Finance and Insurance

Are you ready to address these technology project risks?

• Implementation partners offer project management support, but this isn’t their core business and their informal process reflects that. Vendors often overlook steps that are vital to success, such as completing the necessary planning functions and gaining buy-in from stakeholders. This leads to a lack of engagement, inaccurate schedules, and critical resource shortages. Without a structured project management methodology and the supporting tools to guide them, the team is likely to omit important functions and miss early signs of trouble, forcing them to cut corners as they race to stay on track.

• Multiple critical paths, time-sensitive resource pressures, wide-ranging impacts to business processes, and hard deadlines leave little room for errors or delays in a technology project. Any failure to deliver the expected results, or any disruptions to the organization’s operational capabilities, could put a dangerous drag on revenue projections. Regulatory penalties may also be levied if compliance mandates aren’t met. Getting things right the first time can mean the difference between the project’s—and the organization’s—success or failure.

• Many of today’s business processes and operations hinge on technology, but integrating new systems with legacy infrastructure and existing workflows can be difficult and disruptive. Without a common project plan for all parties to use—one developed with the participation of every group involved in the proposed changes, and one that establishes accountability for each activity—the resulting mash-up of platforms might not work as a cohesive system. This lack of coordination and control will hamper the firm’s productivity and the level of performance that can be gleaned with the new technology.

• Involving all the right people early in the project’s planning phase may appear cumbersome because there’s too much to do and too little time available. But without input from these individuals on task durations and dependencies, the project plan won’t be workable or realistic. Unless this data is gathered and incorporated into a top-level, integrated plan, the project will shift off-track—and be expensive to salvage—almost immediately.

THE SOLUTION
With deep experience planning and executing complex technology implementations, PMAlliance is a project management consulting firm that works alongside internal PMs in financial institutions and insurance organizations to help them successfully deliver their can’t-fail projects. We supplement the knowledge of our clients’ in-house project teams, working together to apply our unique combination of proven methodology, robust risk assessment and mitigation tools, and targeted expertise to help them deliver even the most challenging, high-impact projects on time and on budget.

Our background in technology platform deployments enables us to work alongside blended internal project teams and vendors to ensure the right people are involved in estimating time and resource requirements. Together, we can move your software and related business process projects forward to a successful completion. Using our methodology, your team will have the foundation necessary to leverage a common approach to project management. This drives accountability, provides for tightly disciplined progress and timeline monitoring, and assures strong communication between the busiest and most diverse cross-functional project teams.

In short…

WE DRIVE SUCCESSFUL PROJECTS

THE BENEFITS YOU CAN EXPECT WITH PMALLIANCE

Robust Communication
Information flows won’t be hindered by traditional silos or other functional barriers. Your team will be in close contact as they raise concerns, ask questions, and develop solutions. There won’t be any last-minute surprises or fires to put out. With everyone working from the same playbook, your organization can move through its technology implementation with the least disruption to daily operations.

Expert Resource Management
Finite internal and external resources will be carefully allocated and activities will be monitored throughout the project to ensure no conflicts arise. The team’s daily workloads will also be considered as the project plan is developed and task duration estimates are incorporated into the master schedule.

Reliable Schedule Management
You will know your technology project is being executed on a timeline that’s workable and realistic, and that any applicable compliance milestones are a top priority. Activities will be closely monitored to ensure delays are avoided and that progress is aligned with your project’s target completion date from start to finish.

A Cohesive Plan
You will know your organization is working under a single, integrated plan and a common approach to project management, with engagement and accountability as priorities. The planning function will span all stakeholder groups and progress will be carefully monitored at each step.

Day-One Success
Right away you will see the development of a project charter and a realistic plan that shows whether you can achieve your target completion date or not. You will know if your investment’s results will meet everyone’s expectations. You will also have peace of mind knowing that your team members are committed to the success of your project plan from day-one.

Access to the Latest Project Status
You will have on-demand access to status reports at all times and you will also receive formal reports once a week. The Executive Dashboard will be available so you can quickly assess the status of key project milestones and review the critical paths that are driving these dates.

Your Project Done Right
You will have a technology implementation project that delivers real value to the organization, that maintains regulatory compliance, that sticks to its time-frame and budget, and that doesn’t devolve into a slew of follow-on projects because the team wasn’t able to accomplish its goals the first time.

Case Study