Project Management of ERP Implementations

For many Higher Education institutions the ERP is the most demanding and complex technology project the campus has ever undertaken. A great number of ERP implementations often experience significant budget overruns or are even abandoned, costing millions of dollars and causing untold frustrations.

Professional project management provided by an outside management source, one with experience in ERP projects, can help reduce risk, increase quality, and potentially save millions of dollars for the institution.

Project Management Support Services for Your Implementation
Collegiate Project Services can provide on-site project management resources to help your institution manage your ERP implementation. Our firm has more than fifteen years experience in helping Higher Education institutions successfully manage their ERP implementations.  Collegiate Project Services has experience working with the leading ERP providers. Our project managers are experienced in Higher Education information technology projects and are PMP-certified professionals.

Duties of our Project Manager

• Facilitate the development and refinement of professional, dependency-driven project plans for all phases of the project.
• Provide oversight and scheduling support for the continuous maintenance of the project plans.
  
• Coordinate and participate in weekly schedule updates, ensuring the focus is directed toward keeping critical path tasks on schedule. Constantly monitor performance against the project plan and give early warnings and feedback to project teams whose schedules are slipping.
  
• Intervene as needed to provide schedule compression tools and facilitate schedule compression activities to keep the various project phases on schedule.
  
• Provide a leadership role in the process of identifying and focusing team efforts on the dependencies among the various project components.
  
• Act as a third party advocate for the client in dealing with various project vendors.
  

Duties Related to Project Organization

• Structure, organize, and focus the project team and its sub-teams by delivering the necessary team training, monitoring team performance, and providing interventions as needed to improve the effectiveness of the teams for the life of the project.
  
• Work closely with the project team leaders to ensure the project team addresses and prioritizes its activities, conducts effective team meetings, reaches decisions by consensus, and communicates well with stakeholder groups.
  
• Help structure, focus, facilitate, and become a member of the project steering team to ensure the appropriate guidance is provided, boundaries are established, and barriers to project success are dealt with effectively.
  

Duties Related to Project Communication and Change Management

• Facilitate the development and execution of a project communication plan, as well as communication plans for all project sub-teams, ensure all stakeholders understand the goals of the project, the reason for the project, the progress being made and are prepared to milestone events.
  
• Facilitate better communication among the client's various stakeholder groups, including vendors.
  
• Take a lead role in addressing the cultural change issues of communication, "politics," resistance, teamwork and leadership that could provide barriers to a successful completion of your project. Employ change management principles to help your institution prepare for, manage through, and benefit from this change initiative.
  

Duties Related to Developing Internal Project Management Capabilities

• Provide one-on-one coaching and specialized training, as needed, for key team leaders, sponsors, steering team members, schedulers, and others to improve the roles performed by these individuals for project success.
  
• Develop the internal project management capabilities of your institution's personnel by modeling, involving, and tutoring selected individuals in project management skills, project management software skills, team member skills, group decision-making and problem solving skills, meeting skills, change management skills, and other skills, as needed, to develop talent for future large-scale projects.
  

Shadow Project Management Services

A “shadow” project manager works side-by-side with the leader of your IT project. The shadow project manager ensures that the project is carried out using professional project management processes and tools. This person is a behind-the-scenes “driver” of the project. A shadow project manager can benefit your institution because they are able to devote themselves full-time to managing the project, whereas your internal resource has other duties and responsibilities in the institution.  In certain software implementation projects, the shadow project manager also acts as a third party advocate to help your institution deal with the software vendor.

For More Information
For more information about Project Management of ERP Implementations please call us at 877.454.1290 or contact us by email.