Words by Megan Avard, Founder and CEO
One of the benefits of living in the fast-paced and modern world is the availability of technology solutions that can assist with how companies deliver projects.
Digital capabilities transform the way we deliver projects by helping stakeholders to plan more effectively, increase productivity and manage deliverables for overall project success.
At the centre of digital transformation is the integration of digital technologies across the business, enhancing operations and value. As such, digital transformation needs to be handled with care, as it can cause disruptions to long-standing business practices.
Outdated processes such as complex spreadsheets, printed documents and lengthy email chains are no longer best practice, and whilst it feels like a big step to change your business, if you choose not to, it faces being left behind as the industry around it progresses.
Without digital capabilities, your business will weaken its competitive positioning as Portfolio and Project management is now expected to be performed with digital technology, and without it your clients will question your reputation, processes and procedures, and lose faith in your ability to deliver outstanding work.
In the current and ever-changing market, it is a must to make the transition. The sooner you do so, the quicker your business can get back its competitive edge.
Here are five ways that digital capabilities are revolutionising project deliveries and outcomes.
Planning
The planning stage of every project is crucial to the project’s performance and success. From people and materials to financials and site selection, without planning you simply don’t have a project.
Planning can be a highly manual and extensive process, which often involves many parties and specific requirements. Digital technology, such as SurePact, allows you to streamline procedures in the initial planning stages, but also assists in planning across the entire lifecycle of the project from start to finish.
With SurePact, you can manage and plan for an entire suite of portfolios across people, processes, information, equipment, materials, funding, locations, documents and reporting.
Risk management
Every project comes with both internal and external risk, and when human resources are also involved, those risks multiply exponentially. By using digital solutions you can prevent and mitigate errors and mistakes early on before they snowball into large cost, time and scope blowouts.
SurePact’s modules work together to provide a full Portfolio Solution, giving customers up-to-date information, data and documentation in one accessible place, meaning risks can be identified and managed sooner rather than later and provide that single source of truth.
Communication and collaboration
In modern workplaces, agile processes are a must to facilitate change as it occurs. Part of this agility relies on strong communication and collaboration between team members across all levels of the project.
Clear, concise and consistent communication can be a huge beast when dealing with several key departments, contractors and stakeholders. It can result in miscommunications, avoidable errors, lost information and time wasted searching for details in email chains, paperwork and in co-workers’ brains.
The ability to engage, connect and interact across internal and external stakeholders allows for knowledge to be leveraged and performance to be increased. It also helps to foster a shared ownership of projects, creating a synergised environment.
When delivering projects, modern digital solutions can increase communication capabilities, ensuring everyone is on the same page and understands the expected results.
Communication needs to be available in real-time to prevent projects halting over variation approvals, problem solving and decision making, reducing idle time on-site and increasing productivity and efficiency.
SurePact allows for this in the one accessible platform, so that everyone – both on- and off-site – is always accurately informed.
Integration
There are a range of technologies that work together to deliver business outputs. Having these solutions talk to each other is the only way that maximum value and efficiency can be realised.
Whatever system you are using, it is essential that the modules are fully integrated with each other and also with your existing enterprise software. Poorly developed integration can add hidden costs and outweigh the benefits of implementing new software solutions.
SurePact’s extensible integration frameworks add value to organisations with a fully serviceable Application Programming Interface (API), which supports all application features and a federated Single Sign-On, which delivers a seamless experience for users based on their organisation’s sign-in process.
This framework also supports connectors to other systems that supply any type of interface, from files to APIs. Data or API access can be enabled to support clients preferring to integrate SurePact data with in-house business intelligence software.
Results-focused reporting and analytics
For those involved in reporting, it can be a tedious and manual task. Data needs to be found, reviewed, broken down and reported on so that strategies can be developed, future decisions can be informed and stakeholders can be updated.
Accurate reporting is essential to increase compliance, improve governance and enhance productivity to avoid costly mistakes.
Robust and real-time analytics, like those provided within SurePact, help to keep projects on track and within budget with minimal risks.
With digital tools at your fingertips, Project Managers will be presented with more time during the day to focus on strategy and optimising deliverables. Energy can also be reinvested into strategy and focus can be honed into results.
These are just some of the ways that portfolio and project delivery can be transformed through digital capabilities – and some of the ways SurePact can help.
While digital transformation can feel intimidating and can be both a cultural and work shift, the learning, restructuring and transitioning phases will pay off big in the long-term.
It is important to train those involved in your organisation with updated processes and protocols and onboard them to any new digital systems as soon as possible. At the same time, it’s important to keep the pace manageable, to avoid overwhelming those involved.
Contact us today to learn more about SurePact’s Portfolio Delivery solution, and how we can help your business to undergo a successful digital transformation.
