Project Management Software Success Story

A municipal management and tax accounting software company selects Project Insight, online project management software, to share vital project information over dispersed team locations, and improve project progress.

Tailored Business Systems

"Our financial people are getting those deal alerts in a more timely way, so they don't have to wait until the project is done to send an invoice That means better cash flow and faster payments."
--B. K., Consultant, Tailored Business Systems

The Company
Located in Georgia, Tailored Business Systems (TBS) has designed, produced, and installed computer software for IBM midrange systems in the government sector since 1973. As their name indicates, the company tailors its standard software offerings to meet the unique requirements of each customer. The TBS mission is to deliver efficient, economical, and secure environments for its municipal clients.

The Challenge
TBS serves its municipal customers through projects that vary in size from simple tasks, from sourcing and installing a new printer, to managing the installation of an entire new IBM AS400 platform.

Consultant B. K. explained, "One thing that would often complicate the process is that it's an intensely cooperative effort between internal TBS software and support services and third-party hardware and software component vendors. Once we've gotten a sales order and ordered the computer from IBM, it is sent to our third-party integration and installation group. They, in turn, add many peripherals to it, which could mean a firewall, PCs, printers, and third-party software. At that point it is our job to get everything running like a system, then our support and training people handle the last phase of the project."

As sales have continued to grow, and with so many internal and external team members working from different locations, TBS knew they needed a web-based system. Its then current manual process was cumbersome and slowed down overall progress on projects. "That was the thing that was really missing in the earlier process at TBS: there was no ability to share information and collaborate about tasks, events and dependencies that could prevent the team from moving forward. People were running around the hallways, handing over a piece of paper here, having an ad hoc status conversation there," said B. K..

The Solution
TBS began a search for a web-based project management system that would work with their multi-company collaborative team approach. B. K. explained, "We needed to be able to redefine the formalized process and have it available to an entire project team via a web interface." The company looked at several systems and narrowed it down to 4 or 5 that covered most of their fundamental needs, which included:

• Web interface and full functionality with a true ASP model.
• Permissions structures that would let TBS system administrators define which team members access specific content or change settings by company, group or user.
• An executive view and dashboard.
• Email alerts for different upcoming, due, overdue, or completed tasks.
• Project templates that could be re-used with minor modifications when needed.

After a careful internal evaluation of the candidates, TBS chose Project Insight in the fall of 2005.

The Results
Currently, 20 users are working in Project Insight, and B. K. reports the positive impact on the organization was swift. "We now have better visibility and communication within a project because all of our team members have good access via the web. They communicate better about things that are going on and they use the discussion threads to do that."

TBS is also finding that once team members adjusted to the new system, they quickly saw the improved intervals. "We've seen that projects just aren't taking as long," said B. K. And he named another important benefit, "Our financial people are getting those deal alerts in a more timely way, so they don't have to wait until the project is done to send an invoice. Our email alerts let them click through into a project task and find out, 'Hey, that was a $12,000 revenue event we can bill for right now.' That means better cash flow and faster payments."

Reflecting on his experience with Metafuse and Project Insight as a whole, B. K. finished by saying, "I'm immensely impressed with Metafuse as an organization. You can have the best project management system in the world, but jumping into it and figuring out how to make it work can be very complex. From my sales contact and through my implementation, I have found Metafuse able to bring in the right resources to help us answer those questions to get us going in the most efficient manner. We just found Metafuse was incredibly helpful. They're a good group. People jump to the call."