In the period from 2014 to 2017, in one interesting development company (with 300-600 employees, the number of people in the organization changed significantly during this period), within the framework of the organizational development department, I implemented, together with a team of analysts from the organizational development department, a number of projects to optimize and automate business processes through the implementation of the following systems:
- corporate portal (MS Share Point) — processes of searching for information, informing, ordering internal corporate services
- electronic document management system, EDM (MS Share Point WSS Docs) — processes of preparation, revision and approval, approval of documents, processes of issuing orders and monitoring their execution
- sales/customer relationship management system, CRM (MS Dynamics) — processes of putting an object up for sale, sales of primary real estate, reporting
- corporate/information project management system, CPMS/ISUP (MS Project Server + MS Share Point) — calendar and network planning processes, communications — joint work of the project team (on the portal), engineering documentation management processes, formation of analytical project reporting
In a few words, briefly, through the “grid” of the same parameters, I will tell you about each project.
The “project team” refers to the core of the working group, not all employees involved in individual tasks. “Reasons” – what circumstances preceded the implementation of the new system. “Budget” – the general order of expenses for licenses, methodology, implementation, excluding equipment, these prices are publicly available from vendors and implementers (contractors).
1. CORPORATE PORTAL (MS SHARE POINT/ WSS PORTAL)
The reasons for implementation are that the previously existing web page with the company’s employee phone numbers no longer meets the company’s growing needs, especially in terms of informing new employees about how the company is structured, who does what, the company’s image as an employer, etc.
Sponsor – CEO
Customer – HR manager, head of the administrative department
Project manager – head of the Organizational Development Department
Project team – UOR (manager, business analyst), UIT (MS Share Point specialist)
Timeframe : August – October 2014 (development and implementation stage)
Budget (approximately) – 1.5 million rubles.
Functionality — a single information platform for all company employees, sales office addresses, contacts/phones, corporate news, promotions, events, external PR activity, corporate regulatory documents, internal services — ordering a courier, ordering certificates from the accounting/HR department, ordering a driver, etc.
Vendor/Solution — WSS Consulting/ WSS Portal, a “closed” solution on the open Share Point platform
Contractor – WSS Consulting, then MIGO
Risks – during the implementation of this project, there was a change in the company’s top management.
Integration — Help Desk (total number of requests/number of active requests), ECM (total number of active documents at the approval stage related to this employee/number of documents awaiting approval by this employee/number of overdue documents)
In the spring of 2014, the realization came that something more was needed, the Company is growing, – it is necessary to create a common information platform for the staff, where employees, and first of all, new employees, will find all the necessary information about the company – employee contacts, who has birthdays when, notifications about new employees, see the dynamic organizational structure of the company, and understand where who sits, what the department does, who to contact on what issue, and how the company lives as a whole.
KPI — a corporate portal can be a source of indicators of employee activity, involvement in corporate initiatives and projects.
2. ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, EDMS (MS SHARE POINT/ WSS DOCS)
The reasons for implementation are the imperfection and long period of development of our own solution on the Oracle platform, long waiting in the queue for tasks to program new needs from business customers on our own, frequent changes in approval routes due to frequent changes in the organizational structure, due to the growth of the company, and long, labor-intensive readjustment of approval routes in the previous ECM system.
Sponsor – President
The Customer is the heads of the legal department, the financial department (in other companies the Customer is the office work and document management department, but this is not our case)
Project Manager – Head of Organizational Development Department
Project team — UOR (Head of Organizational Development Department, UOR 1 Business Analyst, UOR 2 Business Analyst), UIT (MS Share Point Specialist), contractor
Deadlines — May-June 2016 development of the solution methodology/preparation for trial operation, July 2016 phased launch of new processes for coordinating cost contracts, January 2017 — launch of the Instructions module, March 2017 — launch of modules for coordinating acts of completed work (ACR), tender packages (TP)
Budget (approximately) – 6.5 million rubles during 2015.
Functionality — automatic formation of the composition of approving/informed employees/roles, approval routes depending on the set of conditions; development, approval, visa of cost contracts, AVR (acts of completed work), TOR for tender (package of tender documentation), instructions, outgoing letters, ORD (organizational and administrative documentation — OM, orders), contract templates, project business plans, planning decisions, normative and methodological documents (regulations, provisions, standards). Structured storage and convenient search of documents. Collegial work with 1 document, with recording of document versions. Relationships between documents. System of informing about the delay in document approval. Substitution mechanisms. Assessment of the quality of approval. Formation of analytical reports on approval processes. Mobile access to the EDMS.
The sequence of tasks during the implementation of the system (the tactics of “small step-by-step victories”) is 1) cost contracts for the main activity, 2) assignments, 3) cost contracts for supporting processes, 4) contract templates, 5) acts (AVR), 6) a package of tender documentation (TOR for the tender)
Vendor/Solution — WSS Consulting/WSS DOCS, a “closed” solution on the open Share Point platform
Contractor — WSS Consulting/MIGO
Integration — corporate portal, CRM, 1C Treasury (Bit Finance)
Methodology – a matrix of approval routes for priority types of documents has been developed (types of documents X positions/roles = function at the intersection: approval/informing, sequential/parallel), approval subjects/areas of responsibility for each approver have been developed/approved (which made it possible to avoid a situation where everyone approves everything), standards for document approval by types of documents and roles/positions of employees, etc.
Requirements from the Customer (example) — assessment by the Control and Accounting Department of the quality of contract preparation, approval, elimination of comments, automatic generation of the composition of approvers and approval routes, tender passport, transparent connection of the tender procedure with the process of approving the contract with the winner of the tender, related documents, types of contracts = classifier of the cash flow statement + part of the items from the income statement, etc.
Features of the methodology built into the system from Vendors (example) – agree with irreparable comments – this type of decision specified in the reference book when coordinating documents was unacceptable for us, we made it inactive
The result is that in conditions of an increase in the number of contracts and an increase in the number of approvals, the average value of preparation, approval, and visa of contracts = 10 working days, 2 weeks.
Risks:
- against the background of constant changes in the organizational structure, it was especially interesting to implement the ECM, when the ECM solution itself closely depends on the organizational structure, names of departments, positions, powers, which were constantly in dynamics… At the time of the project, the employee directory was maintained in the ECM separately, manually, integration with another system for the employee directory was not implemented, but there were plans… The NSI project was initiated later)
- The functionality of the “assignment management” module “did not take off” for a rather funny reason: when an employee-executor postponed a deadline once again, the manager no longer wanted to respond to this postponement, automatic requests to the manager to approve the postponement forced us to abandon the use of this block, although it would have been more logical to come up with a way to minimize postponements of deadlines)
- During the implementation of this project, there was a change in the company’s top management.
Resistance – some employees were sure that the ECM slows down the approval of contracts, since there are too many people approving them, but when an example of approving a specific contract was clearly examined at a meeting, no one could cut anyone or remove them from the route.
KPI — the ECM system should be a source of accounting indicators of executive discipline when working with company documents — how many of what types of documents are promptly initiated/approved by an employee, for what reasons approval delays occur, the total time frame for document approval.
For example, the indicator, — the share of timely approved contracts in the EDMS , — the ratio of the number of timely approved contracts to the total number of contracts received for approval in the planning and accounting period (quarter) is quite important. The criterion for the timeliness of approval is determined by the standard time for approvals specified in the EDMS.
3. SALES MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS, CRM (MS DYNAMICS)
The reasons for implementation are the imperfection of our own development on the Oracle platform, long waiting times in the queue for programming tasks for new needs from business customers on our own, errors in sales reports,
Sponsor – President
Customer – Commercial Director
Project Manager – Head of the UOR
Project team — UOR (Head of Organization Development Department, UOR business analyst), UIT (specialist/developer), contractor
Deadlines – methodology November 2014 – May 2014, launch into pilot industrial operation – June 2015, refusal to maintain the second “old” system – March 1, 2016, 9 months lived in two, or rather, in three systems, plus MS Excel.
Budget (approximately) – 8 million rubles for 2014-2015.
Functionality — business process of selling primary real estate (chains of planned tasks for each type of real estate contract-transaction: apartment, parking space, office space), business process of putting an object on sale (building/unit/…), sales reporting for departments (commercial, financial, project management). Management of promotions/discounts, prices. Protocol of each transaction. Analytical operational reporting package for the needs of operational (weekly/monthly) control/sales management.
Not done (not a priority task, lack of customer/resources) – post-sales service process, entering sales plans
Vendor/Solution – Microsoft/MS CRM Dynamics
Contractor – TISA (ARK Realtor)
Requirements from the Customer (example) – recalculation of the schedule of customer payments by events – actual date of signing, actual date of registration of the contract
Risks – during the implementation of this project, there was a change in the top management and commercial director of the company.
Integration — distribution of customer payments under contracts (1C Treasury/Bit Finance), prices/discounts/meters — websites for each development project, approval of customer contracts in the ECM, dynamic visually beautiful reporting to “generals” in Qlick Sense
KPI — the CRM system should be a source of accounting indicators of the effectiveness of the sales process, the sales funnel, with the help of this system it is possible to evaluate the quality/duration of each stage of the sales process for 1 client/employee/client category/employee category.
Examples of indicators: contracting, revenue, a set of indicators for the sales funnel (ratio of meetings to calls, concluded contracts to meetings/showings of apartments), timeliness of preparation of sales reports, receipt of expected money from clients, the share of cancelled booking contracts, main contracts for the purchase of real estate.
4. CORPORATE/INFORMATION PROJECT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, CMPS/ISUP (MS PROJECT SERVER + MS SHARE POINT)
The reasons for implementation are the lack of uniform standards for managing investment and construction projects, the lack of standard regular reporting on projects, and a lack of understanding of the complex consequences of failure to meet the deadlines of the KSG (calendar-network schedule) of the project.
Sponsor – President
The customer is the president, and to some extent, representatives of the DPU (Project Management Department)
Project manager – head of the Organizational Development Department
Project team — UOR (head of UOR, business analyst of UOR), head of planning department, MS Share Point platform specialist, contractor
Deadlines : April-September 2016 concept of the ISUP, July-September 2016 prototype of the ISUP
Implementation logic (project schedule) — Stage 1 — development of the concept of the ISUP (project management information system), Stage 2 — pilot implementation of the ISUP prototype on 2 test projects (one project — point development, the second project — complex, 5 construction stages). Stage 3 — Refinement of regulations, implementation, integration (1C, ECM), project budgeting, Stage 4 — Commissioning.
Budget (approximately) – 6-7 million rubles.
Functionality of the KSUP:
- project portal as a single information platform for project data/documents for data exchange both within the company and with external general designers and general contractors, PWA
- KSP (calendar-network planning), MS Project Server
Vendor/Solution — Microsoft/ MS Share Point + MS Project Server … + later began to use Synchro due to the ability to visualize the construction site as the work schedule was being executed.
Contractor – first Acceleration, then a freelancer with deep knowledge of MS Share Point
Integration – planned with the 1C accounting system, with CRM (in terms of project reporting), with the ECM (links to documents, instructions)
Methodology — a concept of a project management information system for a development company (PMI: 2017-kontseptsiya-isup-dlya-developerskoy-kompanii , a draft document outlining the approach to developing a PMI, the basic rules for constructing a PMI) was developed, units of measurement for recording the % of work completed (floor/section) were developed, a number of corporate rules for forming calendar-network schedules (CNS) were developed, for example, the structure of objects is primary for structuring work in the project schedule, the correspondence of the work structure to the cost structure at the BDD level, etc.
Risks –
- During the implementation of this project, there was a change in the contractor, senior management and the company’s top management team.
- Risks (individual examples) – PWA – unfriendly interface for the average user,
- PWA directories cannot be synchronized with MS Share Point 2013 directories using the standard functionality,
- the system “slows down” when maintaining schedules of 20-30 thousand jobs,
- the multi-user collaborative interface (PWA) is implemented through an inconvenient thin client without adaptive layout,
- the links between the master schedule and the detailed schedules of subprojects do not work correctly when changes are made “from below” (milestones “at the top” in the master schedule are not updated correctly);
- The requirements in the contract templates with general designers and general contractors do not take into account the requirements for working with the customer’s ISUP, our corporate cost/work classifiers, etc.
KPI — the ISUP/KSUP system is a tool for assessing the quality/efficiency of project implementation processes, project management. Project assessment based on a typical list of control points for the implementation of a development project. Strategic, functional control points of the project.
