Project Management
We provide project management (PM) services for system implementations and business process redesign projects. Where applicable, the project management methodology employed for these services are based on principles embodied in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), which are promulgated by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Depending on the scope of the project, PM services typically includes the following areas:
Day-to-day management of the client and vendor project staff.
Management of the vendor contract(s).
Review and approval of project deliverables.
Issue/risk management.
Scope management.
Schedule management.
Project budget management.
Management of the project facility.
Oversee all change management activities.
Status reporting.
Quality Assurance Services
Quality assurance (QA) services are essentially a means to either act as a control function to oversee a project’s progress and/or to supplement the project management team with an experienced consultant from our firm to help resolve complex issues where another practitioner would add value. Generally, this service consists of a part-time consultant where the bulk of the work is completed remotely. The actual scope of every project is different.
QA services can range from a periodic review of a project’s progress with a status report back to management to ad hoc requests that may occur weekly, monthly or every few months. Ad hoc requests typically consists of feedback on a specific issue, review a draft deliverable or participate in strategy sessions throughout the project’s life cycle. QA services can also be used for assisting organizations with other services listed below where the organization has most of the right skills in-house to complete the bulk of the work, but requires some part-time consulting expertise for a portion of the work.
Change Management
We provide change management services for system implementations and business process redesign projects. Depending on the scope of the project, change management services typically includes the following areas:
- Leadership alignment.
- Change readiness assessments.
- Communication plan and execution of the related activities.
- Change management plan and execution of the related activities.
- Facilitate business process redesign and adapting to the new system or process.
- End user training plan and execution of the related activities.
- End user training materials.
- Management of knowledge transfer with the client’s project team.
- Sustainability plan.
Business Process Redesign
Business process redesign may be related to a system implementation or redesigning processes. In either case, our firm will provide an experienced business architect to lead the effort of implementing best practices in each functional area. This service can also be combined with our change management service described above. Whereas the change management service will facilitate business process redesign by ensuring the right experts from the client and/or vendor are involved with the process change, the business process redesign service will assign a seasoned business architect not only to facilitate the effort but to also provide possible solutions for each functional area for which he or she is an expert.
Business Case Development
Our business case development service is normally related to technology projects where the capital cost is significant and/or the alternative solutions and implementation strategies are complex and warrant expertise not housed within the client organization. Depending on the scope of the project, this service typically includes the following areas:
- Interview key management and staff to understand the current state.
- A high-level review of current business processes and systems.
- Development of high-level business and technical requirements.
- Gap analysis of current systems in relation to the business and technical requirements.
- Identification of alternative solutions, with pros, cons and estimated costs.
- A recommended course of action.
- Presentation to senior management of the business case report.
Software Vendor Selection
Software vendor selections generally includes the following areas:
- Development of detailed business and technical requirements working with the client’s subject matter experts.
- Definition of the scope of the project in the following key areas: Data conversion, interfaces, reports, customizations and forms. It normally also includes a definition of organization scope to clearly define if all or only parts of the organization are included for the new system.
- Determine the best procurement strategy.
- Development of a request for proposal (RFP).
- Review all proposals and provide a summary evaluation of each one, including key strengths, weaknesses, compliance with the RFP requirements, cost analysis, etc. This information will be submitted to the client’s evaluation committee as one input into their decision making and scoring of each proposal.
- Facilitate reaching a short-list of vendor proposals with the client’s evaluation committee.
- Facilitate orals and demonstrations with the short-listed vendors.
- Facilitate final scoring of the short-listed vendor with the evaluation committee.
- Create a Vendor Selection Report summarize the procurement and the recommendation by the evaluation committee of the best vendor solution.