IBM

Industry: Technology | Software
Location: North Carolina
Revenue: $80B

Custom Microsoft PPM

“As a consultant in large and complex delivery, I have worked with numerous partners and vendors over the years and have come to set a lower standard than I set for my own team, but with EPM Solutions, this was not the case. We asked for it, and they delivered.”

Cheryl Dabbs
Lead Project Manager

Big Blue Engages EPM Solutions to Quickly Develop a Proof of Concept for Launching Microsoft PPM

Microsoft PPM Case Study Software Industry

Business Situation

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), an American multinational technology company, provides high-value project schedule management consulting services through the IBM MapIt Solution Center. This specialized unit at Big Blue uses an array of leading-edge tools, methods, and expert services to deliver integrated planning and predictive modeling to improve schedule integrity all while reducing risk.

MapIt’s proprietary tools and utilities work directly with Microsoft Project—the client “scheduling engine” for Microsoft PPM—which, at the time, consisted only of Project Server built on SharePoint. These IBM tools facilitate both project plan quality and metrics based on earned value reporting, predictive analytics, and cause analysis of deliverables at risk.

Client Challenge

Cheryl Dabbs, a lead project manager at MapIt, recalls how EPM Solutions of San Ramon, California was quickly selected to “provide a Microsoft Project Server implementation to support IBM’s efforts in a feasibility study for migrating an existing application from Microsoft Project client to server.” She further added, “EPM Solutions gave us a price and they stuck to it; no overruns, no excuses.”

Greg Winterhalter, a founding member of EPM Solutions, was elated to take on this proof of concept for MapIt. “Not only was it an interesting feasibility engagement for Microsoft PPM,” Greg recalled, “but it also gave me a wonderful opportunity to work with Big Blue again.” Much earlier in his career, Greg owned a technology company, which he eventually took public. During that time, he had developed a unique product—based on an IBM communications protocol—which allowed mini-computers to communicate with mainframes. Impressed with the effectiveness of this technology, IBM became a leading customer of Greg’s start-up.

Within a week of being awarded the contract, Greg once again displayed his technical chops, but this time, in the emerging field of Microsoft-based project portfolio management. He moved quickly and set up the first ever working instance of Microsoft Project Server for his old friend IBM.

Normally, Microsoft Project Server is installed on premise; however, EPM Solutions provided a unique service for hosting Project Server in the cloud to help clients like IBM gain better efficiencies, time to market, and lower costs including maintenance. EPM Solutions, in a forward-thinking manner, provided this service years before Microsoft developed its own cloud version—Project Online—which has since taken the PPM market by storm.

Once the instance of Project Server was running in the EPM Solutions’ hosting center, role-based training was scheduled and provided onsite for the project managers and administrators at MapIt. IBM was extremely pleased with the results. “We never had to ask more than once for something to be changed,” Cheryl Dabbs said. “We received guidance from EPM Solutions that put the impact of change in context so that we could fully anticipate the outcome.”

Robert E. Roth, another senior project manager at MapIt, remarked “As a result of EPM Solutions’ services we were able to land a significant client contract that funded the development of our Microsoft Project Server-based application that generated significant revenue for us.” Overall, EPM Solutions and IBM were a great match. “As a consultant in large and complex delivery, I have worked with numerous partners and vendors over the years and have come to set a lower standard than I set for my own team,” Cheryl Dabbs noted, “but with EPM Solutions, this was not the case. We asked for it, and they delivered. I would welcome the opportunity to work with them in the future.”

Solution & Results

Realizing that going at it alone was not a feasible option, Hess quickly issued a request for proposal and awarded the project in record time to EPM Solutions of San Ramon, California partially based on the highly detailed estimate and step-by-step upgrade plan. Tim was also impressed: “EPM Solutions and its employees were very flexible. They were willing to work around the schedule of the Hess IT team to make the upgrade and migration happen on the extremely tight timeline required by our leadership.”

With the clock ticking, EPM Solutions, as a first measure, immediately set up a complex test environment to begin executing the tedious upgrade and migration plan so no byte of data would be lost and Hess operations would not be interrupted for even a nanosecond. Greg Winterhalter, Senior Director, equated the time-sensitive operation to the “IT and project management version of performing a heart transplant.” The multi-step and iterative process involved many migrations of data to the test environment where it had to be manipulated and cleansed based on multiple error logs.

Some complications arose during the operation including a variety of data corruption errors in SharePoint 2007—the platform that Microsoft Project Server is built on—that had to be isolated, analyzed, and fixed for the test environment. Some of these errors included a top-level site not being available and many missing pages of data. While making use of automated tools to perform the bulk of the migration, EPM Solutions had to resolve the errors and exceptions manually.

Once the test environment was in perfect condition, it was time to perform the most delicate operation—a full migration to the production environment. EPM Solutions was given one weekend by Hess to make this happen. Everything had to be completed by the open of business on Monday morning. Working around the clock that weekend, EPM Solutions team performed a full upgrade and migration to the Hess production server without even the slightest hiccup.

Tim, who now works as an Economic and Decision Analysis Specialist, noted, “EPM employees were very knowledgeable, dedicated, and professional. They made the production cut-over seamless to the end users.” He further added, “Management was very happy with the results and quality of their work.” As evidenced by the Hess experience, delivering what you promise along with providing consistent transparency and trust are the hallmarks of an EPM Solutions client engagement.

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