Project Rescues through High Impact Consulting

“This project’s success is the direct result of the Software Consortium project manager’s dedication, service, leadership, and creativity …”

– Director of Clinical Research

Often Software Consortium is called in when projects are seriously challenged. These circumstances call for a depth of technical expertise, strong consulting skills–communication, influence, team-building and management experience. High impact consulting can put a project back on a success track as well as realize huge cost savings for the client through better project management decisions and productivity. Econometric studies cite a 64:1 payback from investments in top level project management. In one client situation, the decisions we helped the client make on one project paid for the two years of consulting which we performed on three other consulting projects.

Client Background:
A healthcare institution asked us to help with their new clinical management system, which was millions of dollars over budget and had no go-live date. Many of the organization’s senior leaders were calling the project unsalvageable and requesting cancellation. The project’s leader had heard that Software Consortium brings uncommon abilities and a talent for turning around challenged projects and called the company.

The Project:
The troubled Clinical Management System was complex and would manage all clinical projects within the institution. An auditable system, it would track patient health information and billing, enable collaboration on clinical data and maintain security.

A discovery analysis was undertaken by one of our project managers and he presented the results to the executives overseeing the project. The evaluation laid out the gaps between where the project was, the reasons it was falling short of expectations, and the course of action that would get the project delivered to fulfill business goals. Consensus to go forward was reached and our project manager assumed control of the project. Restored by new leadership, the project began to move forward: IT standards were developed; vendor guidelines were produced; cost controls were put in place; test environments were built; project teams were established; business requirements were written and scope documents produced; statements of work were developed, contracts were signed; project plans were communicated; target dates and deliverables were set and met.

The Result:
The project went live institution-wide on the new scheduled date. As stakeholders began to use the system, Software Consortium suggested features that brought added value to the project and supported high quality customer service. Many clients of the system have commented on our ability to identify a problem and to quickly deliver a solution. One example is that we added a state-of-the-art ad hoc reporting system that the client’s own security officer has called “the most secure system for reporting I’ve ever seen.”

The client’s Director of Clinical Research said, “This project’s success is the direct result of the Software Consortium project manager’s dedication, service, leadership, and creativity in working with our diverse and unique organization” and believes that without the dedicated work of our team, along with other key individuals within their organization, the project would have been cancelled.

Products/Technologies Used:
Ruby on Rails (RoR), JRuby on Rails (Java), Web Services, Web-based application, SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, Linux, Apache, Tomcat

To learn more about Software Consortium’s broad experience, please contact us.