Covestic engaged to get a major technology deployment back on track.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
A Fortune 500 company was in the midst of a major new technology deployment and
was experiencing problems meeting milestones and completing deliverables. The project
involved deploying a new technology to support the company's national customer care
department, including a speech interactive voice response (SIVR) system. The new system
was needed to provide automated functionality that would enable customers to complete
day-to-day account transactions without needing to speak with a live representative. In
order to meet corporate cost reduction targets, timely deployment of the SIVR system was
essential.
COVESTIC'S SOLUTION
Covestic was asked to assume program management responsibility for the SIVR system
deployment. In an effort to maintain business-critical timelines and deliverables,
Covestic assigned an overall program manager and several experienced project managers
to organize and coordinate the key functional areas of the program. The Covestic team
worked in partnership with the client's senior business management, internal IT staff,
and external vendors to create a revised overall project plan with clear milestones and
deliverables. A status reporting and escalation process was established to monitor
performance and resolve any issues quickly and efficiently.
Through Covestic's structured program approach, the client was able to achieve key project objectives, including:
- Procurement, installation, configuration, and testing of three new hardware environments installed in three separate datacenters across the United States. Each environment consisted of nearly 50 load-balanced servers deployed in cluster configurations providing redundancy both within and across datacenters.
- Implementation of client-specific application software developed as a joint effort between the system integration vendor and client developers.
- Development of a datamart with real-time data feed for ad hoc business reporting needs.
- Full user-acceptance testing, planning, and execution.
- Creation and execution of full system performance testing and documentation.
- Creation of operational readiness testing and documentation.
- Development of a multi-phase deployment plan and ongoing management of system deployment.
- Support for training of approximately 8,000 customer service representatives.
- Management of the ongoing application tuning and maintenance efforts.
PROJECT RESULTS
While an extremely tight timeline was required to meet business commitments, the initial
solution deployment was completed as planned. The customer care organization was very
vocal in their support of the program team in general, and the Covestic team in particular,
for achieving strong results under a demanding program schedule. Covestic was invited by the
client to lead the second phase of the SIVR project.
THE COVESTIC ADVANTAGE
Covestic immediately understood the critical nature of this program and the high visibility
it was receiving across the client's senior management team, and responded rapidly by inserting
senior program/project managers (each with over 12 years of experience) into key roles across
the project. Working together as a team and using proven methods of planning, tracking,
communicating, and problem resolution, they were able to reorganize the method being used to
manage the program.
Each of the Covestic project managers assumed a primary role in managing key
components of the plan, but also acted as quality assurance resources to improve
the performance of the other members of the project management team. Using Covestic
templates and communication methods, they were able to expedite completing the
deliverables and providing more comprehensive status updates and issue/risk management
communications.
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