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“Pcubed has provided me with the confidence that I am only investing in activities that are aligned with a common strategy and investment is focused exactly where it is needed...”
Bradley Yorke-Biggs
Aston Martin

Audio Product Manufacturer Portfolio Management Solution

Enabling the people, processes, and technology for portfolio management.

The Client

The Client is a worldwide leader in the manufacturing of high-quality, high-fidelity audio and electronic products for automotive, consumer, and professional use. The company has approximately 12,000 employees and global annual revenue of over 3.5B USD.

The Challenge

The Client identified the need to enable identification, selection, and management of programs and projects that align with business strategy. They needed to facilitate accurate reporting of project effort, resource expenditures, overall progress, and they required workflows control of project management activities. Finally, they required detailed execution and monitoring capabilities to deliver accurate and timely information for project managers, program managers, and executives through time recording, project progress, and dashboard status reports.

The Pcubed Solution

The Client's IT Project Management Office (PMO) is managing an initiative that will provide the Client with the capability to strategically align, prioritize, and monitor all programs and projects on a global basis while working within the identified resource and budget constraints of the organization. The initial scope of this project focuses on obtaining visibility and control of the IT portfolio for the Automotive and Consumer businesses, then eventually expanding the portfolio to include Professional and Corporate projects for a complete view of all IT projects globally.

Solution - example screen

The Pcubed Solution is comprised of the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution - to enable top-down strategic portfolio planning and bottom-up program, project, and resource management - and The Project Group (TPG) PSLink and ResourceLink to integrate the EPM Solution with SAP. The integration between Microsoft Office Project Server and Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server has been extended with a Pcubed solution to synchronize budgeted cost and resources between both applications as well as with SAP. In summary, the Pcubed solution integrates all the fundamental components of the Microsoft Office EPM Solutions with SAP budgeting and financial controls.

Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server provides the IT PMO with the capability to monitor the governance gateways and ensures that each project has the required information to justify the capital and operational expenditure funds that will be requested from the Finance Department. Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server also includes attributes that will help support project prioritization and resource planning during the annual budgeting process by capturing costs, resource estimates, risks, and timing information. After project funding has been approved, project managers will begin detailed project planning using Microsoft Office Project Server. Once the project enters the Deliver phase, project financial controls will be integrated with SAP by creating an image of the project in the SAP Project Systems module. A resource and cost budget will be established in SAP based on the project plan and actual resource hours and project costs will be exchanged between SAP and Microsoft Office Project Server.

Solution - example screen

The Results

With integration between the Microsoft Office EPM Solution and SAP, project managers can now deliver their projects while having visibility of actual labor, actual costs, and overall project timing. The Client now takes benefit of the following:

  • A common repository for all programs, projects, and resources
  • A semi-automated PMO workflow for governance and oversight of the IT portfolio
  • Visibility of all IT projects with online status reporting for capital expenditure projects
  • Resource planning and actual time collection for projects and administrative activities
  • Project time and cost comparison between budget and actual at the project, department, and organization level
  • Dynamic project team collaboration for documents, issues, risks, and changes
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“Working together with the Pcubed team was very constructive. They were concise during the implementation project, and had immediate understanding of our business needs, which lead to quick results.”
- VP of Site Management and PMO
“We required a powerful enterprise program management system with the flexibility to handle a challenging multi-national, multi-company environment. Pcubed worked with our IT Program Management Office to design and build a world-class solution based on proven project management capabilities. This will be an important tool for us as we rely on IT to provide support for our suite of legendary audio and infotainment brands.”
- Director of Program Management