OpenText home page.
Customer stories

Leading Telco Operator logo Leading Telco Operator

Leading telco operator reduces time-to-market by 40% and stream lines the running of 1,700 projects a year with OpenText™ Project and Portfolio Management

Leading Telco Operator logo

Outcomes

  • Centralizes all project information in one place and offers powerful reporting functionality
  • Reduces time-to-market by 40%
  • Cuts costs by eliminating the need for multiple tools and by supporting a 20% reduction in workforce
  • Prompts users to keep information updated and makes data available with intuitive dashboards

Challenge

Ensure the efficient management and successful resolution of business critical projects.

Telecommunication technology evolves rapidly and the pace of change is matched by increased customer demands. Operators face intense competitive pressure to launch new products and services, but many find that their traditional structures and processes are not built to cope with the pressure. That was the challenge faced by a leading Middle East operator which manages an average of 1,700 projects a year for new products, offers or services.

Before using OpenText™ Project and Portfolio Management, time-to-market for new products and services was a big issue because it was necessary to speak with a lot of different people to capture the necessary information. Now this is no longer the case because all the information related to specific services or products is stored in OpenText Project and Portfolio Management.

Company Manager
Leading UAE Telco

“We run about 1,700 projects a year and it was a challenge to effectively monitor them all. Some project managers were using Microsoft Project and some were using Excel to keep track of projects in their individual areas. This use of disparate systems made it very difficult for the Project Management Organization (PMO) to collect all the information it needed to give a comprehensive overview to senior management. Reporting itself was a problem so it was difficult to know the exact status of each project and make best use of resources. We needed a tool that would enable us to collate all the information in one place and meet tight time-to-market deadlines.”

The operator issued a Request for Proposal to test the OpenText™ Project and Portfolio Management and since it was an existing customer using hardware and software, OpenText Project and Portfolio Management was a strong contender. Proof of Concept tests delivered successful results and the impressive market share of OpenText Project and Portfolio Management was another factor that made it the chosen solution.

Details

Solution

OpenText™ Project and Portfolio Management is designed to help project managers cope with time, cost and resource management challenges by consolidating project data into one place for better status visibility, improved reporting and more effective forward planning. It includes many different modules and the company currently employs Demand Management, Project Management, Program Management and certain elements of Resource Management. The Demand Management module captures all project and non-project requests so users know who is asking for what and can allocate resources. Stakeholders have a comprehensive picture of past, present and future demands so requests can be prioritized, assigned, viewed and spread across multiple dimensions to identify trends. The Project Management module is designed for easier management of large, geographically dispersed enterprise environments. It integrates project management and process controls to reduce the number of schedule over-runs, so reducing project risks and costs.

The automation feature is central OpenText Project and Portfolio Management, the Program Management module eliminates the need for multiple point tools and paper manuals by automating processes for managing scope, risk, quality, budgets and schedules.

Resource Management provides comprehensive resource analysis which includes both strategic and operational activities at any stage of the work lifecycle. It gives a holistic view of where internal or contracted resources are committed and enables managers to respond to changes with a clear understanding of resource capacity and work prioritization.

The customer was assisted by a software and services company, OPTiiM. Headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, with 50+ dedicated consultants, OPTiiM has pioneered the wave of OpenText Project and Portfolio Management adoption in the region. With over 40 OpenText Project and Portfolio Management implementations under their belt, its team has the experience required to turn every OpenText Project and Portfolio Management initiative into a successful story.

OPTiiM assisted in both the process design and the technical implementation of the OpenText Project and Portfolio Management solution. OPTiiM also drives innovation in the OpenText Project and Portfolio Management space by exploring unaddressed business problems and providing adequate automation for them. Some examples are automated master planning, improved mobile reporting, and more.

Currently, the operator has OpenText Project and Portfolio Management licenses for 1,500 users and the tool is used purely for its UAE operation. Use of OpenText Project and Portfolio Management started with projects in the IT department and was then extended into the Marketing and Engineering departments and the PMO. OpenText Project and Portfolio Management starts at the very beginning of the project process when researchers use it to gather the information required to support proposals for possible new projects. Other parts of the organization, such as the tendering section, also use OpenText Project and Portfolio Management software to capture information—in fact any department that needs to follow set processes can benefit from OpenText Project and Portfolio Management.

Results

OpenText™ Project and Portfolio Management now consolidates all necessary data into a single source of information and provides sophisticated dashboards and reporting capabilities to make vital information available to all stakeholders.

“Technically, OpenText Project and Portfolio Management is state of the art,” comments the manager. “It provides a repository for projects, related documents and any notes and actions related to them. We have instant updates on project status and we also have demand, traceability and tracking mechanisms. We can use it for publicity planning and also for demand forecasting and future planning, because we can see the complexity of new project scopes. This results in proper project execution, project planning and demand management.”

OpenText Project and Portfolio Management delivers real-time enterprise reporting and support for ad hoc queries so senior management can now be provided with a host of comprehensive reports on which to make business decisions. These include Key Performance Indicator and Service Level Agreement reporting, weekly status and progression reports, demand statistics, demand control reports and pending project management reports. To ensure that information is always up-to-date, OpenText Project and Portfolio Management also provides auditing functionality which constantly reminds people to store their data in the system.

“Now we can be much more agile, which enables us to produce services, projects and new products more quickly and efficiently,” says the spokesperson. “The feedback from other departments is that our time-to-market is 40% faster than before we were using OpenText Project and Portfolio Management. We are also saving money because there is no need to buy multiple tools to store and provide information. An efficiency exercise aimed at optimizing projects also resulted in further savings from a 20% reduction in the workforce.”

We need to constantly provide new services to remain competitive. This means running approximately 1,700 projects a year so efficient project management is critical to the success of the company.

Company Manager
Leading UAE Telco

About Leading Telco Operator

Leading Telco Operator logo

Leading telecom operators must constantly launch new products and services to meet the competitive challenges of their demanding market. For one Middle East operator, this means running 1,700 projects a year and ensuring the quickest time-to-market, so efficient project management is critical to the business. Its answer is to use OpenText Project and Portfolio Managementsoftware.

How can we help?