What Is Enterprise Project Management And It's Importance?

Hindustan Unilever

Hindustan Unilever is the owner of so many brands which we use in our daily life, but we are not aware of it. Pepsodent, Closeup, Surf Excel, Wheel, Dove, Lux, Lifebuoy, Fair & Lovely, Ponds, Lakme, and many more are the products of the same company.  Dove, Lux and Lifebuoy, all the three are soaps, so why have three products of the same field and create your own competition?

This is the strategy because of which Hindustan Unilever has become such a huge company. The plan is to dominate the full field and provide so many options to the customers that all the types of customers can choose from atleast one option and they will end up buying a product of Hindustan Unilever only.

Each soap brand targets a different group of individuals. 

Lux: Lux is positioned as a favourite soap of film stars and it targets the age group between 16-40 and urban and semi-urban areas. Lux has the best scent as a soap. 

Lifebuoy: Lifebuoy is targeted as a family brand. It is positioned as a health and value product.

Dove: Dove targets women of the upper class. It is a beauty soap. 

Thus, instead of working as a competition, all these products target different sets of the audience and thus cover the whole market by providing them with plenty of varieties. 

This is the best example of Enterprise Project Management as all the different projects(brands) are working successfully and is not becoming an obstacle for the other one. Now, just imagine that there is zero transparency or no connection between all the brands.

These brands instead of targeting different sets of the audience will target the same sets and will probably end up being rivals. Thus the strategic alignment of taking the whole market is failed and money is also wasted by targeting the brands at the same audience. Therefore it is necessary to have Enterprise Project Management, so as the projects have alignment with the business strategy. 

The most common reason why projects fail is the misalignment between project goals and business strategy. According to the Project Management Institute’s “Pulse of the profession 2017: Success rates Rise”, Organizations that establish an enterprise project management office (EPMO), with the goal of aligning projects and strategies, suffer 33 percent fewer project failures. 

Enterprise Project Management:

Simply put, Enterprise Project management means having a clear view and idea of the whole working of the organization. Total transparency is needed in the organization to incorporate Enterprise Project Management. An organization have multiple projects on hand at the same time which may be connected to each other or maybe not, but are ultimately related as they all impact the same organization. Unlike the normal approach of project management, the focus here is on the strategic alignment of all the projects with the organization’s goals. Thus, Enterprise Project Management refers to managing projects on a company-wide scale. 

Here, all the members of the organization should be aware of all the projects and the project description, that all other departments are handling, and the resources that would be used to complete those projects. Everyone should be aware of who is doing what and by when. i.e. All the members should have a 360-degree view of the organization.

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), these initiatives can include:

1. Using Project Management Software to consolidate multiple projects and make them more visible and trackable across the organization.
2. Creating a project management department
3. Using “stages of growth” models to improve project management capabilities.

Importance of Enterprise Project Management:

1. Increased Efficiency:

You will be shocked on about how fast you can work once you have the right Enterprise Project Management tool installed in your organization. The first effect that you will notice is the increased efficiency of the members. You can work and communicate easily with all the members. 

If your project management software is packed with features like Gantt charts, team chats, file sharing, reminders, charts and Task Management Software alike features, you will notice that now everybody is aware of their’s and all the member’s tasks and responsibilities. Thus, eliminating the obstacles to productivity and hence boosting it. 

2. Reduced Costs:

Consider the expense spend on the Enterprise Project Management software as the best investment that you can do for your organization because as soon as you start working over the software, it will start delivering you the dividends in terms of reduced cost.

It eliminates the time consumed in meetings to inform how much work is completed, as you can easily see it without making any report in the project milestones, thus helping in being more productive. A cloud-based system eliminates the need for heavy up-front investment for the premise system. You can use cloud-based software like SmartTask which is easier to implement, can boost your productivity by up to 40%, and is more cost-effective.

3. Better Visibility:

The main purpose of Enterprise Project Management is to provide an overview of all the projects of the organization and align them strategically with the organization’s ultimate goal. 

A project portfolio can be used to get a centralized view of all the projects. This can help you in organizing a similar types of projects in a single portfolio and know their progress through project milestone. This provides you with real-time monitoring of all the projects in a single screen. You can keep your entire team updated on the progress of multiple projects.

Because of real-time monitoring errors, problems and issues can be solved quickly and on time without causing any deviation to the project scope.

It removes the bottle-neck of centralized shared services. This level of visibility is essential for the effective long run of any organization. It helps the executives as now they are in the loop too and they can take necessary decisions and can barge in before the project is at risk.

4. Better Project Outcomes:

The main objective of implementing any Project Management is to achieve better outcomes. This is the ultimate test of any project management software.

In starting you may just see improved results in some process or another, in the long-term you will progress in each and every process, from planning, project analysis to delivering the final product. 

You will witness remarkable improvements in Budget management, Employee engagement, and Work quality.

5. Resource Allocation:

As the resources are limited, it is necessary to have the right people at the right place doing the right jobs, to have the project completed. There would be many projects that would need the same resources to be completed, thus an alignment should be there between all the projects so as the resources are used in the best way possible and zero wastage of resources is maintained. 

The resources should be allocated according to the skill sets needed in doing the project, availability of resources, and geographic needs. A balance should be maintained between the project managers and team members and work should be allocated in such a way that the workload is maintained and no one is burdened.