“Whilst other solutions may look stronger than pmPoint in some criteria, the pmPoint solution provided the greatest breadth of support across our requirements. In addition, pmPoint’s support for textual project information was seen as highly valuable and in line with RACQ’s PM approach.”

Tim Healy
Executive Manager – PMO
RACQ

Testimonial: Royal Automobile Club of Queensland

The Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ) provides motoring services and insurance policies to customers in Queensland, Australia. Establishment of RACQ’s Project Management Office (PMO) in late 2007 signified the organisation’s desire to formalise its project management practices and improve project performance. A baseline assessment of project management capabilities taken at that time revealed that project execution would benefit from implementation of a consistently applied project management methodology, standardisation of templates and processes, and implementation of project management software to support project delivery.

RACQ were seeking a software solution that could not only support these current needs but also provide the flexibility to adapt to changes over time as capability for project management increased. The solution would also need to cater for projects of different sizes and a wide variety of types, ranging from small local initiatives, to large corporate-wide programs. The variety of project types ranged from standard software development and deployment, e-business, marketing systems and campaigns, and even roadside services.

Using Pcubed as local implementation partner, RACQ embarked on a selection process reviewing a number of potential solutions including Brightwork’s pmPoint. This assessment was made using in excess of 100 defined criteria under categories including PM Lifecycle support, portfolio management, and project scheduling.

The implementation took approximately 8 weeks from decision to pilot (including development of the PM methodology and configuration of pmPoint). Progressive roll-out of pmPoint post-pilot is now underway on a project by project basis and in line with PMO resource availability to ensure project team support. pmPoint is currently being used by up to 250 people, supporting 19 corporate (major) projects and 76 local projects.

The benefits of deploying pmPoint in RACQ include:

Easy customization and integration of RACQ’s project management methodology, templates and reports. The system acts as a training tool to roll-out this methodology, which occurred concurrently with the implementation of pmPoint.
Support for applying a scalable methodology to include the different types and levels of management, of projects at RACQ.
Built-in notifications and reminders on providing project updates eg. alerts on tasks due soon, late etc.
Provision of a project site for publishing project information and relevant documentation to the project team and general staff.
Good support for textual project information.
Provision of Roll-up reporting based on program, portfolio, organisational structure, portfolio segmentation.
Replacement of the manual aggregation Status Reporting process.
Provision of an organisation-wide view of corporate and local project activity.
MS Sharepoint-based. Natural collaboration and an easy-to-use web-based interface.
Natural promotion of project management as a discipline, across RACQ.