in London, England, and a growing managed services provider in Europe. At any time, Attenda has approximately 100 projects in progress, with employees maintaining project-related information in data silos on their PCs. Executives and resource managers did not have global insight into the project pipeline, and without a centralised repository for documents, it was difficult for staff to collaborate efficiently on projects. To solve these issues, Attenda deployed Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and created a collaborative framework for managing projects and allocating resources across the organisation. Attenda cut project cost overruns, achieved an estimated 10 per cent improvement in operational efficiency, and boosted its reputation for excellence in project management—a key differentiator the company is using to win more clients.
McKesson – Healthcare Services Company Fosters Rapid Adoption for New Collaboration Environment
To promote collaboration among its many dispersed business units, McKesson, the nation’s largest healthcare services company, deployed Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. McKesson realized, however, that its new technology would help the organization function as a cohesive entity only if users successfully adopted and took full advantage of the product’s capabilities. By taking a well-planned approach to deployment that included collaborative, Web-based training for users rather than individualized help-desk support, McKesson was able to foster a groundswell of excitement around Office SharePoint Server 2007. Now, more than 10,000 employees rely on the new collaboration environment to find and share information, manage documents and projects, and work together across business units—and that number grows every day.