By Kimberly McDonald Baker
Project Partners worked with Iberdrola Renewables to implement their Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management system – which resulted in awards for both Iberdrola Renewables and Project Partners.
Iberdrola Renewables is a very exciting company in the fast growing renewable energy field. Its portfolio of power assets require 24-hour energy management and scheduling, every day of the year.
The firm identified several key challenges they wanted their new Enterprise Project Portfolio Mangement system to address. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP
Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Projects Applications Release 12 provides rich functionality to support multi currency processing capabilities in the areas of accruing revenue and generating invoices. Revenue is always processed in the project functional currency, as distinct from the project currency and project funding currency. Revenue amounts derived in the billing transaction currency (invoice processing currency) are converted to project functional, funding and project currency during the revenue generation process. The Release 12 EBS system tracks and posts the revenue, unbilled receivables and unearned revenue in both the functional and billing transaction currency to the general ledger, thereby giving full visibility, both at the project level and in the general ledger, of the details of revenue in the different currency options. Read the rest of this entry »
By Jason Ames, PMP
Concluding our discussion from the prior blog articles, we now address success factors number 4 and 5.
Finding the Bottlenecks
One of the big advantages to having an Enterprise Project Portfolio Management system is the ability to see how each project affects the rest of the projects. Project managers have been trained to look at the critical path of their own projects but do they know if other projects are impacting their performance?
Ask yourself these questions:
- Do team members work on multiple projects?
- Does your project share a facility with other projects?
- Is your project dependent on another project’s output? Read the rest of this entry »
By Jason Ames, PMP
Continuing our discussion from the prior blog article, we are now ready to address success factor number 4:
Determining which Projects to Start and When to Shut Them Down
Selecting the right projects is as important, if not more important, to your success as executing projects efficiently. The projects you select should support your firm’s strategic direction and contribute to the bottom line. Once projects have been selected they need to be ranked against each other to determine which projects are the most critical and who will win when resource conflicts exist. Just selecting and ranking projects is not enough, projects need to be continually reevaluated to ensure that they still meet your organization’s strategic direction. Over time priorities change, new opportunities arise, project ROI decreases, so you need to know how changes effect your project portfolio and where to put your resources. Read the rest of this entry »
By Jason Ames, PMP
Continuing our discussion from the prior blog article, we are now ready to address success factor number 3 in the Key Drivers to EPPM Success.
Measuring What’s Important
Team members will work to what they are measured against, so it is important to ensure that you are measuring the right things and that management is encouraging the right actions. It does not make any sense for a team to spend lots of money on overtime when cost is the critical factor. Former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden used to say “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.”
When a program starts it is important to establish the measurement criteria. If your project has a fixed budget you should be targeting cost controls and allow your schedule to slip if necessary. If you have fixed deliverable milestones you do everything possible to complete them on time. Too often organizations measure non-value-added metrics.
What should be done to ensure this does not happen? Read the rest of this entry »
By Jason Ames, PMP and Kimberly McDonald Baker
Continuing our discussion from the prior blog article, we are now ready to address success factor number 2 in the Key Drivers to EPPM Success.
All Business Systems Talk to Each Other
An Enterprise Project Portfolio Management system is one of many business systems that an organization may use to improve its operations, but it must not live in a vacuum. An organization’s projects touch accounting through project costs and expenditures. Projects touch engineering through cost and material estimating, drawing releases and change orders. Service projects are affected when scheduling client engagements. Read the rest of this entry »
By Jason Ames, PMP and Kimberly McDonald Baker
Too often organizations make an investment in an Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) system but they fail to recognize the full benefits. One of the reasons is that people fail to see an enterprise PPM solution as more than just a scheduling tool.
When used properly, however, an EPPM system can be a critical factor in driving business value, not only by making sure a project stays on schedule but also via ensuring that the right projects are selected, resources are used efficiently and decision makers have the information they need to drive corporate strategy.
Key Drivers of EPPM Success
1. Top down commitment, bottom up participation
2. All business systems talk to each other
3. Measuring what’s important
4. Determining which projects to start and when to shut them down
5. Finding the bottlenecks
6. Constant learning
This series of blog articles will address each of the above success factors. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP
Oracle E-Business Tax delivers comprehensive functionalities that address the unique requirements of tax calculations, processing, accounting and reporting requirements in the different feeder applications. No longer are tax features defined and configured in the respective modules and applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite Payables, Oracle Receivables, and Oracle Projects. The Oracle E-Business Tax module provides for a central repository to define and hold the tax contents and records for the requirements of the modular applications. Tax services are provided to the needs of e business suite through a two way effective interchange of transaction and tax data between the applications and the robust tax engine that resides in Oracle E-Business Tax. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP
Oracle Report Manager is an online report distribution system that provides a secure and centralized location to produce and manage point-in-time reports. Report producers submit, publish, and set security for reports. Report consumers view and approve reports. Reports can be published and presented to certain responsibilities without additional security or a variety of security models can be applied, allowing only authorized users to view entire reports or parts of reports. In addition, we can use specific templates to integrate reports displayed by Report Manager using the organization’s individual style. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP
Oracle Advanced Global Intercompany System (AGIS) is a powerful application designed to handle the complex Intercompany accounting and processing requirements of global corporations. It has been designed and built using the OA Framework that is easy to use, and yet very sophisticated and rich in feature sets. It leverages the core building blocks of R 12 architecture in the areas of Legal Entity, Trading Community Architecture, Sub Ledger Accounting for Transaction Account Definition, workflow integration for processing and Approvals Management Application(AME) for transaction approval. The greatest benefit of the application is its ease of use for multiple companies belonging to different legal entities and Primary Ledger(s) across the globe that shares the same Oracle Application instance. Read the rest of this entry »
