Project Management Software Success Story

A Six Sigma firm rejects its home-grown project software, and chooses Project Insight, online project management software, to simplify processes and improve client relationships.

Sigma Breakthrough Technologies, Inc.

"Project Insight is really a core component of what we do and a critical component of how we deal with our clients. It is a significant improvement over what we had before...If you can use a browser, you can use the software."
--A. A., IT Support, Sigma Breakthrough Technologies, Inc.

The Company
Since its inception as one of the original three Six Sigma deployment firms in 1996, Sigma Breakthrough Technologies, Inc. (SBTI) has been recognized as a leader in large Corporate Lean and Six Sigma deployments. With a history of successful interventions at companies including 3M, Cummins, Eastman Chemical, and others, SBTI also enjoys the leadership of the most stable management and deployment team in the Six Sigma industry. Committed to helping its customers' processes meet the Six Sigma standard of no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities, SBTI is led by one of the original Six Sigma developers, and an executive team that leverages over 100 years of combined process improvement and product development expertise.

The Challenge
SBTI works with its corporate customers to bring their business processes to Six Sigma standards. The projects involve working with massive amounts of data, and SBTI works with its customers to store the data, manipulate it, analyze it, and share it within their organizations and back to SBTI for oversight. "We come in to interpret the data, which means we have to have access to data in the first place," said A. A., IT Support for SBTI.

"The projects we perform are dictated by our clients. Previously, we gave our customers project tracking software that was developed in-house to implement and track their projects. Then, our executive director or a project manager inside our organization followed the project with our client, guiding and training them," A. A. continued.

The main problem with SBTI's home grown project management system was that it was a stand alone program, installed on a single computer. "This made it very difficult to manage projects within our client organizations, and also made it difficult for them to share their data with us," said A. A.. "Maintenance was tough. With a stand alone copy, any updates had to be dished out in fifteen different versions to all clients. We needed something more robust that would allow us to manage multiple projects simultaneously." Another significant challenge was that viewing the project or uploading and updating data involved physically being in the office where the stand alone program was installed.

The Solution
SBTI set out to review and evaluate project management programs that would simplify the process of working with their clients. The review team evaluated three or four programs, including Project Insight from Metafuse, with evaluation factors including cost and subscription services versus the purchase of stand alone copies.

"Project Insight was far beyond anything else we saw at the time of our evaluation," recalled A. A. "It was the clear stand out product." SBTI began using Project Insight Hosted Enterprise in early 2003, and ultimately purchased the installed version in July 2004. Currently, SBTI has 269 registered Project Insight users, both employee consultants and clients.

The Results
Now that SBTI is using Project Insight for its client projects, collaboration comes easily. Because the product is web-based, SBTI project managers can see client data as soon as it is entered into a client space in Project Insight. "Clients can see it, we can see it, so it's instantaneous information from our perspective," A. A. reported. "Because it's not based on a particular type of machine or a specific program, we've been able to cut out involvement with the whole client network. Anyone with a browser can access information from anyplace home, office, on the road."

SBTI and its clients save their documents in a single, common location, which makes accessibility and overall system use very simple. Both client and project manager have access to data and can backup the information as needed.

"Once our clients upload their data, an email alerts us and we can start working on the data and analyzing it on our end. It's very quick and easy," said A. A.. "Project Insight requires very minimal training. Every time we add a new client or a new person to the list, they find it very intuitive. It requires very minimal technical support for our customers. If you can use a browser, you can use the software."

The biggest success, says A. A., is "the ability to implement the software no matter the location, no matter the client, no matter their internal setup. We can go into any location they have, give them a login, provide a password, and they're ready to start using the software. Project Insight is really a core component of what we do and a critical component of how we deal with our clients. It's a significant improvement over what we had before."