Challenge:
As a leading global property firm, Knight Frank's internal service departments constantly deliver projects to the business. The Shared Services executive team was lacking visibility of all change initiatives, and there was a lack of alignment, communication and common practice across departments.
Our Microsoft PPM Solution:
We implemented Microsoft PPM as a departmental solution, supporting different project types for Finance, Marketing, Estates and IT departments.
For all, a common terminology and basic project life cycle was defined to provide a consistent framework for all projects, supported by appropriate templates. Simplicity was key as project management disciplines and skill sets varied across departments. With this basic framework in place, individual departments were then able to add their own specific data content and processes to account for their specific needs.
The tool provides mechanisms to capture progress reports and signal clear Red/Amber/Green project status.
Reports and portfolio views were deployed to provide the visibility to the executive team
Finally, a knowledge transfer programme was put in place, instructing users across all departments not just in the usage of the tool but also in the concepts and best practices of project management.
Benefits:
With this shared platform in place, the whole Shared Services division has developed a standardised approach for project initiation and delivery. This ensures greater compliance and control, for example by enforcing business cases being in place before major initiatives are commenced.
The consistent register of projects provides visibility to all stakeholders, benefiting the executive team in particular - they can see what's going on not just in their own department but across the whole division.
Comments