2. The Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Project Management Solution:
4/21/2017 5:50 AM
The Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Project Management Solution:
Doing the Right Things Right
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This presentation is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY

3. Agenda Project & Portfolio Management Overview
Office Enterprise Project Management Solution
Deployment Approach
Top 10 Benefits
Contact info

4. Portfolio Management is a Growing Market
Gain Visibility & Control Across all Investment Portfolios
Project Portfolio Management (PPM)
Analyze Portfolio
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
Derive Assessment Scores
Finalize Transformation Decisions
Capacity Planning
Portfolio Analytics
Portfolio Optimization
Portfolio Selection
Build / Update Inventory
Portfolio Prioritization
Project & Program Management
Detailed Planning
Analyze Portfolio
Develop Business Case
Things to remember about Portfolio Management
Portfolio Management helps organizations to gain visibility and control over all investment entities (e.g. projects, applications, products).
Portfolio management helps organizations improve decision-making and identify the investments that will deliver maximum business value
Portfolio management is not just about projects
Successful organizations must gain visibility, insight, and control across varied investment portfolios (projects, programs, applications, products)
To maximize the return from IT investments, you must analyze and manage the interrelationships between application, asset, business process, and project portfolios
An action taken in one portfolio may trigger changes in other portfolios
Projects are vehicles for change
Description of diagram
In both APM and PLM analysts begin by building a inventory of all applications / assets and products respectively.
Next it is important to objectively derive scores for each investment (i.e. Strategic Importance, Risk, Operational Performance, Probability of Success) and analyze the portfolios.
This analysis results in Transformation decisions (for example you my decide to maintain, enhance or retire an application) which in turn are considered projects and are managed via the PPM governance processes
This cyclical process results in the application and product portfolios being updated on completion of the project.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
Execution / Delivery
Derive Assessment Scores
Finalize Transformation Decisions
Build / Update Inventory
Update Portfolio Inventory

5. Project Portfolio Management: Select & Deliver the Right Investments
4/21/2017 5:50 AM
Project Portfolio Management: Select & Deliver the Right Investments
Portfolio Management enables organizations to identify and select the investments that will maximize business value
100%
50%
Value Lost
Portfolio
Management
Project
Management
66%
Ability to Identify Business Value Potential (Project Portfolio Server 2007)
Project Management helps ensure organizations successfully deliver the selected investments and realize the business value
50%
Value Realized
The above diagram shows portfolio management on the Y-axis and project management on the X-axis.
More is known about project management. Project management techniques help organizations to effectively deliver projects (on time, on budget).
Less is known about portfolio management.
Many people believe that portfolio management is just concerned with aggregate level reporting (such as reporting across a portfolio of projects). This is wrong.
Portfolio management is not just concerned with projects. Portfolio management helps organizations manage many different investment types (such as projects, programs, applications, and products).
Portfolio management includes analytical techniques that help ensure organizations select investments (or projects) that will maximize business value.
Organizations that solely invest in enhancing their project management capabilities are in danger of delivering sub-optimal portfolios (that is, delivering the wrong projects on time and on budget).
The truth is that successful organizations need to invest in developing both disciplines (project management and portfolio management) to help ensure they select and deliver project portfolios that align with the organization’s strategic priorities and maximize ROI. 0%
75%
100%
Ability to Realize Business-Value Potential
(Project Server 2007)
© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This presentation is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, in this summary.

6. Successful Organizations Use Both Disciplines
4/21/2017 5:50 AM
Successful Organizations Use Both Disciplines
Portfolio Management
Portfolio Governance Business Case Dev
Benefits Forecasting
Prioritization / Valuation
Portfolio Optimization
Adv Portfolio Analytics
Project Portfolio Management answers the following questions:
Have I selected the right investments?
Do the investments align with the strategic objectives?
Do I have sufficient resources to deliver the selected investments?
Will the investments be delivered on time and within budget?
Are my investments delivering the forecast benefits?
Project Management
Project Planning
Cost Management
Resource Management
Time Reporting
Change Management
Issue Management
Project Reporting
Collaboration
Successful organizations require both disciplines.
Portfolio Management (supported by Office Project Portfolio Server 2007) starts before and goes beyond traditional Project Management (supported by Office Project Server 2007) and includes the following capabilities:
On the front end:
Portfolio governance
Business case development
Benefits forecasting
Analytical techniques to prioritize, optimize, and select the portfolio that best aligns with the organization’s strategic priorities.
Capacity planning
On the back end:
Portfolio level reporting
Benefits realization
Merging these two disciplines forms Project Portfolio Management, which answers the following questions:
[Read from slide]
Portfolio Reporting
Benefits Realization
© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This presentation is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, in this summary.

7. Microsoft Office EPM Solution
Manage & Control all Types of Work
Improve Visibility & Insight
Team Members
Resource Managers
Exec Stakeholders
Manage and control all types of work
Standardize and communicate a governance framework across the organization.
Consolidate essential data for all business and IT investments in a centralized repository.
Effectively deliver project and program portfolios that help maximize return on investment.
Gain transparency and control across your existing application portfolios.
Manage work from simple proposals to complex programs of projects.
Improve visibility and insight to enhance decision-making
Objectively prioritize, optimize, and select the project portfolio that aligns with your business strategy and maximizes return on investment.
Proactively predict cost, resource, and schedule overruns through key performance indicators (KPIs).
Create custom views (such as Dashboards or Scorecards) and reports to gain transparency across all projects, programs, and application portfolios.
Analyze information, and then use predefined reports or create a custom report to expose project-related information.
Effectively communicate and collaborate with all stakeholders
Effortlessly collaborate and share essential information through team project workspaces that use Windows SharePoint Services.
Keep teams aligned through task assignments and timesheet reporting.
Confidently initiate, plan, and track projects whether in or out of the office.
Use built-in integration to communicate project-related information through Microsoft Office system applications.
Evolve with a scalable and configurable platform
Take advantage of embedded best practices and templates to simplify configuration and deployment and quickly realize a return on investments.
Effectively integrate and share data with line-of-business solutions.
Scale up and out with confidence using the newly redesigned server architecture.
Tap into all of the Project Web Access capabilities through their exposure as Web services.
Incorporate business processes by using the Windows Workflow Service support for the Office Project Server 2007 new event model.
Effectively Communicate & Collaborate
Evolve with a Scalable & Configurable Platform IT
Project & Portfolio Managers

8. What is our EPM Solution?
Line of Business Systems
Project Managers
Executives
Portfolio Analysts
Project Managers
Application Managers
Executives
Resource Managers
Team Members
The Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution consists of a number of products. Details…
The Front End
Office Project Server 2007 provides a rich set of browser based functionality through its component Office Project Web Access, a Microsoft ASP.NET application that uses Project Server Web Services through Microsoft Internet Explorer and Project Server Web Parts in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services As Office Project Web Access is built on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 it offers all the advantages that come with WSS 3.0 (e.g. rich browser experience by using AJAX development techniques, WebPart and Integration framework). In addition to the web based client Office Project Server 2007 is accessed by Office Project Professional 2007, and by other Win32 clients such as Visual Studio.
Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 capabilities are accessed via Office Project Portfolio Web Access, the ASP.NET based front end of Office Project Portfolio Server 2007.
The Middle Tier
Office Project Server 2007 provides a real application server that includes the new Project Server Interface (PSI), discrete business objects, server-side events, a common data access layer (DAL) and queuing services. The PSI provides web services which can be consumed by other applications. Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 delivers the Portfolio Server Interface (PPSI) which helps organizations to integrate with other line of business applications. Office Project Server 2007 and Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 are connected via those middle tier components. This out of the box connection is known as the Project Server Gateway, a bidirectional link that enables administrators to associate multiple Office Project Servers to Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, providing executives with a consolidated view of all projects within the organization. Further information on Project Server Development can be found in the Software Development Kit (SDK) posted on MSDN.
The Back End
Office Project Server 2007 uses SQL Server 2000 SP4 or later. Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 requires SQL Server 2005). Office Project Server 2007 takes advantage of some of the new features in SQL Server 2005 such as security enhancements and improved Analysis Services and Reporting Services.
What you see here is the complete Microsoft Office EPM Solution.
1) The EPM solution is built on a robust and enterprise-class platform:
SQL Server is essentially the primary data store for all project-related data, and drives the core server-side reporting capabilities
WSS is the collaboration platform, that comes with Windows Server – it enables the sharing & tracking of project documents, issues/risks & tasks
Document check-in, check-out and versioning
Risk management with links to projects and tasks
Project Server integrates with lots of different line of business systems such as SAP, PeopleSoft and Seibel
Expanded set of PDS APIs to build solutions: Timesheet API, Resource pool creation API, Project data creation API, Enterprise custom fields API
Active Directory connector: Sync Project Server resource pool with AD, Sync security with AD group membership lists
Project Professional events, object model and Project Guide enhancements
2) Project 2003 Server is the foundation application server and utilizes SQL Server as the database store:
Essentially enables Project Managers to share project plans broadly, maintaining one version of the “truth”
Project team gains access to real-time project information
Better control over who has access to project information
3) Executives will use web interfaces to make portfolio decisions and track health of projects & programs
Dashboards to easily assess whether work is supporting business
Easy browser access
Insight to make decisions based on financials, schedule, other key performance indicators
4) Project and Resource Managers will use Project Professional to easily create Enterprise project plans.
Establish project schedule with key milestones
Associate key resources
Collaborate with team members via Project Server and PWA
Project Guides to easily propagate templates, methodologies, best practices
5) Team members will use Project Web Access to participate directly and easily:
Executives for access to project scorecards to view project status
Resource Managers for assigning (committed/soft-booked) resources on a project
Team members for access to submit status reports, issues or risks, associate documents and enter time against tasks
Ease of use: Project Web Access, Outlook
6) EPM is part of the Office System, and as such, provides many benefits to users in the form of:
Familiarity
Office 2003 look and feel
lower training costs, higher adoption, etc.
Productivity
Easily take Project information to Word, Visio, PPT
Print Grid/Export to Excel
Importing Project tasks onto Outlook calendar
Reporting actual via Outlook calendar or WSS web-part
Project Server Gateway

9. EPM Solution Deployment Options
Big Bang Approach
Phased Approaches
Deploy all products within the EPM Solution at the same time
Utilize a phased approach to deploy the products within the EPM Solution to address specific pain points
Option 1
Phase 1
Phase 2
The EPM Solution can be deployed in a “Big Bang” approach or deployed in a “Phased” manner in accordance with the customers pain points.
Option 2
Phase 1
Phase 2

10. EPM Solution Deployment Best Practice1 2 5 3 4
The diagram shows the following:
Best practice governance phases (Create, Select, Plan, and Manage): A project will pass through these best practice phases throughout its life cycle.
PPM Life Cycle Steps: These more granular steps provide more detailed overview of the primary activities and events that a project will complete during its life cycle. For example:
In the Create governance phase, a project request is captured and users begin to develop a detailed business case to support the idea.
In the Select governance phase, all competing projects within the portfolio are prioritized and optimized against budgetary constraints. This results in selecting a project portfolio that best aligns with the organization’s strategic priorities.
In the Plan governance phase, the project managers begin to develop the detailed project plans for each of the selected projects before the project is approved and given a baseline.
In the Manage governance phase, the project is tracked to a successful conclusion.
Create the project request in Project Portfolio Server 2007 and build a detailed business case (e.g. cost, resource, benefit, strategic impact, risk, schedule etc.)
Prioritize, optimize and select the project portfolio that maximize ROI and aligns with the organization’s strategic priorities
Utilize the Project Server Gateway to export the selected projects from Project Portfolio Server 2007 to Project Server 2007
Run capacity planning reports, finalize release schedule and develop detailed project plans in Project Server 2007
Track and manage the project to a successful conclusion in Project Server On a recurring basis synchronize project data with MOPPS 2007
Capture the project request and build detailed business case. 1 4
Capacity analysis and detailed project planning 2
Select the optimal project portfolio 5
Track and manage the project to a successful conclusion 3
Export selected projects to Project Server 2007

11. Capture Project Requests/Ideas
Create: Capture Project Requests in an Enterprise Repository
4/21/2017 5:50 AM
Capture all project requests within a central repository, and define business-case templates to standardize the data collection across the organization
Predefined workflows help ensure the projects are subject to the appropriate governance controls throughout their life cycle (from proposal to post-implementation)
Capture All Project, Program, and Application Investments Centrally
With Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 you can capture all projects and programs in the Portfolio Builder module, providing you with a holistic view of all of your investment portfolios in one central system of record. The flexible scorecard in Portfolio Builder enables you to quickly slice and dice the investments across portfolios to create intuitive and informative reports (for example, by line of business, program, or portfolio).
Automate Governance Processes Across the Organization
Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 includes an intuitive workflow designer that enables administrators to define governance phases and multiple workflows, helping to ensure that projects are subject to appropriate controls throughout their entire life cycle. As shown in this slide, each workflow is composed of a series of life cycle steps (such as Propose Idea, Initial Review, Complete Request, Request Review, Portfolio Selection, and Selected) which in turn are mapped to governance phases. The governance phases are used as common denominators to aggregate and report on projects across various workflows.
The phases and workflows establish a blueprint for your organization’s governance framework and help ensure all projects complete the necessary deliverables and receive managerial sign-off before moving to the next life cycle step. This audit functionality keeps stakeholders aware and accountable as projects move from business case creation to consideration to implementation.
Capture Project Requests/Ideas
Governance Workflow
© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This presentation is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, in this summary.

12. Strategic Impact Assessment
4/21/2017 5:50 AM
Create: Business Case Development
Build a detailed business case for each project request in accordance with the governance workflow
General Information
Cost Estimates
Resource Estimates
Use Templates to Streamline the Collection of Data and Metrics
Standardize and streamline the collection of data across the organization by defining templates and forms for each investment type (for example, project and program) using the Portfolio Builder module of Office Project Portfolio Server The following are some examples of templates that can be created to capture critical project data:
Project Request Form: Complete a project request form to capture the high-level information for each new request, such as business description, start and end dates, and sponsors.
Business Case Templates: Develop a detailed business case for each project request in accordance with the governance workflow including:
General Project Information: Capture general project information.
Cost Estimate: Capture detailed cost estimates.
Resource Estimates: Capture detailed resource estimates at the skill level.
Benefits Estimates: Capture both financial and non-financial benefit estimates.
Strategic Impact: Assess how each project supports your organization’s business strategy.
Risk Assessment Questionnaire: Derive a risk score for each project through a configurable risk questionnaire.
Schedule Management: Capture the phases and key milestones.
Issues and Risk Management: Log all issues and risks throughout the project’s life cycle.
Benefit Estimates
Strategic Impact Assessment
Risk Assessment
© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This presentation is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, in this summary.

13. Prioritize Business Drivers
4/21/2017 5:50 AM
Select: Portfolio Prioritization
Use proven techniques to define and prioritize business drivers
Assess the impact of each project request against the prioritized business drivers
Business Drivers
Projects
Prioritize Business Drivers
Impact Assessment
Derive a priority score to evaluate each project request (that is, strategic value, financial value, risk)
Analyze the project portfolio before attempting to make funding decisions
Portfolio Optimizer for PPM
The Portfolio Optimizer helps organizations prioritize business strategy, projects, and programs:
Business Strategy Prioritization:
One of the most critical tasks in the portfolio management process is to define and prioritize the organization’s business strategy. The Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 Portfolio Optimizer module includes the pair-wise comparison matrix used to help executives objectively prioritize business strategy for the upcoming planning horizon.
Project and Program Prioritization:
With potentially hundreds of projects, programs, and applications competing for the same limited budget and resources, formulating common scoring criteria is essential to effectively prioritizing and evaluating the competing investment proposals.
Make use of best practice techniques to automatically derive prioritization to objectively assess projects, programs, and applications.
Project and Programs—Best practice prioritization scores include:
Financial Value: Calculate a project’s financial value (ROI, net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR)) based on the cost and benefit estimates captured in each business case.
Strategic Value: Objectively derive a strategic value score for each project in Portfolio Optimizer based on the project’s impact on the business strategy.
Risk Assessment: Calculate a risk score for each project derived from the risk assessment questionnaire.
Prioritize Projects
Investment Maps
© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This presentation is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, in this summary.

14. Efficient Frontier Modeling Business Alignment Analysis
4/21/2017 5:50 AM
Select: Portfolio Optimization & Advanced Analytics
Benchmark the selected portfolio against the Efficient Frontier
Use sophisticated optimization algorithms to maximize the portfolio’s strategic value under varying budget constraints (that is, cost and resources)
Efficient Frontier Modeling
Calculate and communicate the selected portfolio’s alignment with the organization’s strategic priorities
Portfolio Optimizer for PPM
The Portfolio Optimizer helps organizations select the project and program requests that best align with the organization’s business strategy:
Run what-if optimization scenarios under varying budgetary and business constraints.
Utilize advanced portfolio analytical techniques to refine the selected portfolio. Advanced Portfolio Analytical techniques include:
Break Portfolio Constraints with Efficient Frontier Analysis
Efficient Frontier modeling enables analysts to visually identify the project or program portfolio that will deliver the maximum strategic value under varying constraint thresholds (such as a $5 million budget or a $10 million budget). Each point on the Efficient Frontier represents a different bundle of projects (or programs) from the proposed portfolio. The Efficient Frontier represents the best value. For example, in the diagram you can see that with a $34 million budget you can achieve approximately 72 percent of the portfolio’s total potential strategic value, although the current portfolio solution is only achieving 60 percent. Organizations can use the Efficient Frontier in two ways:
Identify the point of diminishing return: Find the point where the curve begins to flatten, indicating you are paying a lot more to achieve a disproportionate amount of strategic value.
Benchmark the selected portfolio against the Efficient Frontier: Compare the position of the selected portfolio in relation to the Efficient Frontier.
In reality, due to varying constraints (for example, interdependencies, project alternatives, mandatory investments, and resource constraints), most portfolios are sub-optimal and fall beneath the Efficient Frontier. Analysts can use Portfolio Optimizer to identify and break these constraints, which will move the portfolio closer toward the Efficient Frontier and increase the total strategic value from the portfolio under the same budgetary constraints.
Dynamically Assess Your Portfolio’s Business Alignment
The Portfolio Optimizer Business Alignment Framework methodology provides a rational approach for selecting project and program portfolios that best align with business strategy. Executives can dynamically assess the correlation between the business driver priorities and the investment from the selected project or program portfolio. This technique helps you quickly see if you are over- or underinvesting in each of the prioritized business drivers.
‘What If’ Analysis
Business Alignment Analysis
© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This presentation is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, in this summary.

15. Office Project Server Gateway
Select: Project Server Gateway
Utilize the Project Server Gateway to export the selected projects from Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 to Project Server 2007
Office Project Server Gateway
Having selected the optimal project portfolio the Portfolio Analyst can us the Project Server Gateway to export the projects from Portfolio Server 2007 and create projects on Project Server 2007.
The Project Server Gateway is a bi-directional link between Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 and Office Project Server The Gateway ensures data integrity between the two servers throughout a project’s lifecycle.

16. Plan: Capacity Planning Analysis
Maximize Resource Utilization
Identify skill surpluses and deficits across the planning horizon
Finalize project portfolio release schedule
Analyze and communicate training and headcount requirements to HR
Now that the projects have been successfully exported from Project Portfolio Server 2007 to Project Server 2007 the portfolio Analysts can use Project Server’s Resource Center and flexible Reporting Infrastructure to run Capacity Planning analysis. The analysis will help the analyst to:
Identify skill surpluses and deficits across a planning horizon
Finalize the project portfolio release schedule
Analyze and communicate training and headcount requirements to HR
(Note: This analysis is carried out at the generic skill / resource level. Not at the named resource level)

17. Plan: Detailed Planning
Develop Detailed Project Plans
Build the detailed project plan (e.g. detailed tasks, milestones etc.)
Assign name d / individual resources to the plan
Capture inter project dependencies
Finalize and baseline project plan
Synchronize project level data with Office Project Portfolio Server via the Project Server Gateway
Now the Project Manager can begin to build the detailed project plan. This includes:
Adding tasks and milestones
Capturing inter-project dependencies
Assigning named resources (i.e. replacing generic skill placeholders)
Baselinning the project plan
It is also important to synchronize the project data with Project Portfolio Server to ensure data integrity.

18. Manage: Track Project Performance
Track Progress
Collaborate to deliver projects on time and within budget
Share essential information through team project workspaces
Keep teams aligned through task assignments and timesheet reporting.
Proactively predict cost , resource and schedule overruns through KPIs
Use built-in integration to communicate project-related information through Microsoft Office system applications.
Project Workspaces
Timesheets
Task Assignments
Project Manager
Team Members
Timesheets
Project Web Access provides access to timely, business-critical project information stored by Office Project Server 2007, so teams can share knowledge, collaborate smoothly to complete tasks and deliverables, and adjust activities quickly to accommodate project changes and updates
Issues & Risks Mgmt
Status Reports

19. Manage: Measure Portfolio Performance
Transparency, Visibility & Control
Build scorecards & dashboards to measure portfolio performance
Utilize the flexible reporting infrastructure to standardize and streamline the reporting process across the organization
Synchronize project level data with Project Portfolio Server 2007 to enable re-optimization analysis
With Project Server’s Project Center and Report Center you can measure and track projects, programs, and portfolios throughout their life cycle, giving you the visibility to proactively identify potential issues, make decisions, and help ensure that your portfolios deliver maximum business value.
It is important to run regular synchronization events between Project and Portfolio Server to ensure data integrity and to allow the portfolio analysts to run recurring prioritization and optimization events.

20. EPM Solution: Top 10 Benefits
Standardize and automate the governance processes.
Capture all investments within a central repository.
Objectively prioritize business strategy and competing investments.
Align the selected portfolios with the business strategy.
Effectively manage resources.
Collaborate and coordinate easily.
Measure and track portfolio performance.
Get more from existing technology investments.
Tightly integrate with line of business applications.
Quickly realize a return on investment.
1. Standardize and automate the governance processes.
Define multiple workflows to subject each project to the appropriate governance controls throughout its life cycle — from proposal to post-implementation — resulting in lowered costs, faster cycle times, and increased quality.
2. Capture all investments within a central repository.
Consolidate business and information technology (IT) investments within an enterprise repository to improve visibility, insight, and control. The Office EPM Solution enables you to implement repeatable processes as templates to standardize and streamline data collection across the organization. Centralized data facilitates cross project analysis of finances, resources, schedules as well as other data trends and status for informative reports.
3. Objectively prioritize business strategy and competing investments.
Employ proven techniques to define and prioritize your organization’s business strategy for the upcoming planning period, and automatically derive objective prioritization scores to effectively evaluate the competing investments from multiple dimensions.
4. Align the selected portfolios with the business strategy.
Run optimization what-if scenarios to identify tradeoffs and select the optimal portfolio under varying budgetary and business constraints that best align with your organization’s business strategy. Take advantage of advanced portfolio analytical techniques to identify and break the constraints prohibiting the portfolio from reaching the Efficient Frontier.
5. Effectively manage resources.
Without understanding long-term workloads and capacity, companies can experience inefficient hire-fire cycles, resulting in higher overhead, lost knowledge, and poor employee morale. By providing visibility into overall work commitments, actual timesheets, and resource capabilities, the Office EPM Solution helps you create resource plans to align your strategic recruiting and outsourcing with your long-term business objectives.
6. Collaborate and coordinate easily.
Helping to ensure that teams share common goals and work together effectively becomes more vital as organizations become more geographically and culturally diverse. Web-based access to timely, business-critical project information stored by the Office EPM Solution means teams can share knowledge, collaborate smoothly to complete tasks and deliverables, and adjust activities quickly to accommodate project changes and updates.
7. Measure and track portfolio performance.
Effectively measure and track projects, programs, and applications throughout their life cycle, giving you the visibility to proactively identify potential issues, make decisions, and help ensure that your portfolios maximize return on investment (ROI) and improve operational efficiencies.
8. Get more from existing technology investments.
The Office EPM Solution is built on Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services so you can get the most out of your organization’s skills in these Microsoft technologies. The Office EPM Solution also includes pre-built integration with the Microsoft Office system, ERP applications, and the Microsoft collaboration platform. This enables users to contribute data to the Office EPM Solution while working in familiar applications such as Outlook or SharePoint.
9. Tightly integrate with line of business applications.
The well defined Project Server Interface API, the Eventing Model supporting the Windows Workflow Foundation, the SDK with reference samples, and other tools make the Office EPM Solution a flexible and extensible platform to manage your work. Utilize the Project Server Interface, a Web services based API, to seamlessly integrate the Office EPM Solution with General Ledger, HR, ERP, CRM and other line of business applications.
10. Quickly realize a return on investment.
The Office EPM Solution provides organizations with an end-to-end project portfolio management solution. By enabling increased employee productivity, faster cycle times, reduced costs, and improved time management, the Office EPM Solution provides a positive and sustainable return on your investment. In IT portfolio management, software can cut costs 2-5 percent, improve productivity percent, and shift percent of budgets to more strategic projects. In developing and bringing new products to market, the best performers — those who have applied rigorous process and technology to their research and development and go-to-market activities — can reduce time to market by more than 30 percent.