The strategic transformation at BPAY Group was to be delivered via a number of key projects.
Overseeing everything was the Project Management Office (the PMO) – an entity charged with ensuring that the investment in projects returns the desired outcomes, and that they are delivered within budget and on-time.
When the Head of Project Services, Sean Nairn, joined BPAY Group, he quickly realised that to position the PMO to truly orchestrate business transformation, he needed to do three key things:
After researching the market, and influenced by BPAY Group’s strategy to move to the cloud, Sean decided on Microsoft Project Online as the right PPM tool for the business.
“…we needed a tool that both supported our framework and the users. It had to be in the cloud, and it had to be fully supportive of our methods and processes. But perhaps most importantly, it had to appeal to our users: we knew that management’s visibility of benefits would happen if users embraced the use of the tool in their day-to-day jobs…” – Sean Nairn, Head of Project Services, BPAY Group
Sean needed the PPM tool to deliver these key capabilities:
- visibility on accurate, real-time project information and status – without having to navigate through endless notes and spreadsheets
- consistency in the way projects are delivered – consistent and repeatable use of project management methods and tools, by every project team, every time
- the ability to prioritise projects so that the right projects are selected in the first place – i.e. the ones that both align best with business strategy and are deliverable within available budget and resources
- and most importantly deliver insights on demand versus resources’ capacity
Sean engaged Microsoft PPM gold partner, EPM Partners, to implement Microsoft Project Online using its pmo365 approach, and transitioned all existing projects to the new platform. The implementation of Project Online and, more importantly, its adoption by users was very successful. BPAY Group now has top-down visibility on work being delivered to provide the business with the insights needed to drive smarter and more-timely project investment decisions.
These benefits were only possible because of the adoption of the PPM tool by all end users – be they project managers, program managers, resource managers or team members – who now use the PPM for project governance and to manage schedules, resources, costs, risks, issues, and intra- and inter-project dependencies. It is also used to track time and effort via timesheets, and integrates project costs data directly imported from BPAY Group’s finance system.
The successful adoption was made possible by embracing EPM Partners’ pmo365 approach and services – the optimal way to digitise project portfolio management. It removes the administrative overhead of collecting PPM data and provides invaluable insights to the PMO and to executives within the business. pmo365 makes the new tool a one-stop-shop and single source-of-truth for everything related to project, program and portfolio management, so that end users want to use the tool, and not have to use the tool. With pmo365 the visibility and the insights required by the business are delivered almost as a by-product of the implementation, rather than being an overhead on project managers.
A pmo365 implementation of Microsoft Project Online employs three main tactics: introduce new interfaces and technologies – like Project Online forms and pages; replace the existing files used to manage projects – like cost management Excel sheets; and integrate with existing systems – like BPAY Group’s finance system.
“This has been a very successful implementation. The tool is highly flexible and EPM Partners’ unique pmo365 services are first class. We have very successfully introduced a world-class PPM system that fully supports the PMO in its execution of projects at BPAY.” – Sean Nairn, Head of Project Services, BPAY Group
BPAY Group is now is looking to expand the use of Microsoft Project Online, both functionally and technically, in its integration with JIRA and using new components of Microsoft’s PPM toolset to develop, manage and track different strategic roadmaps, linked to BPAY Group’s strategy pillars and objectives.
This case study is also featured on Microsoft’s Customer Story, to read it go to: https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/733816-bpay-epmpartners-microsoftprojectonline
