News Archive

BrightWork 12 is Released

Project and Portfolio Management Success Made Easy!

BrightWork brings your Project and Portfolio Management together in one integrated SharePoint solution. It’s designed to help you Start with the level of project management you are comfortable with and Evolve your project management practices over time. The new release of BrightWork 12 adds new features and lots of enhancements, all motivated by our desire to make successful project and portfolio management easy for everyone.

The highlights of this release will be shown in a Live Demo on May 14th including: 

All language versions of BrightWork 12 are now available including English, Spanish, French, German and Norwegian. Customers with a current support plan can contact support@brightwork.com to plan their upgrade. For our cloud customers, the upgrade will be deployed in early May. 

Using SharePoint and BrightWork for Project Management in Local Government

Chicago Housing Authority

Chicago Housing Authority is the largest owner of rental housing in the city of Chicago, providing homes to more than 50,000 families and individuals, while supporting healthy communities in neighbourhoods all across the city. CHA is currently undergoing the Plan for Transformation, the largest and most ambitious redevelopment effort of public housing in the history of the United States. As part of the Plan, CHA will redevelop or rehabilitate its entire stock of public housing.

Prior to using BrightWork, the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Technology Initiatives Office (TIO) was tracking all project requests and projects using various methods: Word document for project status report, Excel spread sheets for tracking issues, risks and action items. It was all manual updates and reporting making it more time consuming to keep track of your projects and reporting. Reporting to leadership was also a manual process of updating a dashboard on an Excel spread sheet.

The CHA’s TIO had been using SharePoint as the document repository for sharing and collaborating on projects. To a certain extent it was also used for project management: for storing Excel sheets for tracking issues, risks and action items and saving project status reports. Using BrightWork as a third-party tool allowed the Authority to leverage its SharePoint investment. The project teams continued to benefit from SharePoint and leverage BrightWork for project management and reporting.

The Technology Initiatives Office had a customized template developed using a BrightWork Out-of-the-Box IT Project Template. The template is consistent to the TIO’s project management methodology. CHA also leveraged the Out-of-the-Box project request template from BrightWork. Each project request is now easily tracked and identified to current projects. This allows management to report on project requests to make decisions if a project is feasible to take on.

Customized dashboards were created to give the project teams and management consistent and immediate reporting on all projects the TIO is managing. Out-of-the-Box workflows were also utilized on some of the processes that require approval. This has allowed us to be quicker on requesting approvals and sign offs on documents and reducing the amount of paper that used to be generated.

Other departments are realizing the capabilities that the BrightWork tool can bring to their own projects and have expressed interest in using the tool and project management in general. Chicago Housing Authority have reaped many benefits from using the BrightWork solution but the most important ones are the amount of time spent in updating the project status reports and logs have been reduced. Being able to quickly report to management via dashboards has also been a huge benefit as well since maintaining your project status rolls up to other dashboards.

About Chicago Housing Authority

Chicago Housing Authority is the largest owner of rental housing in the city of Chicago, providing homes to more than 50,000 families and individuals and has more than 9,200 apartments in buildings designated for seniors and over 11,400 units in family and other housing types. It also oversees the administration of 37,000 Housing Choice vouchers that allow low-income families to rent in the private market. www.thecha.gov

BrightWork 12 - Release Dates

The English Language Version - Now Released  

BrightWork 12 - the English language version - is released! We expect the additional language versions (German, French, Spanish and Norwegian) to be available by late April. 

Highlights of BrightWork 12 include: 

Customers who wish to plan their upgrade can contact support@brightwork.com

Collaborative Project Management Guide Edition 2 - Call for Participation

Project management is a discipline, and as such can be quite difficult without the proper training.  Some project managers have had formal training (for example PMI’s PMBOK or PRINCE2) while others instinctively know how to initiate, manage and close projects to success.  Many of the people we work with at BrightWork are PMBAs (Project Managers by Accident)!  They have had little to no project management training and find themselves tasked with managing one or more projects and leading a team of smart peers. 

To assist our PMBAs, BrightWork and our customers published a Collaborative Project Management eBook and Training Video, that provides a simple and practical approach to initiate, plan, track, manage and close a project.

Since its release, we have received many requests to extend the guide with additional content covering even more project management areas.  Hence the call for participation in creating edition 2 of the Collaborative Project Management how-to guide.  Edition 2 will be an aid for the community, by the community and as with edition 1, we reasonably expect it will be downloaded and used by tens of thousands of new Project Managers.

To register your interest please email cpm@brightwork.com with your thoughts on how you would like to contribute to this community effort aimed at helping the new accidental Project Managers.

Using SharePoint and BrightWork for Project Management in Healthcare

Children’s Hospital Boston is a 400-bed comprehensive center for pediatric health care. As one of the largest pediatric medical centers in the Unites States, Children’s Hospital Boston records approximately 25,000 inpatient admissions annually.

Children’s Boston wanted a system to get a “snapshot” of PMO project status that: integrated with SharePoint, was intuitively obvious, could be updated in less than 5 minutes, enabled roll-up reporting, graphical charting, and required no programming. Using a combination of Microsoft SharePoint together with BrightWork, Children's Hospital Boston successfully developed and deployed an Information Systems Project Tracking system that is used to track and monitor all IT projects.  With this system, anybody in the organization with a web browser can quickly and easily access this intuitive system to review the portfolio of projects and see the status of each project.

In this short video, Matt Kennedy, IT PMO Manager, Children's Hospital Boston explains, due to the roll-up reporting capabilities of BrightWork, they have developed a very powerful tool to make IT Project work visible to the rest of the organization. Matt explains a little further how it is a point and click type operation with no programming required. Today at the Children’s Hospital Boston, to update a project status takes 2-3 minutes and to create a new project for tracking in the system takes less than 5 minutes.

About Children’s Hospital Boston:
Boston Children's Hospital is a 395-bed comprehensive center for pediatric health care. As one of the largest pediatric medical centers in the United States, Children's offers a complete range of health care services for children from birth through 21 years of age.

BrightWork New Customer Requirements Gathering Program

Calling All BrightWork Customers: We Need You!

Here at BrightWork, we're dedicated to giving you the solutions you need for successful and easy Project and Portfolio Managementusing SharePoint. As you know direct customer feedback is invaluable to the BrightWork Team. While we might be the ones putting the software out there, you, our customers, are the ones using it. So it's no surprise that our customers' feedback from the front lines is a key source of input in the product development process.

We need to hear from you to make sure BrightWork is valuable to you, the real product users. This is your chance to have your say and also to hear what other customers are asking for!

All customers are invited to email support@brightwork.com to register their interest in participating. They will be contacted promptly in response with a request for their top 3 product improvement suggestions. We will then collate and score all requirements and give each participating customer the option to talk through their requirements on a webcast with fellow customers.

Project management success made easy for everyone!

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New eBook: Choosing the Right Project and Portfolio Management Solution: An Evaluation Guide

Selecting A Solution That Evolves With You

Evaluating and selecting the right Project and Portfolio Management software for your organization can be quite the challenge.  This week, BrightWork has released an innovative new eBook that provides a practical approach to make your evaluation easier and more effective.

Read the ‘Project and Portfolio Management Solutions’ evaluation guide and learn not only how to select the right solution for your organization, but one that will evolve and mature with you. 

Download this guide and you will get:

Project management success made easy!

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Manage Projects on SharePoint – 2012 Round-up!

The prospect of a new year always brings new ideas, fresh energy and lots of projects, and you can be assured that BrightWork has lots of exciting news and resources lined up to help you manage projects on SharePoint in 2013.  But as we say goodbye to 2012, here’s a look at some of our highlights from the past year:

New Template Design Sync and Innovative Reporting in BrightWork 11.

BrightWork 11 unveiled two exciting new features, the new Template Design Sync and Enhanced Reporting Capabilities.  

The new Template Design Sync is a revolutionary new feature that enables customers to make design changes to a BrightWork template and pull those changes into a live project site created from the template. Unmatched design items can also be removed from the destination site. 

BrightWork 11 also presents a giant leap forward in SharePoint reporting.  New and enhanced reporting capabilities include In-report dynamic-column sorting and filtering, Personal Reports, and Report Distribution options now available on the Reporter Tools Ribbon. Learn More…

Free SharePoint Project Management Templates [Lite and Structured]

The free Project Management Templates from BrightWork will get you started managing projects with out-of-the-box SharePoint today. The templates extends out of the box SharePoint 2010 to provide a collaborative workspace to manage a project.

The new ‘Lite’ template gives you just enough project management to create and track a project on SharePoint with the greatest of ease. For those looking for extra project management, the ‘Structured’ template that delivers a more coordinated environment to manage a project on SharePoint - along with an optional sync to Microsoft Project Professional.

Both Templates enable your project teams to execute their work and stay connected, giving your project managers and executives the information they require to make informed decisions and get work done. It’s yours for free! Download Templates!

BrightWork in the Cloud with Project Share Online

Project share online is a cloud based solution, SharePoint based solution that delivers instant work, project and portfolio management. SharePoint provides the fastest way to start collaborating on projects with task lists and associated documents can easily be shared online with a project team.

Project Share Online provides four elements:

  1. Worked Samples
  2. Online, On-Demand Training
  3. Place to Manage Projects and Portfolios
  4. Self-Service environment.

Learn more about Project Share Online with our short demo or 30 Day Free Trial.

PM Basics Plus

BrightWork and IIL partnered to create PM Basics™ PLUS, the first and only program that combines SharePoint capabilities with proven project management instruction.

PM Basics is a 12-hour self-paced, multimedia training program that teaches the fundamentals of project management across all areas of the PMBOK® Guide. BrightWork is a collaborative project management application for SharePoint. Put these two products together and you get something completely unique in the marketplace: PM Basics PLUS. Learn More…

IPM Day 2012

November marked the 9th Annual International Project Management Day, a free virtual event that was established as a way of recognizing the extraordinary efforts made by project management professionals worldwide.  IIL put together an outstanding program of on-demand video presentations featuring a wide range of experts and thought leaders from all sides of the project management community. Éamonn McGuinness, CEO of BrightWork, presented a session on the topic “SharePoint 2013 - What’s New for Project and Portfolio Management?". The on-demand viewing period has since begun and visitors to the virtual conference center can still earn up to 12 PDUs! Register for this Event! 

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SharePoint Solutions for the AEC: Project Management 

Join award winning SharePoint Solution provider and AEC Expert Gig Werks, Project Management experts BrightWork, and Microsoft to learn about Project Management solutions for the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industries. This webcast will show you PM dashboards, reporting, task & resource management, scheduling, critical alerting, and visibility across the organization with SharePoint.

SharePoint Solutions for the AEC: Project Management

More Information and Registration

If you have any questions about this event, please contact Richard Matzelle at richardm@gig-werks.com.

About Gig Werks

Gig Werks is an Award Winning Microsoft Gold and Field Managed Partner with certified expertise in SharePoint, Business Intelligence, Custom Application Development and Advanced Infrastructure. Gig Werks expertise includes all aspects of SharePoint: Business Intelligence, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Web Content Management (WCM), Collaboration, Business Process Automation, Search, Portals as well as Unified Communications. Gig Werks provides clients with secure, connected solutions that streamline business processes and yield maximum returns on investment. www.gig-werks.com

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Using SharePoint and BrightWork for Project Management in Education

Maranatha Baptist Bible College

Maranatha Baptist Bible College is a comprehensive liberal arts college founded in rural Wisconsin, serving approximately 1,000 students. As an AQIP Institution, a strong culture of “Quality” improvement exists at the College, but their ability to track activity across the campus was limited-to-non-existent.

Maranatha’s inability to track project activity across the campus led to some challenges for the college. There was little “celebration” of successful projects, leading to a drop-out in interest for future endeavours and the college also missed opportunities to share learning from completed projects. The ability to collaborate was limited also, with lots of different methods being used which made it tough to determine where projects actually stood because there wasn’t consistent collection of project data. Maranatha tried to build a solution in SharePoint, but they realized early on that an “in-house” SharePoint solution was not going to work for them.

In the short video, Matt Davis, Executive Vice President at Maranatha, discusses his organization’s SharePoint Project Management solution and why they chose BrightWork. The case study also includes a webcast demonstration of the SharePoint solution described.

About Maranatha

Maranatha Baptist Bible College is a comprehensive liberal arts college founded in rural Wisconsin, serving approximately 1,000 students. Students can choose from 28 majors, 42 minors and 5 graduate programs. MBBC is regionally accredited through the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges & Schools and is also an AQIP Institution. www.mbbc.edu

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Product Review: BrightWork 11 Brings Unique Features to Market Solidifying Its Offering

BrightWork 11 was recently reviewed by Mike Ferrara for SharePointReviews.com, a completely independent product directory providing objective reviews of SharePoint plug-ins and applications.

Released in August 2012, BrightWork 11 makes project, portfolio and work management on SharePoint even easier. The latest release features some unique new functionality including the revolutionary template design sync and innovative reporting capabilities which make BrightWork a “legitimate best of breed choice” for users looking for a project, portfolio and everyday work management solution on SharePoint.

“BrightWork yet again delivers a solid solution for project managers looking for control and flexibility in the same package. The new features highlighted in this review help add credence to the product’s stance amongst market competition" writes Mike Ferrara.

You can read the full review here: Read Review!

About Mike Ferrara
Mike has over 12 years of experience with information systems integration, and specializes in SharePoint products and technologies.  Mike is an active member of the SharePoint Community and is well-respected and acknowledged in the industry for architecting and implementing solutions that are both robust and progressive. He is an editor for SharePointReviews.com, contributes articles for CMSWire.com and is currently Director of SharePoint Platform Services at Hyperion Global Partners.

www.sharepointreviews.com

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AmSurg Improves and Standardizes Enterprise Project Management with SharePoint and BrightWork

AmSurg owns and operates over 200 ambulatory surgery centers in 33 states and is the nationally recognized leader in the development, management and operation of outpatient surgery centers.

AmSurg runs a number of projects that impact multiple centers. These programs range from policy and procedure initiatives to marketing initiatives, contracting initiatives and implementations of revenue management and clinical systems.

The organization needed a way to track and manage these medium-to-large projects. The projects deal with virtually every department in the organization and usually require rollout to over 200 AmSurg centers. There were growing requests for the status of various programs and projects from senior management, but no efficient way to report on them. There was also a lack of organizational project management knowledge and few formal project management processes in place.

AmSurg wanted to leverage the existing SharePoint infrastructure they already had in place. After evaluating several options, they opted to deploy the BrightWork solution because of the best practice template approach to project management on SharePoint.

In the short video, Doug Kennedy, Director IS and Project Management at AmSurg, discusses his organization’s SharePoint Project Management solution and why they chose BrightWork.

Click here to learn more about this case study, including a webcast demonstration of the SharePoint solution described.
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About AmSurg

Partnering with more than 1,500 physicians at more than 220 outpatient surgery centers across the United States, AmSurg is the nationally recognized leader in the development, management and operation of outpatient surgery centers.

AmSurg surgery centers provide high quality, low cost surgical services with superior patient satisfaction.

We believe in empowering our physician partners to achieve their professional and personal goals by providing innovative operational, clinical and strategic services.  www.amsurg.com

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BrightWork to Present at IPM Day 2012: Power of the Profession

BrightWork will be presenting at the 9th Annual International Project Management Day taking place on Thursday November 1st, 2012.

This Free Virtual Event was established as a way of recognizing the extraordinary efforts made by project management professionals worldwide.

This years’ program features a wide range of experts and thought leaders from all sides of the project management community (PMI, NASA, IIL, etc.) who will share their knowledge through recorded video presentations and discuss the most current and critical topics in project management today.

Éamonn McGuinness, will present on the topic of “SharePoint 2013 – What’s new for Project and Portfolio Management”. The Microsoft SharePoint 2013 release was unveiled in July 2012 with many new features required for managing projects. Microsoft SharePoint 2013 now has a new template for managing a project with exciting new capabilities including social capabilities, a new WBS list type that synchronizes with Microsoft Project.  It is clear the Microsoft SharePoint team is now really encouraging us to use SharePoint 2010 and 2013 to manage work and projects, and Éamonn McGuinness will demonstrate how!

As a registrant you can earn up to 12 PDUs by watching video presentations from more than 25 global experts and influencers. During the live hours of the event, you’ll also be able to visit IIL Learning Booths, live chat with speakers, stop by Sponsor Booths, and network with other attendees.

Click here to register for IPM Day 2012. Last year over 30,000 professionals attended, with rave reviews and this year attendance at the event is expected to be upwards of 50,000 people. This is arguably the best free Project Management training available in 2012.

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BrightWork Exhibiting at Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2012

BrightWork will be exhibiting at this year’s Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2012 on November 12th-15th in Las Vegas, NV. 

Attendees can meet us at Booth 465, where we will showcase the recent release of BrightWork 11 that includes the revolutionary new Template Design Sync and even more innovative reporting features. We will also be giving away some awesome prizes, so make sure to drop by for a chance to win.

The Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2012 is the most comprehensive event in the world dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies.

This year’s event will host over 30 featured sessions with deep-dive information aimed at Developers, IT Professionals, and Business Decision Makers. This conference will provide attendees with invaluable knowledge to increase productivity and stay ahead of the game through focused breakout sessions, hands-on lab environments, and instructor-led lab scenarios. 

To learn more about the event, visit the SharePoint Conference 2012 Website.

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Free SharePoint Project Management Template now available on Office 365

Smarter Project Management for Office 365 Users

The Free SharePoint Project Management Template from BrightWork is now available for download in the Office 365 Marketplace. This template extends SharePoint to provide a collaborative workspace to manage a project giving project managers and executives:

The template will run on SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, and Microsoft SharePoint Online. Download Now!

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Announcing BrightWork 11 For SharePoint

Featuring the Revolutionary New Template Design Sync and Innovative Reporting Capabilities

Boston, MA — August 22nd, 2012 — Today, BrightWork has launched a new product release, which makes work, project and portfolio management on SharePoint even easier for BrightWork customers.

BrightWork 11 unveils the new Template Design Sync, a revolutionary new feature that enables customers to make design changes to a BrightWork template (e.g. add a new list, library or view, change a Quick Launch, change a site Home page, etc.) and pull those changes into a live project site created from the template. Unmatched design items can also be removed from the destination site.  In addition, the Template Design Sync allows customers to modify their project management processes in the template and then, as needed, apply the new process changes to existing projects.

Watch a quick demo of the BrightWork Template Design Sync!

BrightWork 11 also presents a giant leap forward in SharePoint reporting.  New and enhanced reporting capabilities include:

Watch a short demo of the BrightWork Reporting enhancements!

BrightWork 11 also introduces BrightWork in French, adding to the growing list of languages supported.

New customers can see a brief overview of BrightWork 11 here and take a free test drive in our demo sites:  Free Trial
Existing customers should contact support@brightwork.com to schedule their upgrade.

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Introducing PM Basics™ PLUS

Integrating SharePoint Collaboration and Project Management Training

Boston, MA — July 12th, 2012 — BrightWork and IIL have partnered to create PM Basics™ PLUS, the first and only program that combines SharePoint capabilities with proven project management instruction.

PM Basics is a 12-hour self-paced, multimedia training program that teaches the fundamentals of project management across all areas of the PMBOK® Guide. BrightWork is a collaborative project management application for SharePoint. Put these two products together and you get something completely unique in the marketplace: PM Basics PLUS.

Selected Features of PM Basics PLUS include:

1 + 1 = 3! Learn and Execute in One SharePoint Environment! To learn more about PM Basics PLUS, watch a demo, attend a live webcast, or take a free trial of the project management templates: Learn More

About IIL

IIL is a global leader in training, consulting, coaching and customized course development, and is proud to be the educational provider of choice for many top global companies. IIL's core competencies include Project, Program and Portfolio Management, Business Analysis, Microsoft® Project and Project Server, Lean Six Sigma, PRINCE2®, ITIL®, Leadership and Interpersonal Skills, Corporate Consciousness and Sustainability. www.iil.com  

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BrightWork Among Top Finalists for the 2012 Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management Partner of the Year

Boston, MA — June 25, 2012— Today, BrightWork announced it has been selected as a finalist for the Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management Partner of the Year Award.

“BrightWork is very happy to be a finalist for the Microsoft PPM Partner of the Year Award,” said Éamonn McGuinness, Founder and CEO of BrightWork.  “Our mission at BrightWork is to enable any organization to quickly setup and then iteratively mature their PPM practices.  BrightWork aims to deliver immediate visibility and control from day one.  A customer recently reported their project managers became productive on BrightWork within 30 days and are completing projects 25 percent faster.  By combining Microsoft SharePoint for Collaboration, Microsoft Project for Scheduling and BrightWork for Reporting & Best Practice Templates, our customers of all sizes and types now have access to an adaptable and affordable PPM solution that can be deployed across many departments for the management of various types of work, projects and portfolios.  We are honored to be recognized for providing real project success and true value to our customers.”

Awards were presented in multiple categories, with winners chosen from a set of nearly 3,000 entrants worldwide. The Project and Portfolio Management Partner of the Year Award recognizes the partner who excelled in offering breakthrough solutions that extended or integrated the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution. The winner provided technology and marketing offerings that enabled a business customer to easily prioritize their investments, align their resources and strategies, and effectively manage the completion of their projects. Other attributes include innovative thinking that helped solve a technical challenge or addressed the customer’s business needs and empowered their employees. The winning solution showcased the partner’s unique and positive effect on a customer’s business challenges and reflected an expertise in the Project and Portfolio Management competency.

“We are proud to recognize our 2012 Partner Award finalists for their outstanding commitments to solving customer challenges,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. “Our partners are critical to our success as a company, and it is their creativity and innovative thinking in solving the unique needs of our customers that serves as the foundation for mutual, long-term success. We congratulate this year’s finalists on their achievements and look forward to following their continued success in the future.”

The Microsoft Partner Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions during the past year.

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BrightWork Partners with MVC Consulting to deliver Collaborative Project Management on SharePoint

Boston, MA, June 19, 2012 - Today, BrightWork announced a partnership with MVC Consulting to deliver new levels of value in SharePoint to their customers.   BrightWork is a leader in Collaborative Work and Project Management applications on SharePoint.  MVC Consulting is a leader in providing real business solutions using SharePoint.  Together the two partners will leverage BrightWork technology and MVC Consulting services to offer SharePoint collaborative application solutions to the market.

The joint solution will enable MVC Consulting customers to extend their SharePoint deployments to include full Work and Project Management capabilities.  For BrightWork, MVC Consulting’s strong local presence in the Chicago area and their SharePoint service expertise opens new opportunities for solution delivery.
“BrightWork extends the range of services we can offer our customers,” commented Brad Reynolds, Managing Partner of MVC Consulting. “Leveraging the BrightWork application, joined with our services, we can provide our customers with new levels of value from their SharePoint deployments.”

“We are very excited about our new partnership with MVC Consulting,” commented Eamonn McGuiness, CEO of BrightWork. “Their SharePoint expertise and business process experience provides new service and solution options for our prospects and customers.”
Both companies are looking forward to providing a collaborative project management solution that revolutionizes the way Work and Projects are managed across the enterprise.

About MVC Consulting

MVC Consulting, Inc. (www.MVC-Consulting.com) is a certified female owned strategic consulting partner focused on delivering optimized IT solutions to Fortune 1000 Chicago-based companies. For over 30 years, MVC’s consulting professionals have enabled companies to deliver full-lifecycle project solutions with significant business impact. We specialize in combining Collaboration/Workflow Solutions, Change/Project Management, IT Best Practices and Business Intelligence into comprehensive solutions that maximize ROI.
Along with our new partnership with Brightwork, we are a certified partner of Nintex, which is the world’s leading SharePoint workflow company.  Our deep expertise allows MVC Consulting to be the leading go to partner in the Collaboration/Workflow space for implementation, professional services and training.

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Carozzi Completes Projects 25 Percent Faster with Easy-to-Use Solution

June 12th, 2012.  Just Released!  New Microsoft customer success case study highlights BrightWork combined with Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

The case study focuses on 113-year-old Chilean food company, Carozzi, that manufactures food products—about 1,800 in all—including pasta, cookies, juices, and desserts. Carozzi products are sold throughout South America and in the United States, Mexico, and Europe.

To standardize its project management methodology and tools, Carozzi deployed Microsoft Project Professional 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and the BrightWork project management application. Project managers became productive on the solution within 30 days and are completing projects 25 percent faster. They can give all stakeholders instant insight into project health and are able to handle increasingly complex projects with less risk.

“We liked Project Professional and BrightWork, because we could start using them within a few days,” says Erwin Fiebig, Manager, Project Management Office, at Carozzi.  Since deploying its new solution, Carozzi has completed projects faster, increased productivity, and improved project insight. Staff members needed no training to use the solution and are better equipped to handle increasingly complex projects.

To read the full case study on the Microsoft website – Click here

About Carozzi

Carozzi is a Chilean food company with manufacturing operations in three countries and sales around the world. Carozzi has 10,000 employees and revenues of U.S.$1.3 billion. Visit www.carozzi.cl

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BrightWork Partners with Kiefer Consulting to deliver Collaborative Project Management on SharePoint

Boston, MA & Folsom, CA  May 15, 2012 - Today, BrightWork announced a partnership with Kiefer Consulting to deliver new levels of value in SharePoint to their customers.   BrightWork is a leader in Collaborative Work and Project Management applications on SharePoint.  Kiefer Consulting is a leader in providing real business solutions using SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and mobile technologies.  Together the two Gold Level Microsoft partners will leverage BrightWork technology and Kiefer services to offer SharePoint collaborative application solutions to the market.

The joint solution will enable Kiefer customers to extend their SharePoint deployments to include full work and Project Management capabilities.  For BrightWork, Kiefer’s strong regional presence in Northern California and their SharePoint service expertise opens new opportunities for solution delivery.

“BrightWork extends the range of services we can offer our customers,” commented Greg Kiefer, President and CEO of Kiefer Consulting. “Leveraging the BrightWork application, joined with our services, we can provide our customers with new levels of value from their SharePoint deployments.”

“We are very excited about our new partnership with Kiefer,” commented Eamonn McGuiness, CEO of BrightWork. “Their SharePoint expertise and business process experience provides new service and solution options for our prospects and customers.”

Both companies are looking forward to providing a collaborative project management solution that revolutionizes the way Work and Projects are managed across the enterprise.

About Kiefer Consulting
Kiefer Consulting, Inc. is the leading SharePoint solution provider in Northern California.  From providing the first SharePoint template for State of California websites, to releasing the first SharePoint-Android table integration framework, the Kiefer team transforms and extends SharePoint to meet critical business needs. Kiefer Consulting has delivered SharePoint solutions for clients ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to government agencies and leading academic institutions. For the last 25 years, Kiefer Consulting has been delighting customers across the United States.  Today, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, .NET and mobile applications are the practice areas Kiefer offers clients.

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Free Project Management Template

The free Project Management Template from BrightWork will get you started managing projects with out-of-the-box SharePoint today. The template extends out of the box SharePoint 2010 to provide a collaborative workspace to manage a project.

Download this template and you will get:

Download now and enable your project teams to execute their work and stay connected.  Give your project managers and executives the information they require to make informed decisions and get work done. It’s yours for free! Download Now!

Free Template

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The 2.0 World - Life as a Next Generation Information Worker Webinar

Get more value from SharePoint: with Collaborative Project Management.

As part of ‘The 2.0 World - Life as a Next Generation Information Worker Webinar Series’, Aspect and BrightWork have teamed to present a live online session focused on leveraging SharePoint for Collaborative Project Management.

Many organizations have done the initial deployment of SharePoint for a corporate intranet, or perhaps document management. After that there is often the “What do we do next?” question. How do you get more productivity out of SharePoint? One area of low hanging fruit is to deploy collaborative applications like Project Management, Service Desks and other process oriented solutions on SharePoint.

You can start getting more value right away with Project Management. SharePoint is the perfect solution for collaborative project management. Out of the box, SharePoint 2010 has a feature set that can be used to for projects of various types and sizes. It also can synchronize with MS Project Pro 2010, to go beyond the desktop. Use SharePoint Sites and Workspaces for project organization, storing related documents, tracking tasks and reporting. Extend SharePoint with Aspect partner BrightWork to manage work, individual projects and portfolios of projects. Take Project Management to new levels with BrightWork leveraging powerful KPIs, dashboards, resource management and Project Request Management. You will go from “What’s next?” to “Wow, I did not know SharePoint could do that!”

Sign up for the session here.
Thursday May 10th at 10am CDT

About Aspect:

Aspect builds customer relationships through a combination of customer contact software and Microsoft platform solutions. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.

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BrightWork Announces Free Education Program at Microsoft Project Conference 2012

Boston, MA — March 19, 2012 — Today, at Microsoft Project Conference 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, BrightWork announced they are working with Microsoft to provide a free education program for both customers and partners.

“Project 2010 is undoubtedly the best ever release of Microsoft Project, while SharePoint 2010 is widely acclaimed as the industry standard platform for collaboration”, said Eamonn McGuinness, Founder and CEO at BrightWork.  “Combining the two provides many of the capabilities required for managing work, projects and portfolios – once you know how!”

BrightWork will deliver a completely free 3 step education program that will explain, demonstrate and teach how Project 2010 and SharePoint 2010 deliver a smart platform for organizations that want to manage varying types of work and projects.

Step 1 will explain the program in introductory webcast sessions.
Step 2 will provide a guide to online Hands on Learning Labs.
Step 3 will include follow-up support webcasts to answer detailed questions.

To find out more about the program and get registration details, visit the BrightWork booth #213 in the expo hall.

“We at Microsoft are pleased that BrightWork works Project 2010 into the BrightWork templates that manage work, project and portfolios. We believe the ability for customers to see a dashboard of reports in SharePoint that reports across many project sites with data synchronized in from Project Professional 2010 is appealing,” said Ludo Haudoc, general manager, Microsoft Work Management and Applications Group, Microsoft Corp., Redmond.  “We further believe that this capability will provide customers a stepping stone to the capabilities of Project Server 2010.” 

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Announcing BrightWork Release 10 for SharePoint: Bringing Smarter Work, Project and Portfolio Management to Every Organization!

Posted by William Guinan on Feb. 1st, 2012

Today, BrightWork has launched a new product release, which makes project management on SharePoint even smarter for BrightWork customers.

BrightWork 10 comes with a new Project Metrics List that can automatically capture and track critical project metrics, assign warning and danger indictors to metric values, and visualize how the metrics have evolved over time (a day, week, month, quarter or year).  Moreover, this new release ships pre-loaded with sample metrics in the project management templates to give project teams a faster starting point.

BrightWork 10 also features three new project management templates -Project Lite, Project Standard and Project Structured – allowing BrightWork customers to manage and collaborate on loosely structured, semi-structured and fully structured projects.  As with all BrightWork templates, Project Lite, Project Standard and Project Structured are easily configurable for more precise project control and visibility.

Other smart additions to BrightWork 10 include enhanced reporting with new Periodic Status Reports and better Microsoft Project to SharePoint synchronization.

“Our mission at BrightWork is to deliver a SharePoint product that enables any organization to quickly setup and iteratively mature their work, project and portfolio management practices”, says Eamonn McGuinness, Founder and CEO at BrightWork.  “The smart project management, enhanced reports and new templates in BrightWork Release 10 make it easier for our customers to achieve project success”.

If you're already a BrightWork customer, you can upgrade to BrightWork 10 by contacting support@brightwork.com.

If you're not a BrightWork customer give BrightWork 10 a try with a 30-Day Trial.

You can also see a recorded demo of BrightWork 10:   Register Now!

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JumpStart Your 2012 Projects with SharePoint and BrightWork

Boston MA, 24th January 2011 The start of a new year always brings new ideas, fresh energy and lots of projects! Get a head start on your 2012 projects with the Project Office JumpStart solution from BrightWork.

The JumpStart leverages best practices and a proven deployment approach to implement a fully working Project Office on SharePoint - in as little as three to four weeks!!

Available for both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010, the JumpStart includes deployment services, BrightWork software for up to 50 users, and support for one year.

Deployment Services

Software

Support and Upgrades for 1 Year

See here for more information.

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Manage Your Projects on SharePoint – 2011 Round-Up!

Boston MA, 24th December 2011 - The prospect of a new year always brings new ideas, fresh energy and lots of projects, and you can be assured that BrightWork has lots of exciting news and resources lined up to help you manage projects on SharePoint in 2012.  But as we say goodbye to 2011, here’s a look at some of our highlights from the past year:

Smarter Project Management Coming in BrightWork 10

Perhaps the most exciting upcoming feature is the new BrightWork Project Metrics list. This list will enable you easily to automatically capture and track important project metrics, assign warning and danger indictors to metric values and visualize how the metric has evolved over time.  Project metrics are important because they give you and the other project stakeholders an easy, objective and scientific way of measuring the progress of the project, and also the grounds with which to make important decisions as to the direction and scope of the project.  BrightWork now comes with the capability to easily define, capture, track and report on metrics for single projects or for multiple projects in a Project Office.  Read More!

Collaborative Project Management eBook

Do you have team members who are now managing projects but who have had no formal training? Maybe the time or the budget was not available? "Accidental" project managers so to speak! For these new project managers we developed an eBook. The intention is to deliver an easy to follow and simple to use guide for Project Managers who are not yet formally trained in Collaborative Project Management. The Collaborative Project Management eBook describes the typical stages, steps and sub-steps involved in starting, setting up, managing and closing a typical project. The eBook also has a section on Project Management Leadership style.  Download Your Free eBook!

Project and Portfolio Management Case Study eBook

This free eBook provides a glimpse into the real life experiences on 10 very different organizations deploying SharePoint for Project and Portfolio Management. The 10 case studies explore the entire spectrum of project management, from simple task management to full program management. Each case study explains the challenges these organizations faced and how BrightWork templates and reporting on SharePoint delivered a practical solution to collaboratively and efficiently manage projects. Upon downloading the eBook you have the option of viewing a webcast which examines 5 of the case studies contained in the eBook.  Download Your Free eBook!

BrightWork Presents at International Project Management Day 2011

November marked the 8th Annual International Project Management Day, a free virtual event that was established as a way of recognizing the extraordinary efforts made by project management professionals worldwide.  IIL put together an outstanding program of on-demand video presentations featuring a wide range of experts and thought leaders from all sides of the project management community, (PMI, NASA, IIL, etc.). Presenters included Éamonn McGuinness, CEO of BrightWork, whose session on the topic of "Using SharePoint for Project and Portfolio Management", is the first time this event featured a track on Project Management for SharePoint. The on-demand viewing period has since begun and visitors to the virtual conference center can still earn up to 12 PDUs!  Register for IPM Day!

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Project & Portfolio Management on SharePoint - Free Training Kit!

Boston MA, 12th November 2011 - Project management is a discipline and as such can be quite tough. But we at BrightWork believe that when approached the right way and with the right tools, organizations can quickly and easily enable smart and efficient project management. Project management experts BrightWork can help you learn how to use to use SharePoint for project management today, without any setup.

BrightWork have released a free training kit designed to educate project managers on how to leverage SharePoint for practical project and portfolio management. The kit includes two training guides and an online SharePoint environment (hosted by BrightWork) where trainees are guided through the creation, management, and configuration of their own project office on SharePoint. Each trainee has free access to their SharePoint site for up to 30 days - with no interruption.

Sign up here and get immediate access to your training kit and SharePoint site. Get Me Started!

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BrightWork to Present at International Project Management Day 2011

Boston MA, 12th October 2011 - BrightWork is pleased to announce that we will be presenting at the 8th Annual International Project Management Day taking place on Tuesday November 3rd, 2011. 

This Free Virtual Event was established as a way of recognizing the extraordinary efforts made by project management professionals worldwide.  

This years’ program features a wide range of experts and thought leaders from all sides of the project management community (PMI, NASA, IIL, etc.) who will share their knowledge through recorded video presentations. 

Attendees can earn up to 12 PDUs for this event.  

On November 3rd, you will be able to chat live with speakers during specified times, and you can interact with peers and colleagues in the Networking Lounge.

If you miss some of the presentations during the live event, don't worry: the Virtual conference center will stay "open" for three more months, so you can continue to view them (for free) during the 90-day on-demand period.

Éamonn McGuinness, CEO of BrightWork has been invited to present “Using SharePoint for Project and Portfolio Management.” 

Click here to register for IPM Day 2011.  Anticipated attendance at this event is expected to be upwards of 30,000 people.  This is arguably the best free Project Management training available in 2011.  Please forward to your colleagues.

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BrightWork Attending Microsoft® SharePoint® Conference 2011

Boston MA, 28th June 2011 – BrightWork is pleased to announce we will be exhibiting at this year’s Microsoft® SharePoint® Conference 2011 which will be running from October 3rd-6th in the Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, CA.  It is the most comprehensive event in the world dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies. It will also be commemorating SharePoint’s 10 year anniversary with a very special event in Disneyland® Park exclusive for SharePoint conference attendees.

This year’s Microsoft® SharePoint® Conference 2011 will host over 240 informative sessions planned on cloud services, best practices/guidance and real world experiences from a mixture of leading Microsoft Engineers, Product Managers, MCMs and MVPs. This conference will provide attendees with the training, insight, and networking you need to develop, deploy, govern and get the most from SharePoint.

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BrightWork Partner with K2 to Deliver World Class Workflow Solution

Boston MA, 14th June 2011 – BrightWork has recently partnered with K2, a company which focuses on building workflows and process-driven applications that improve business efficiency. Many of our customers ask us how they can use workflows to extend the project management capabilities of SharePoint.  Some of our customers use SharePoint Designer to build interesting and innovative workflows to improve their business processes.  Others have invested in third party workflow solutions, such as K2, to easily build out advanced workflows in their SharePoint environment.

K2 is a complete environment that allows users to build workflows and improve business productivity with process-driven applications.  K2 blackpoint is a SharePoint add-on that allows users to build workflows and process-driven solutions in their SharePoint environment quickly, without code or complexity.  BrightWork has worked closely with K2 to ensure that BrightWork integrates seamlessly with the K2 solution.  K2 and BrightWork have collaborated to deliver a flexible solution for a wide range of needs by bringing business processes and project management closer together.

Recently, K2 invited BrightWork to present a webinar on their Expert Webinar Series, on the topic: Project Governance and Management Reporting using SharePoint.  In that webinar, K2 and BrightWork presented an economical solution built on Microsoft SharePoint that provides a quick, cost effective solution to manage and track the full project life cycle from idea through timely portfolio reporting.  The webinar demonstrates how you can use the two solutions together (BrightWork for project and portfolio management and K2 for project management lifecycle processes) to leverage SharePoint as a collaborative platform.  

Click here to view this webinar and learn more about K2 and BrightWork integration.

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BrightWork Announce New Partnerships with Altara, IBS and Xcelligent

Boston, MA, 21st March 2011 BrightWork, the leading provider of SharePoint Project Management applications has recently announced three new strategic partnerships with Altara in California, IBS in the Bahamas, and Xcelligent in Florida. Through these new partnerships, BrightWork will be supported by proven market leaders to provide the best project management solution to clients in these regions.

Altara is a California-based provider of ERP solutions and a Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) partner. For over 10 years, Altara has implemented financial, accounting, and business management systems for their customers. The company offers tailored business solutions by providing a package of consulting services and business applications that meet the specific needs of customers. Renowned for their outstanding customer service and support, Altara is continuously ranked among the Top 10 MBS partners worldwide.

IBS International is a global software development and consulting firm based in the Bahamas. IBS offers expertise and professional services in areas such as: website design, web application development, database applications, web hosting, project management, online marketing, and strategic IT planning. The company focuses on solutions that will leverage tools and business processes that clients already have in place, resulting in reduced costs, improved efficiency and providing immediate value.

Xcelligent is a Process and Management Consulting firm based in Florida. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Xcelligent provides a variety of solutions for the following areas: business process management, project management, enterprise architecture services, business intelligence, and performance management. Xcelligent uses an integrated approach, utilizing a combination of tools, templates, methodologies and processes to provide the most efficient business solution for clients.

“Developing our Partner Channel is very exciting for us,” said Eamonn McGuinness, CEO of BrightWork. “Altara, IBS and Xcelligent are market leaders in their regions, and their expertise combined with the BrightWork solution will provide customers with a powerful project management solution. By aligning the BrightWork product with the activities of our partners, we will be able to reach a greater audience and serve our customers better in these regions.”

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