Project management services provider, C2, is rolling out Project Portfolio Office, an online project portfolio management (PPM) and collaboration application, to meet its need for a more integrated approach to its project management activities.

More and more organisations are realising the benefits of investing in a dedicated project management team, especially for larger, complex projects which introduce significant risks and expenditure.

With this in mind, C2 Project Management Services aims to provide its customers with the specialised skills and services required for the effective planning and management of their projects, and thereby reduce the risk of project cost and time overruns.

Hilton Roos, project manager at C2, states that the organisation sought a project management system that combined effective functionality with ease of use, allowing it to more efficiently manage its projects and programmes, with a view to producing better quality business deliverables and generating improved management information.

“C2 is involved in the provision of numerous project management projects that need to be tightly planned and executed, usually within constrained parameters. We were finding that project reporting and tracking, and portfolio and programme management, were becoming quite challenging in a number of respects.

“By implementing PPO, we will have improved visibility and access to a common, consolidated, real-time view of the status of all our projects and workload per resource, allowing us to generate relevant and appropriate decision-support information. PPO provides the best fit for our current business needs, as it will assist in streamlining the processes and procedures for all our project managers,” he explains.

Prior to implementing PPO, there was no centralised storage of project documentation. “We needed a solution that provided for central storage, retention and faster access to project-related and other documentation. Real time access to these documents was critical to reduce duplication of work.”

At this stage, the C2’s main users of PPO will be its project managers and administrators, the company’s management, and third party contractors, partners and suppliers. Using PPO will allow these project teams and stakeholders a far greater visibility of the status of work in their projects.

Says Guy Jelley: Project Portfolio Office CEO: “Access to the required reports and dashboards that include all project, programme and portfolio information to track, manage and prioritise, is key in a multi-project environment. Providing a proper, dynamic document repository, which provides easy access to project documents, knowledge and lessons, is also critical for any project team.

“Additionally, as a cloud-based application, PPO is easy to use, yet also enterprise capable. In short, PPO ticked all the boxes for C2, and was the ideal choice to meet its specific needs.”

Roos says that the software’s ease of use, tried and tested web-based capabilities and reputation, plus the fact that it can easily be customised and its affordable support service, all played a role in the national C2 selecting the tool.

“From a support point of view, PPO is the only solution of its type that has been developed in South Africa and is locally supported. This, plus its ease of implementation, made it a great fit for C2’s requirements and maturity levels,” he explains.