Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or similar IT packages have become widely used in businesses of all sizes and types. From my understanding, small and family businesses or companies are the only ones yet to join the mainstream trend of implementing ERP software, although the vast majority of medium and lower-medium-sized companies have already performed an implementation at least once (some of them twice or even more often). But I thought it might be interesting anyway to see how my personal experience and the conclusions I have drawn for myself correlate to implementation issues and business practices in different regions and sizes of businesses. I placed the 5 categories of problems in ascending order based on the degree of “entanglement.”
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Recently there were two great articles published on our Website touching the interesting problem of interactions between traditional manufacturing management and project management: The Business Model for the 21st Century Is Project-centric and Weather the Recession with Project ERP. I agree with the respective authors that the project-driven management approach can help companies improve their businesses in any kind of economic situation, whether during a recession or a booming economy. But in this blog post I would like to share some thoughts with you on other aspects of how project management can help manufacturing. Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog series explained Deltek’s ebullience despite a hostile and depressed environment, and also analyzed the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Professional Service line of business, which is largely represented by Deltek Vision [evaluate this product]. Part II then analyzed the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Government Contractors (GovCon) line of business, which is represented by Deltek Costpoint [evaluate this product] and Deltek GCS Premier [evaluate this product].

This final part will focus on Deltek’s Enterprise Project Management (EPM) line of business, which helps companies deal with the ever-growing reporting regulations being imposed by government agencies. Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog series explained Deltek’s ebullience despite a hostile and depressed environment. The continued cash-generating operation has been complemented by in-house developments, acquisitions, and partnerships.

The previous blog post also talked about the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Professional Service line of business, which is largely represented by Deltek Vision [evaluate this product]. Parts II & III will analyze the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s remaining lines of business. Read the rest of this entry »

Time and again during my decade or so of covering the enterprise applications market as an industry analyst I have witnessed what difference a year can make. And boy, would 2008 be such a year!

A year ago or so, I concluded an in-depth four-part series on Deltek (NASDAQ: PROJ), whose executives were recently happy to tell me that 2008 was not that terrible a year for the company. Quite the contrary, Deltek feels comfortable as a company even in these troubled economic times. Read the rest of this entry »

Project portfolio management (PPM) is a process to obtain project management information of all resources, time, budget, and labor skills in order to align, manage, and review these elements–and to ensure deliverables are being met in terms of project milestones, in accordance with the work breakdown schedule.

In a time of economic and business uncertainty, PPM may be the prescription to obtain successful IT project management results. However, IT departments in many organizations are viewed by some in senior management circles as a huge money pit, a kind of necessary evil that generates little in terms of ongoing business development or growth.

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Part 1 of this blog series covered the spectrum of Meridian Systems’ Proliance solution for Tier One, multi-billion-dollar global companies. It also analyzed Meridian’s early bet on leveraging Microsoft Office Business Applications (OBAs), and harnessing the Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology collaboration that is revolutionizing the capital infrastructure industry.

Meridian, which promotes its business as the Plan-Build-Operate (PBO) technology solutions leader for Project-Based Organizations (another PBO acronym, and thus the “PBO squared” mantra), offers an end-to-end solution for building owners, construction and engineering firms, and public agencies in three flavors. These offerings respectively cater to high-end (Tier One), mid-market, and small market organizations that manage capital building programs and facility assets. Read the rest of this entry »

Claiming the “Catch us if you can” movie mantra, the quiet Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) leader Meridian Systems, based in Folsom, California (US), and now owned by the billion-dollar global positioning system (GPS) giant Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB), is going on the offensive with competitors and industry analysts in its newest round of marketing announcements.  To the large bastion of technology vendors, reporters, and research analysts reporting on market requirements for what once was simply the realm of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS)  – the company’s somewhat shy, but technology-precocious, management is issuing a hearty challenge: “Catch up (with us)!” Read the rest of this entry »

After several years (if not decades, even) of painstakingly corralling and setting up all their custom data, objects, tables and whatnot, and making sure that these static and/or dynamic transactional data are secure, many enterprise applications users have realized that the time is long overdue for them to start looking at ways to make their applications more process-savvy. Read the rest of this entry »

As recent media reports suggest, the dreaded “R” word—recession—is looming large across the horizon of most western and global economies. Many organizations have had to scale back their spending and reduce costs. Due to the cyclical nature of our economy, certain industries will fare better than others. Read the rest of this entry »

Introducing “Green” to Projects

There is a growing trend in IT organizations to reduce the environmental footprints that are typically generated from large enterprise IT project initiatives. To achieve this goal, a group of prominent IT organizations Read the rest of this entry »

Part II of this blog series analyzed the relatively recently launched Deltek EPM suite, which came as a result of three focused acquisitions. It also analyzed the suite’s resulting potential cross- and up-sell opportunities and its prospective additional revenue for Deltek in a standalone manner. However, Deltek has not been sitting still when it comes to continually enhancing its core products either.

Deltek Vision 5 Series

For example, the new Resource Planning module of Deltek Vision 5 [evaluate this product] was devised to allow project managers to assign staff to projects and immediately see the impact on labor utilization. The managers can then modify resource assignments to meet project needs, whereby color coding provides focus on resources.

The new module also offers real-time insight into employee billing rates and actual labor charges. It provides visibility to align resources for upcoming projects in order to increase overall resource utilization. The available tools give project managers a view of employee utilization by project or across all projects by day, week, month or year. In addition, the enhanced Resource Search feature allows for projection of future staffing allocation. Read the rest of this entry »

In this final installment of the Project Management Communication series, we look at a vital project management tool. This system has provided visibility to senior management, as well as justification for projects based on the expected value of each product in its planning stage, and in projects both in progress and completed. Read the rest of this entry »

Frequently when project teams convene to discuss post-project reviews, project team members feel that if communication had been better, the project would have gone smoother. The reason communication in project management is crucial is because it can impact a project’s success, and it is very important that project managers use the right types of communication during a project. Read the rest of this entry »

As with almost every business activity, the importance of communication cannot be overstated when managing projects. Examining the various phases of project management, it’s easy to see the importance of all types of communication at each phase.

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