Ford and the Premier Automotive Group

Pcubed developed a customized project management system to prioritize and manage resources while improving global communication.

The Client

One of the world's largest automotive manufacturers, Ford and the Premier Automotive Group (PAG), working within their European Customer Information Systems (ECIS). The system is central to supporting their customer relationship management strategy.

The Challenge

At any one time ECIS is running 30-40 projects simultaneously while supporting several programs across multiple countries and Brands. With so much going on, the need to reduce variability and improve consistency and repeat business was crucial, but did not always meet with bottom line accountability. The client required a partner to help overhaul its project management system and allow proactive and informed executive decisions.

Additional aspects to be considered were:

• An enhanced ability to recognize and budget for changes, to reduce overspend and overruns
• To optimize the Client's existing project management system
• Help ECIS show its clients how it is achieving their goals and adding value

Other key challenges included:

• The system needed to be coordinated with marketing and sales, dealerships, financial departments and customer response centers
• Overall collection and management of customer and prospect information required an improved strategy and implementation

The Pcubed Solution

Having gained an understanding of the existing process within ECIS, Pcubed developed a consistent project management control mechanism leveraging from the existing infrastructure and current project management. The solution was deployed on a showcase program and 'proved out' before implementing it across the department. The objective was to implement a measurable set of common control processes across the portfolio of projects. Pcubed best practice PM processes were evaluated and adjusted to suit the specific client environment and then implemented. They included:

• Issue, Risk, Change & Cost Management throughout the project control cycle using Microsoft Project enabling proactive management decisions to be made based on real project metrics
• Coaching and mentoring of ECIS staff to enable them to take responsibility for new aspects of Project Management

Key elements of the solution included:

• The reduction of 'actual work effort' on projects to the 'planned work effort' from 60% to 15% while project overruns have been reduced by 85%
• The identification of new business requirements totaling $900k through an improved Change Management process
• Informed decisions are now made based on accurate and real data
• The prioritization of scarce resources and proactive management of issues while improving the way it communicates with its clients