Project Management Software Success Story

An internet domain name registration company selects Project Insight, web-based project management software, to improve project team collaboration and communication.

Register.com

"We were experiencing a situation where project managers were slaves to our project management system With Project Insight, our biggest success has been its automatic adoption. I have people approaching me daily with requests for accounts and training."
--T. O., Register.com

The Company
Register.com was the first registrar to compete in the domain name registration market after government deregulation in 1999. Founded in 1994 and headquartered in New York, Register.com has risen to become a leading provider of global domain name registration and Internet services. With over three million domain names under management, Register.com offers registration in over 240 country code domains.

The Challenge
The IT group at Register.com works within multiple, geographically dispersed offices as well as with third-party vendors on various development projects for the company. Working with Microsoft Project desktop, the project managers were expending a significant amount of time and energy updating the project master file with individual updates emailed as attachments from team members. At times, the managers were relegated to interviewing individuals about their status, taking notes, then integrating their own updates with the master file.

"We used to have a file server that was a mess," said T. O., IT Manager at Register.com. "Everyone had individual directories, which were cluttered, disorganized and unsearchable."

Along with other managers, T. O. was well aware that the project team needed a better way to communicate and collaborate in order to reduce the "housekeeping" involved in project management. T. O. said, "The project managers found it tedious to update a plan manually. A lot of times they'd create a plan initially, but that plan wouldn't end up being the tool they needed to drive the project to completion. They couldn't hone in on key issues and late items. If a manager doesn't know what's late or what's critical, then that project's in jeopardy."

The Solution
Register.com launched a formal evaluation process in 2003, creating a matrix of all the features they sought, the criteria for acceptance, and then plotted it on a matrix. T. O. noted, "We looked at many systems, and the final contenders were Project Insight and Microsoft Project Server."

Register.com performed a side by side comparison of the two solutions. Register.com found Project Insight to be stronger in: ease of use, time and expense tracking, reporting and performance. They signed a deal to purchase Project Insight in December 2003.

The Results
With more than 100 team members, both internal users and third parties, Register.com has seen a remarkable improvement in communication and collaboration on their software development projects. According to T. O., "It's much easier to understand project status with Project Insight, because we don't have to call or send instant messages to capture the status and put it back into the project plan. Instead, the individual contributor shows that it's done, 70% done, or on its way, and we see that in real time."

Accuracy is another area of improvement, because "You don't have a plan that's out of date. The people who are closest to the projects are giving the updates. And another reason I like Project Insight is that I can restrict what the third-party vendors see inside our system," noted T. O..

He continued, "Metafuse provided on-site training, which we really appreciated. In fact, our biggest success has been its automatic adoption. I have people coming to me requesting accounts and training. That helped alleviate some of those initial risks of rolling out a new product."