Project-centric organizations charged with delivering on client projects or managing internal projects face several unique challenges. When it comes to managing and delivering on projects, potential risks such as “will our projects come in on time and on budget?” and “how can we ensure that projects are efficiently run to minimize the impact on our resources?” are often at the forefront of project leader’s minds. Even the most proactive and well-organized companies will have occasional doubts about a project’s ability to achieve its anticipated benefits and meet strategic objectives. If these questions and concerns sound familiar, considering a project management tool may be in order. Below, we’ll give an overview of the key benefits implementing a project management tool can provide for your organization, as well as how to make your business case to upper management as to why implementation makes sense.
Organizations centered around planning, designing, and completing projects for clients know the challenges associated with seeing these projects through from beginning to end. If you haven’t already, considering a project management tool may be in order. Below, we’ll give an overview of the key benefits implementing a project management tool can provide for your organization, as well as how to make your business case to upper management as to why implementation makes sense.
The key benefit of implementing a project management tool is that it can offer your organization process maturity. Ensuring that your project management process is mature will help organizations improve across all critical enablers. To determine your level of process maturity, consider these five phases of business processing and how they relate to your organization’s current method of delivering on client projects:
- P0 – Informal, always putting out fires, always different, its “chaos”
- P1 – Process is working but it’s not easy, it’s painful but things get done
- P2 – Consistent, smooth business processing, everything works
- P3 – The process is integrated with other processes. For example, Time and Expenses flow into project costing tools to analyze burn rates
- P4 – Actively monitoring project budgets to shift resources accordingly in order to maximize value and margin
A project management tool can rapidly accelerate your process maturity. Beyond offering peace of mind by saving your team from last-minute chaos and having to constantly put out fires, the process maturity that comes with implementing a project tool will appeal to organization leaders due to the impact on the bottom line.
Making Your Business Case
A project management tool will allow you to consolidate applications, potentially saving your organization implementation and/or subscription costs. You’ll gain accurate reporting abilities as well as streamlined planning. Leadership will be happy to see an increase in project forecasting capabilities, allowing for better budget and resource management throughout the project’s lifetime. This also offers better risk management and gives project management departments a more holistic view of each project in real-time.
Highlighting these features and stressing the importance of process maturity will help you make a compelling business case. Emphasizing how a project tool will free up full-time employee hours, consolidate applications, reduce risk by standardizing the process, and provide holistic reporting will help you make a strong and effective case for investing in maturing your project management process by implementing a project management tool.
For more information about project portfolio management tools, check out our blog series on Oracle Cloud Project Portfolio Management, including posts like “Project Portfolio Management Overview: What is it and How it Will Help Your Organization” and “Project Portfolio Management: Understanding a Project Plan and Budget”.
For additional learning opportunities including how your organization can integrate technology with your business processes, register for the upcoming March 24-25, 2021 Elire Strategy Summit. This two-day event offers sessions surrounding improving business processes to make them more efficient RPA, Chatbots, and a case study in prioritizing project management.
