Benefits Realization

UMT360 Blog

Is That Really The Outcome You Were Hoping For?

Why do you invest in projects and programs?  A simple question, but one that many employees likely can’t answer.  All investments are made to generate an outcome.  Whether that’s financial, reputational, regulatory, or any other category label you want to apply, every investment – in projects, programs, products, capabilities, technologies, et al has to produce ...

Is Robust Benefits Realization Finally In Reach?

Part 5 in a series on how to extend the value of Microsoft Project Online & Project Server…By now we know how important good business cases are to ensuring good project and program selection. A business case helps the organization determine the relative value of investments, and are also used to evaluate and prioritize competing initiatives. But ...

Shaking The Traditional PMO… Like A Polaroid Picture

The UMT360 team just returned from the PMO Symposium in South Florida, where we met lots of folks interested in learning about transforming their PMO. Symposium attendees stopping by the UMT360 booth learned about the benefits of establishing a strategic PMO and participated in the UMT360 PMO Maturity Assessment. The assessment survey helps organizations picture ...

Powering The Strategic PMO

You’re probably familiar with the grim statistics. Industry analysts tell us that traditional PPM is failing to deliver the anticipated results. And despite continued and significant investments in PPM, companies are still losing up to 46% of the planned business value from their project portfolios. Clearly, the status quo isn’t working. But a new breed ...

Just What is a Strategic PMO?

UMT360’s recent webinar schedule has focused on enabling PMOs to be strategic. Great topics, with some world-class PMO professionals including Learning How to Establish a Strategic PMO with Carl Souchereau from SNC Lavalin T&D, and Changing the PMO Status Quo with Frank La Rocca from ConEd. In fact, we’ve seen so much interest in the ...

Calling All Strategic PMOs (And Those Looking to Become One)

Back in July, we ran a successful webinar discussing what it takes to create a strategic PMO. The webcast, led by Carl Souchereau, formerly of TransAlta and now Project Director at SNC Lavalin, provided practical advice around mastering the important yet tactical aspects of project management as well as taking strategic responsibility for managing the ...

Key Issues Shaping IT Investment Strategies: Interesting Results from Recent Webcast Polls

As the enterprise performance crisis pushes IT investments back to the top of IT leadership concerns, we ran three surveys aimed at understanding where the market is at with respect to IT investment strategies. The questions, asked during the live webinar, Why Integrated IT Portfolio Management Matters, conducted on July 29th, 2014, focused on the ...

What is Portfolio Management?

Ask ten people to define portfolio management and you’ll likely receive ten different answers. Of the various definitions, most will focus on some sort of aggregate reporting across portfolios or highlight alignment of spend with strategic priorities and selecting the optimal project portfolio under varying budget constraints. I believe firmly that neither definition aptly describes ...

Three Steps Toward Benefits Realization

Research shows us that businesses rarely get full benefits from their investments.  It’s largely why Benefits Realization is such a hot topic today.  Defined by Gartner as the discipline organizations adopt to maximize the business value of projects and investments, Benefits Realization software allows senior management to see how specific investments align with the business so they’re better able ...

The Trifecta of Business Value Erosion

Despite significant investments in PPM, it is failing to deliver the anticipated results.  Both Gartner and the Standish Group have reported low project success rates and UMT360 research finds that today companies are failing to realize up to 46% of the planned business value from project portfolios. UMT360’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer Ben Chamberlain ...

UMT360 Seamlessly Extends Project Server

Built on SharePoint, UMT360 is the only Enterprise Portfolio Management solution offering seamless integration with Project Server. Our customers who also use Project Server have found that UMT360 is helping them get more from their PPM. “We wanted one source of information; we wanted a common language; we wanted to be global; and we wanted ...

UMT360 Provides a Better View of Project Financials

Fortune 500 manufacturer of agricultural and farming equipment, AGCO, was having trouble base-lining their portfolio every year. The issues associated with identifying just what they had in their portfolio sent the company in search of an enterprise PPM solution. For portfolio management, they had been relying on what amounted to an Excel dump of the ...

What’s Driving Benefits Realization?

Today’s businesses are moving away from a focus on measuring project results and towards a focus on business benefits.  Senior managers want to know how investments align with business metrics and will impact the business.   There’s a lot of discussion about organizations instituting benefits realization tools to ensure investments deliver real business value.   As organizations ...

Three Hurdles to Benefits Realization

A recent UMT360 webinar on Project and Portfolio Financial Controls for Project Server included discussion of the need for a benefits realization framework.  It’s a topic of intense interest as businesses focus on getting the most out of their investments. Executives want to be assured that they’re getting 100% of the benefits promised and that ...

Project & Portfolio Financial Controls for Microsoft Project Server

In March, UMT360’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer Ben Chamberlain presented a webinar showing Project Server customers how UMT360 can help them gain complete financial intelligence across their project portfolios and increase ROI.   Ben discussed how UMT360 helps eliminate the need for Excel and standardizes investment governance controls across the PPM lifecycle, streamlines capital planning, ...

The Evolution of Portfolio Analytics

UMT360 CEO Mike Gruia talked a bit about the history of UMT360 when he introduced Gartner’s Donna Fitzgerald recently at the Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim.  Below is his introduction during which he discussed UMT’s history in the evolution of portfolio analytics. I’ve been fortunate to be involved with portfolio topics for the last 20 ...

How to get Started Integrating Project Financial Controls

At this week’s Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim, attendees packed into the session about Benefits Realization wanting to know what they can do to better achieve project and portfolio benefits.  UMT360’s Ben Chamberlain presented the Benefits Realization session and told the crowd that it is essential to start looking at projects as business investments.  That ...

Talking Benefits Realization at the Microsoft Project Conference

In a packed session in this week’s 2014 Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim, UMT360’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer Ben Chamberlain talked about the importance of benefits realization software and how UMT360 is helping organizations better achieve that. Industry analysts agree that there’s an issue with organizations not realizing benefits from their investments – PPM ...

PPM & Benefits Realization

In his recent UMT360 webinar, Benefits Realization:  Unleashing the Power of the PMO, Frank La Rocca, the Director of Business Improvement Services in Con Edison’s Finance Organization, shared a benefits realization solution to effectively track the actual value delivered across the investment portfolio.  To ensure you’re realizing planned benefits, La Rocca said organizations should have ...