Are you running a project, or is the project running you ragged?

Projects are a great way to organise groups of people to achieve complex and risky goals. But as teams get larger, it gets harder to maintain communications and keep everyone focussed on the bottom line. Add in a mix of in-house staff, contractors and consultants, and this poor communication becomes lost efficiency, wasted labour and poor procurement; the problems for management can only get worse.

Many organisations employ dedicated administrative staff and large Project offices to shoulder the burden of collecting performance data and producing management reports. But this approach eats into the project budget, which is money that could be saved for contingencies, even if you are satisfied with the quality of data produced

One response to the problems of administering projects is to adopt formal methods such as PRINCE2 or those offered by the Project Management Institute. But the jargon can be disconcerting to the untrained – who are the majority of people in your team – and every hour they spend learning high-concept management theories is time they are not adding value for your customer.

Are your decisions supported by accurate data?

The measure of success for a project office is that it can produce timely, accurate information to support you as the project. And this must be done whilst minimising the amount of time your team are diverted away from their value-adding activities.

Most projects start with good intentions, but a few days sickness at a key moment, a change of personnel in the project office or just a lack of discipline can put barriers in the way of gathering and reporting accurate management information. Even a slight backlog may sap the productivity of an entire team, and lead to serious project issues being overlooked.

Are your customers and stakeholders really paying attention?

Projects involve uncertainty and complexity – after all, if the task was easy then why go to the effort of setting up a project. Everyone agrees that the customers and stakeholders of a project must be involved, and that issues are better solved at the start of a project than at the end. But

Xrisk’s Virtual Project Office – less expensive, more efficient & faster

For any small project – fewer than fifty team members and a budget of less than £10 million – Xrisk can offer a complete project office service at a fixed monthly price per project member. Our team have subject matter expertise in areas as diverse as:

• IT infrastructure
• Software Development
• Civil Engineering
• Workforce Restructuring
• Business Transformation
• Audit & Forensic Accounting
• Sales Strategy & Market Research

Regardless of the goals of your project, we can offer a disciplined, structured approach to administering complex projects, using the latest technology to make communication between team members easy and productive whether they are sitting at different desks or on different continents.

Traditional project management has relied upon charts, graphs, and stats. But that is not enough to guarantee success. Xrisk enhance the fundamentals of performance analysis with the tools for easy communication and collaboration.

With a strong security model, we extend your reach to encompass suppliers, customers and other stakeholders; to ensure that everyone in aware and understands the status of your project, and to identify and resolve issues quickly.

• No deposits
• No complex contracts
• Monthly Invoicing after qualifying period
• Immediate start

What happens after I purchase an Xrisk Virtual Project Office?

A member of our team will contact you to discuss the nature of your project and obtain details on participants. We will work with you to build a simple milestone plan, a schedule and work breakdown structure (WBS) and agree a reporting calendar. We will discuss a security model to allow your customers and stakeholders direct access to elements of your system. Once you are happy, we will provide your team with login details to our project office interface and collaboration suite, and immediately start familiarisation. Time Tracking, Electronic Document Storage and Issue Management are in place from day one.

Our service includes as standard:

• Schedule Progress Tracking
• Time Tracking
• Simple Cash Accounting
• Management Reporting to your own custom schedule
• Secure File Storage & Version Control
• Electronic Document Signing
• Issue & Risk Management
• Integrated SMS messaging and Skype VoIP
• Meeting Coordination
• Remote Collaboration software with Video Conferencing
• 2hrs of free credit with one of our management advisors

All of these facilities are available to all project participants through a Secure, Intuitive Web-based interface.

Options: Facilitated Training Day

We also offer an optional facilitated training day, in which a member of the Xrisk team will meet with your entire team to familiarise them with our project office interface through discussing the project schedule, identifying potential risks and issues. Rather than using abstract examples, your team will learn by directly investigating your project as it is represented in your environment.