Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Overview

In most organisations multiple projects co-exists with many other initiatives or programs. All have various priorities, some are strategic, some tactical and some should not be done at all.

Enterprise Project Management (EPM) is a process, system and mindset to facilitate transparency, management and governance support to projects at an organisational level.

In order to facilitate governance and to ensure the projects are aligned with the strategic intent of the enterprise, it has become essential to be able to manage, monitor, and assess the status of all projects. To achieve this enterprise wide view of projects a set of (preferably uniform) Enterprise Project Management processes, methods and applications is required.

Organisations that adopt a best practice approach to Enterprise Project Management set up a Project Management Office (PMO), adopt a Project Management Methodology or standard like PRINCE2 or PMBOK then select and implement a software system to support Enterprise Project Management. Once these processes and systems are in place, the organisation will create and track a portfolio of existing and future projects leveraging Project Portfolio Management techniques.

Implementing Enterprise Project Management systems needs to be considered in association with the organisation's Project Management Maturity, methodologies, processes and governance structures that are currently in place.

PM-Partners group Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Services

More than ever before organisations require governance, transparency, and management of project returns. Enterprise Project Management (EPM) initiatives provide an opportunity to deliver the processes and systems required to achieve these returns. Implementation however, requires a knowledge and balance of business processes, project management processes, EPM system experience and culture in order to achieve success.

The PM-Partners group enterprise project management specialists have been working with Microsoft Project and EPM since its inception and can:

1. Work closely with you to gather requirements and define the best method of implementation and configuration for your organisation by obtaining a thorough understanding of your business opportunities and challenges
2. Assess your organizational readiness and level of process maturity prior to deployment
3. Help you prepare the organization for an EPM implementation
4. Install Microsoft Project Server or review your current installation
5. Work closely with you to install, configure or assess an existing MS Project Server implementation
6. Plan your implementation, pilot, and phased deployment
7. Create custom templates and standards to save time and simplify use
8. Train your project managers, team and administrators
9. Assess problems, document a plan of action and help improve a challenged implementation

Our consultants help clients achieve the following benefits with Microsoft EPM Solutions:

1. Standardisation and automation of the governance processes to ensure optimal results from projects
2. Capture all investments within a central repository enabling control of costs
3. Objectively prioritise business strategy and competing investments ensuring the 'high value' projects are completed first and irrelevant projects are rejected
4. Align the selected portfolios with the business strategy resulting in more effective strategy execution
5. Effectively manage resources to achieve the best ROI
6. Effective cross functional collaboration and coordination reducing overheads and contributing to staff morale
7. Measure and track portfolio performance to allow adjustments to ensure best returns
8. Get more from existing project investments
9. Tightly integrate with line of business applications hence reducing overlaps and associated costs
10. Quickly achieve an improved return on investment

For more information on project management methodology such as PMBOK head to the PM Partners home page