Enhancing Productivity & Collaboration with Enterprise-Wide Access to Project Data
Background
This is the third in a series of posts exploring findings and financial benefits identified in the Hexagon-commissioned Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting. The study examines the potential return on investment (ROI) organizations can realize by implementing EcoSys™. EcoSys is an Enterprise Project Performance (EPP) solution that supports the success of all projects within an organization by consolidating enterprise-wide project data, across the full lifecycle, into one management platform.
Forrester interviewed four organizations with experience working with Hexagon’s EcoSys. From their discussions with decision-makers, Forrester was able to quantify some of the primary benefits of utilizing EPP software. These benefits were consolidated into 5 key findings:
- EcoSys Reduces Project Cost Overruns
- EcoSys Allows You to Pivot Capital Spending
- EcoSys Improved Project Controller Productivity
- EcoSys Enhanced Collaboration
- EcoSys Allows you to Decommission Legacy Systems
In this blog post, we’ll explore how EcoSys improves project controller productivity and enhances collaboration.
Key Challenge: Disjointed Project Management Systems
Most project-driven organizations rely on a mix of solutions to manage their projects. These solutions include spreadsheets, 3rd party point solutions, and homegrown methods meant to ensure optimal project performance. However, these methods act more as a hindrance than a vehicle to success. As discussed in the previous entries in this blog series, disjointed project management systems do not provide the level of visibility needed to effectively manage capital projects. This low visibility negatively affects the ability to provide accurate forecasting which then leads to a plethora of problems down the road for stakeholders. But, what has not yet been discussed is how disjointed systems also negatively impact the productivity of project controllers and the collaborative efforts of the entire organization.
Manual Data Harvesting
Because the project management systems were fractured, there was no way to provide a singular dashboard where all the data factions would combine into one location. As a result, the project controllers at the organizations interviewed were taking a large portion of their time to manually harvest project data. Having to spend time on such an administrative task was a waste of the project controllers’ talents. However, it was a job that had to be done to get a picture of project performance (although the picture was usually flawed).
Ineffective Communication
Having disjointed project management systems meant leadership relied heavily on project controllers to consistently relay accurate project status updates. However, when project controllers manually relayed information to different stakeholders, confusion was likely to follow. Because project data was always changing, it was common for one stakeholder to have more information than another. On top of this, relying solely on project controllers to understand and manage the disjointed systems caused problems when one of those project controllers left the company.
The Solution: A Singular, Automated Solution that Provides Each Stakeholder with Their Own View of Project Performance
To combat these issues, the organizations interviewed in the study turned to an EPP solution to house their entire project portfolio. This solution provided automation that cut down on the time project controllers had previously taken to manually harvest data. All project data was organized into an easy-to-read dashboard that could be tailored to the specifications of each user. All those in an organization could now check their dashboard and get a full picture of project performance, relevant to their specific roles, while allowing project controllers to continue their work, uninterrupted.
The Result: More Time for High-Value Tasks & Better Transparency
Since project controllers were no longer spending efforts on data collection, they were able to spend more time on identifying trends and proactively addressing the root causes of emergent issues. This allowed for more successful projects overall since they were each given the attention they were due. After 3 years of using an EPP solution, the composite organization (the culmination of each organization interviewed into one representative model) saw project controllers’ productivity increase by 25%. This further benefited the companies as project controllers could each be assigned a greater number of projects, while performing at a higher level than before.
To add to the improvements, each project stakeholder having a near real-time view of project data at their fingertips 24/7 allowed for improved transparency and a decrease in corrections and rework. Because of this, employees were able to convert 50% of their time that had previously been dedicated to relaying information and clearing up confusion to more productive work.
““Over the years [with EcoSys], we have been able to improve our efficiency, improve our productivity, and reduce the number of cost controllers we have needed to hire.”
Project Manager, Engineering Consulting