UMT360 Blog
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A recent report initiating coverage of UMT360 by 451 Research asserts that strategic portfolio management (SPM) is key in helping organizations “capture what success looks like, understand current and future states in terms of architectures and business capabilities, and align different stakeholders to get there.” The report examines UMT360’s ability to deliver SPM capabilities to …
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Bellevue, WA, February 23, 2021: UMT360 is proud to announce the acquisition of Western Principles Consulting, Inc., a leading Canadian-based Project Portfolio Management (“PPM”) consulting firm. Founded in 2005 with headquarters in Vancouver, BC, Western Principles has successfully conducted PPM implementations across Canada, including Microsoft’s PPM systems and UMT360’s strategic portfolio management software suite, in …
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Having already been positioned early this year in Gartner’s 2021 Strategic Portfolio Management Magic Quadrant, UMT360’s Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) software is now also included in a new Forrester analysis of the SPM market. Forrester’s Now Tech: Strategic Portfolio Management Tools is the second major analyst report featuring UMT360’s software, and positions UMT360 as one …
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There’s no question that Microsoft Project Online and Project Server are world-class PPM solutions. When implemented correctly, Microsoft’s PPM platform enables organizations to establish the solid foundation they need to manage project execution. But when it comes to extending capabilities beyond Microsoft’s core PPM features, organizations have historically relied on expensive and complicated customizations and …
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Gartner recently published its Market Guide for Strategy Execution Software. If you’re a Gartner client, you can access it here. The report speaks to the “execution gap” that many organizations are struggling with, and the main culprit seems to be a reliance on traditional tools and processes that keep project success rates stuck at around …
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What do people really mean when they talk about business transformation? And why do we seem to be hearing so much about business transformation within the context of project and program management? Perhaps a few insights from this year’s Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit in Orlando can help to answer those questions. The future …
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UMT360’s own Ben Chamberlain presents the keynote at this year’s Project Management Days event in Helsinki. I was invited to be the keynote speaker at this year’s Project Management Days in Helsinki. It was an honor to kick off this event in front of hundreds of project management professionals from around the world. But I have …
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It’s back-to-school time. And that means a fresh start for kids just looking for an opportunity to learn and grow. This year, the UMT360 team is hoping to make a difference for a few foster kids here in Washington state. Because each fall, thousands of them head back to school, and too many lack the essentials to succeed in the classroom. But …
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Part 1 in a series on how to extend the value of Microsoft Project Online & Project Server… The growing pressures on today’s PMO require that they deliver more than just strong tactical project management skills. To support these strategic demands, project management professionals need increased visibility. They need direct access to information that helps guide better …
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This year’s Gartner PPM Summit was held just outside of Dallas, TX, in early June. One of the highlights of the event was the standing room-only presentation by UMT360 client Frank LaRocca about how PMOs need to adjust their methods to adapt to a changing business environment. The wild local weather that passed through the area just …
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No, the UMT360 team didn’t come up with the theme for this year’s Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit. But we certainly could have. Because from our perspective, the event’s theme — Thriving on Digital Chaos: Innovation, Agility and Collaboration — sounds exactly like what we’ve been telling our clients for years now. We’ve long held that the old ways of managing …
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If you work in public sector IT, you’ve probably heard of FedRAMP. And if it hasn’t yet made an impact on you or your agency, it soon will. FedRAMP stands for The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. It’s essentially a comprehensive framework, established in 2012, that defines what it takes for a company providing …
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Close to 20,000 people will gather in Chicago for Microsoft Ignite during the first week of May. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone there, but we’re particularly interested in connecting with anyone who manages or depends on Microsoft Project Online and Project Server. If that sounds like you, and you’re planning on attending Ignite, please …
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We asked the audience attending a recent UMT360 webinar – comprised mostly of Enterprise Architects (EAs) – a few questions. I learn the most when I hear directly from the professionals in our industry, so I thought I’d share a few of the results that I found particularly illuminating. “There is one prerequisite for managing …
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Release Announcement – Cumulative Update 2 (CU2) for UMT360 for SharePoint 2010 We are pleased to announce the release of the UMT360 for SharePoint 2010 Cumulative Update 2 (CU2). UMT strongly recommends that you test this in a non-production environment first before applying in production.
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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Many of today’s processes and methods for managing technology investments were not designed for networked organizations operating at high speeds. Financial management best practices were not created for programs, portfolios and assets. In a recent webinar, we polled attendees and asked them about which factors are most important in overcoming IT investment management roadblocks. The top top …
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Today enterprises waste more money on IT than ever before and it’s not as if the money is going into growing and transforming the business. What, then, is pushing costs into these stratospheric levels? Most of the money, an average 66% according to Gartner, goes into keeping the lights on and more than 6% is wasted …
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Having just returned from Gartner’s PPM & IT Governance Summit in Maryland, I’ve been reflecting on the many great discussions our team had regarding Digitized IT and UMT360’s approach to Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM). Because we have long promoted the tenets of integration, transparency and digitalization as key to successful business investment management, it’s rewarding …
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IT and the business knows: The year-to-year viability of a company depends on its ability to innovate. We have learned over the years that innovation comes from three sources. Top Down – Driven by management imperatives (i.e. we have to be in the cloud) Bottom Up – Can originate anywhere in the organization, everyone participates and …
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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 …
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UMT360 today announced the release of the newest module in its leading Enterprise Portfolio Management solution – UMT360 Portfolios. UMT360 Portfolios connects siloed portfolios (e.g. project, application, IT Service and business capability) to build a dynamic blueprint of a company’s operating fabric. It provides three breakthrough EPM models to help CIOs, Portfolio Managers and PMOs visualize …
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UMT360 is excited to welcome four new individuals to our Bellevue-based team. Ashok Kuraganti has been named Vice President of Sales. He brings to UMT360 extensive sales experience with organizations including Siebel, Oracle, Niku, SalesForce and ServiceMax. Jeff Parmenter has joined our sales team as a Bellevue-based rep. Jeff has previously sold enterprise software working …
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UMT360 is pleased to be named a finalist in Microsoft’s 2014 Partner of the Year Awards which celebrate top Microsoft partners that solve customer challenges with creative technology solutions. Microsoft received more than 3200 nominations for the 46 awards. UMT360 has been named either a winner or finalist in the Partner of the Year Awards …
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Consolidated Edison’s Frank La Rocca did such a great job setting up an enterprise PMO to handle a $200 million portfolio that the energy company has asked him to do the same for $2 billion of spend. What made him so successful? La Rocca understood early on that he had to have the portfolio transparency …
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UMT360 is pleased to be a Silver Sponsor of Gartner’s PPM and IT Governance Summit being held June 2-4 in National Harbor, Maryland. The two day summit with the theme “Resource Priorities. Generate Change. Realize Returns.” is described by Gartner as a premier gathering of senior executives, program/portfolio managers and IT leaders focused on realizing …
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Gartner’s recently released 2014 CEO and Senior Executives Survey found that growth and IT are executive’s top priorities and those surveyed are talking about digital. In Gartner’s announcement of the survey, VP and Gartner Fellow Mark Raskino said the CEO’s who say technology-related change is important to them, must now invest in that insight. “Make the tough …
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I was reading a blog from a while back on the HBR Blog Network called “The Four Personas of the Next-Generation CIO.” It was amazing to stop and think about how much has changed since the blog was written a few years ago. While the issues for the CIO remain basically the same as in the …
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In Gartner’s recently released 2014 CEO and Senior Executive Survey, a third of the executives surveyed named growth as their top priority. Businesses want growth but face a series of challenges when it comes to finding ways to paying for it. Among other things, the run-the-business investments are eroding capacity, consuming funds needed for growth, …
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An important part of Application Portfolio Management (APM) is creating a strong inventory of information and leveraging powerful business intelligence and analytic capabilities to help identify transformation alternatives and make decisions in terms of which applications to maintain, invest in, enhance or retire. A comprehensive analysis will help identify under-performing applications, redundancies within the portfolio …
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A move is on to shift from project to product-based thinking which allows a business to focus on aligning investments with business drivers and adjust to quick shifts in the marketplace. A buzz really started when Gartner addressed the topic in a Matthew Hotle and Bill Swanton report which came out in November 2013. UMT360, …
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Analyst firm Gartner has released the results of its 2014 CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey and it finds that growth is on the minds of executives. A third of respondents ranked it as their top priority with IT also high on the list. In Gartner’s announcement of the survey, vice president and Gartner …
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Today, many businesses are questioning the effectiveness of their traditional Project Portfolio Management (PPM). What does the PMO need to do to position themselves as leaders with the ability to optimize the spend and maximize ROI across the portfolio? Join Con Edison’s Director of Financial Governance Frank La Rocca for a look at how he …
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Businesses today are challenged with ways to fund innovation as budgets remain flat or increase incrementally. The inability to efficiently invest in the future is one of the reason’s IT is becoming less relevant. It’s imperative that organizations make changes and not only gain a greater understanding of their spending dynamics but also adopt a …
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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 …
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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 …
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In a recent presentation, Gartner Research VP Donna Fitzgerald told a standing room only crowd that PMOs must start change the way they see the landscape and understand that their improvement depends on an ability to deliver value. She explained that 80% of her company’s clients are below level 3 on Gartner’s 5 point maturity …
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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 …
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When it comes to aligning investments with company strategy, organizations need to take a hard look at their existing system for managing investments. The current business operating system includes products and services, and capabilities such as processes and assets. What’s needed is an additional investment system capable of addressing both rapid change and challenges created …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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When looking at PPM in 2014, there is one dominant trend – a focus on value. Speaking at the recent Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim, Gartner Analyst Donna Fitzgerald told a standing room only crowd that what clients are doing today, simply isn’t good enough. Improvement depends on an ability to deliver value. Fitzgerald used …
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UMT360 is pleased to announce the hiring of Carrie Clements who has been named UMT360’s Director of Business Development. Carrie will partner with enterprise field reps to synch up on sales strategy, expectations, timing, etc., meet sales quota within installed client and prospect accounts, quantify and qualify target companies in relation to their need for UMT360 …
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Today, more than a third of IT budgets are consumed by applications with half of that dedicated to maintaining legacy systems which, in so many cases, don’t align with current business needs. As a result, executives are turning to Application Portfolio Management (APM) to rationalize their operational costs, modernize their applications and better align …
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IT investments face a leaner, slimmer future but the companies that master IT investment cost optimization will emerge with better ROI on their investments. IT investments are positioned as so essential to core operations and integral to business success that they often remain remarkably resistant to cutbacks, even in economic downturns. Although IT investment budgets …
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It’s been a topic of discussion by industry analysts in recent days – businesses making the move from a project to product-based investment approach. What’s the difference? In his latest white paper, UMT360 CEO Mike Gruia explains why the project-focused project and portfolio management (PPM) processes which organizations have used for the last decade are …
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Registration has just opened for two upcoming UMT360 webinars. Register today and learn how to deliver more value for your organization. March 18th – Rationalize and Get More Business Value from Your Applications Ben Chamberlain discusses how UMT360 helps businesses rationalize operational costs and modernize their portfolios of they have the agility to successfully meet changing …
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IT spending is back up. Gartner reports the average IT spending increased by 4% in 2012 and is expected to increase by another 3.1% this year (Gartner Market Databook 4Q13 Update) reaching $3.8 trillion. The revival in IT spending suggests that progress is proceeding quickly so it may come as a surprise that many believe …
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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 …
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With pressure to do more with less, IT leaders are turning to Application Portfolio Management (APM) to help them rationalize the operational costs so they can allocate more funds toward innovation. APM is also helping them modernize their portfolios so they have the agility needed to successfully meet changing business demands. Recently, UMT360 CEO Mike …
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The Director of Development for Microsoft’s Project Server Ludovic Hauduc was in the UMT360 offices recently and took a moment to talk about UMT360 as a Microsoft Partner and how our product is helping Project Server customers get more value from their PPM investment. UMT360 is the only Enterprise Portfolio Management solution built on SharePoint …
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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 …
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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 …
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The UMT360 team is enjoying a great first day at the Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim, CA. An energetic response to this morning’s keynote presentations from the GM for Microsoft Office Jared Spataro and the Director of Development for Project Server Ludovic Hauduc. Among highlights, talk about how these are days of rapid innovation and it’s …
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UMT360 partner Project Hosts today announced it has Private Custom Clouds available for UMT360’s complete line of Enterprise Portfolio Management Solutions at Project Conference 2014. You can read Project Hosts’ full press release at http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1714870. If you are attending the Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim starting tomorrow, visit UMT360 at booth 501.
