Main Challenges
Like 90 percent of our potential customers, Happy State Bank was challenged managing their projects with Excel sheets and Word documents. "We weren't managing projects, projects were managing us," said the VP of IT project management, who was hired specifically to create and run the new PMO (project management office) for Happy State Bank.
As a first step toward organizing the PMO, the bank opted for MS Project Desktop and SharePoint for its project management solution. Considering the large investment in both solutions, Happy State Bank decided to leverage their investment in those tools. However, the lack of resources for internal plug-ins and integration between both systems created some unique challenges which became time consuming and inefficient. As the bank matured into a more project-oriented organization they quickly outgrew their home-grown project management system. Their project management challenges were still unresolved, including:
- No centralized control of the project creation process
- Difficult to manage resource allocation and utilization
- Scattered project information
- Too many manual processes – time tracking, issues, reports, etc.
Pushing project data back and forth between MS-Project and SharePoint was not the solution the bank had hoped for. Time constraints, project interruptions and lack of reporting were the leading factors in the search for a new project management solution.
"Eventually, the juice was not worth the squeeze," quipped the VP of IT project management.