Planzone User Story : Industry

« Planzone has been a key tool for us to help structuring our organization in fast growing environment. Our consultants are very often at customer’s site, all over China and Asia, and with Planzone they can now record their progress in a timely fashion. Our Progress review meetings are more efficient and we can focus on the value-added tasks such as anticipating project issues before they happen and optimizing resource schedules. Besides, using Planzone is way for us to bring abstract Project management concepts into the daily work of our teams, which we founded far more efficient than classroom training or well-marketed fancy certifications ».

A core business based on Project Management

Based in Shanghai since its establishment in 2004, Siveco China is China's largest maintenance firm. Siveco China has developed a unique approach, using technology, to meet the needs of owners of factories and infrastructures.

 
Siveco China is involved in facilities management and risk prevention through a range of services including improved maintenance, consulting and implementation of CMMS (Computer Aided Maintenance Management). The company also offers a range of highly innovative solutions called bluebee® available in the cloud, as a mobile version (tablet and smartphone) and compatible with all CMMS.

Project management within Siveco China primarily concerns the use of schedules, which were until now were created with Microsoft Project. But this solution was not flexible enough and did not include all information needed to monitor the activity of the various Project Managers.

Similarly, it was difficult for consultants to access the latest version of the schedule of their project if it had been updated by the project manager when they were traveling.

" Our main need was to centralize and coordinate the schedules of all our Project Managers. This, in order to know their availability and upcoming workload, something which was not possible with Microsoft Project. It caused much redundancy, with the same schedule (stored on the Project Manager’s computer, the consultant’s computer and passed on to our clients) becoming outdated at the first delay or change. "

Centralization, Simplicity and Collaboration

Faced with an increasing number of employees and projects, the company decided to search for a new interface capable of providing the flexibility needed. Searching on the internet, the company found Planzone and decided to try it out in the Project Management department of Siveco China. Using Planzone the department was able to achieve its two organizational objectives:

• Managers can easily follow the progress of individual projects and know the workload of Project Managers
• Project Managers can access their or their employees’ schedule anytime, routinely updated, regardless of their location.

" Gantt charts can be consolidated through the Multi-Project view. This is clearly the biggest advantage Planzone has over its competitors who do not offer this feature in such a simple and easy-to-use way. "

[Spreading workload and sharing resources between different projects]

Only 6 months after implementing Planzone Siveco China has reaped the benefits in its Project Management :

• The centralisation of information shared between Managers, Project Managers and clients
• A guarantee that one is always working on the latest version of the schedule
• Optimizing workload between teams by using timesheets
• Improved timeliness with regard to deadlines by monitoring the progress of each project, together or separately
• Saving time by creating project templates

" The schedules of all projects are easily accessible by Siveco China’s consultants and managers, working either in our offices or whilst traveling. So there is an increased sensitivity to deadlines. And by using the Template, all Project Managers have almost identical schedules that fit perfectly within our current working procedures. "

Assistance in obtaining ISO 9001 certification

" As a centralized repository for all project documents and progress records, Planzone is a part of our Quality Management System, and enabled us to reach quickly the ISO 9001:2008 certification. Now, Siveco China is proud to be the only company in Asia certified for Maintenance management consultancy and CMMS implementation! "