Old Mutual Retail Mass Market, a division of international financial services group, Old Mutual, has implemented Post Vision Technology’s Project Portfolio Office (PPO) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) project management solution to assist it in automating its manual process for reporting on projects, programmes and portfolio, thereby streamlining the previously labour intensive and prone-to-human-error procedure.
“Old Mutual has the challenge of operating from two offices, one located in Johannesburg and the other situated in Cape Town. It therefore required a project management tool that in addition to delivering consistent reporting quicker could also timeously be accessed by a wider audience,” says Rae Henderson, managing director at CPM, the PPO partner responsible for the Old Mutual Retail Mass Market implementation.
He adds that the division also had a need to implement a project management methodology and publish this in the project office tool, which would automate governance processes.
“The automation of Old Mutual Retail Mass Market’s data and the consolidation of new information from its projects to both the portfolio and strategic reporting level, now adds to the credibility and accuracy of such data and reduces the effort involved by removing the need for duplication. This is because PPO makes use of data from the original project-level point of entry. Furthermore, automation of the project governance and framework supports adherence and the ability to audit, as all project artifacts are stored in a central repository with the necessary securities in place.”
With its firm focus on operational efficiency, the Old Mutual Retail Mass Market project office undertook a wide assessment of both local and international project management solution offerings available on the market. PPO was deemed to be the best value option for a number of reasons, such as ease of implementation, simplicity of the charge model and the extent of internal system administration capability, which enables ongoing customisation and greatly limits the need for extensive/ expensive consultation.
Initially project managers, business analysts and project support administrators will be using PPO. “The intention is to incrementally roll out PPO across all project team members and to enable direct access for reporting and dashboard viewing for the Old Mutual Retail Mass Market general management team, who immediately appreciated the power of the graphic reporting capabilities that greatly simplify the interpretation of base data.”
Guy Jelley, CEO of Post Vision Technology, says he is pleased with the adoption and utilisation of PPO at Old Mutual Retail Mass Market and that the tool has proven itself to be of value by increasing project efficiency within the company.
“Project insight, reporting and risk management are more accurate, mainly due to the quality of information being enhanced, thanks to PPO enabling a single, automated point of entry,” he says.
