Who can benefit from PMP certification?
What are the benefits of PMP certification?
What is the Microsoft Office EPM solution?
Who can benefit from the use of EPM?
Why use WGA for your EPM implementation needs?

Who can benefit from PMP certification?

More and more employers are assigning their critical projects to PMPs because they have the experience, knowledge and skills to manage a company's most critical projects...and to get the most out of limited resources.

Useful to an employer immediately and competitively advantageous in a job search, WGA training is applicable to any project, in any industry.

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What are the benefits of PMP certification?

• PMP® is a globally recognized credential since 1969
• The demand for PMPs is growing fast
• Companies are saving up to 15% of gross revenues through improved project controls
• Customer satisfaction increases as project management skills improve on-time delivery
• Operations cycle times are reduced through project planning and team communications
• PMPs maximize productivity from limited resources which is essential in down cycles
• Many companies are requiring that PMPs manage critical projects
• PMPs are seen as leaders in organizations

“For someone looking for an advantage in a tight employment market, the PMP credential is a strong
differentiator. WGA training provided me with 13 tangible skills to apply immediately, including risk
management techniques, advanced cost saving methods and leadership skills. For less than $3,000, I think
this is really great value. I took this course and passed the exam the first time!”

– Project Director

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What is the Microsoft Office EPM solution?

Over the years, Microsoft Office Project software has become a leading project management tool for people who want to make an impact at work by being able to better plan, manage and communicate project information from their desktop. Microsoft Office Project provides the core tools that project managers, business managers, and planners need to manage schedules and resources independently.

More recently, organizations have identified effective collaboration and communication as key factors for achieving project success. Clear communication processes enable project team members to share knowledge efficiently, work collaboratively, and respond quickly when change is necessary. Collaborative interaction between project managers, and project stakeholders facilitates resource management, high level reporting and decision making. As a result, the Microsoft Office EPM Solution was created to:

• Enable organizations to manage their project portfolio effectively.
• Standardize project management processes and best practices across the organization.
• Centrally manage resources bases on skills and availability.
• Enable effective communication and collaboration within project teams and with other stakeholders or partners over the Web, an intranet, or an extranet.
• Report across projects in the organization and roll-up scorecard reports.

An extensible, enterprise-scale architecture enables effective integration with other line-of-business (LOB) systems. The picture below depicts the attributes of EPM.

Strategic alignment for enterprise project management

Making your strategic goals a reality requires technology that is robust enough to support your core business and yet flexible enough to accommodate your existing processes. The Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution provides this infrastructure, so you organization can gain visibility, insight, and control its portfolio of projects, as well as improve productivity, reduce cycle time, decrease costs, and increase quality. The Microsoft Office EPM Solution allows you to communicate with resources and other stakeholders, while leaving ultimate control in the hands of the project manager.

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Who can benefit from the use of EPM?

Executives: Manage Projects as a Collective Portfolio for Better Decision-Making

More effectively manage your company's project portfolio by continually identifying, prioritizing, and investing in projects that align with your corporate strategy. By doing so, you can make sure your company's efforts are spent only on activities that contribute to the bottom line.

The Microsoft Office EPM Solution can help you manage your project portfolio effectively by enabling you to:

• Evaluate project status and quickly identify at-risk and underperforming projects using roll-up scorecard reports that graphically display key business metrics.
• Integrate critical project data as Web parts into your executive-level dashboard side-by-side with other critical information for a more complete view of your business.
• Gain insight into the performance of your overall portfolio by identifying trends and problem areas using powerful analysis tools.
• Understand the impact of trade-offs and evaluate strategies to mitigate risk using what-if scenario modeling features.

Project Managers: Streamline Project Management Performance for Competitive Advantage

Whether delivering products or services, all organizations need to meet project deadlines, budgets, and stakeholder expectations. To maintain customer satisfaction and meet customer expectations, no room exists for project errors or delays.

To stay competitive, companies are increasingly implementing initiatives to improve their project delivery by continually reducing cycle times, minimizing costs, and controlling quality. These initiatives require skilled people, standardized processes, and superior technology—unified and driven by effective project management.

The Microsoft Office EPM Solution streamlines project management processes for greater performance thus enabling you to:

• Achieve organization-wide compliance and greater efficiencies in project delivery by capturing and deploying best practices and continually improving processes.
• Consistently meet project goals and attain higher customer satisfaction by creating plans that reflect realistic schedules, resource requirements, and budgets.
• Gain a deeper level of project governance and control through project performance, issue, and risk tracking capabilities.
• Comply with government and regulatory requirements by integrating standardized methodologies with your existing project management processes.

Resource Managers: Optimize Resources Across Your Organization for Sustained Competence

People are the most valuable—and often the most expensive—assets of your organization. To maximize productivity and be cost-effective, it is critical to assign the right people to the right project teams.

Managing people across an organization, however, is complex. Resource information is often controlled in various departments, making it difficult to forecast short- and long-term resource needs accurately. Without a complete understanding of the skills and availability of its staff, your organization cannot strategically hire, deploy, and develop resources that match the needs of your project portfolio.

The Microsoft Office EPM Solution provides you with powerful resource management capabilities which enable you to:

• Better assess resource efficiency and activity across projects by accurately and consistently tracking resource use and workload.
• Assemble high-performing project teams using staffing tools that help your organization optimize resource allocation and assignments from a central resource pool.
• Effectively determine hiring needs by forecasting short and long-term resource capacity and project demands.
• Achieve the greatest return on your human capital investment.

Project Teams: Strengthen Collaboration Across the Enterprise for Improved Productivity

Effective communication is essential to achieve project success. With clear communication processes, team members can share knowledge, work together smoothly to complete tasks and deliverables, and respond quickly to change.

Project teams, however, are becoming more dispersed—both organizationally and geographically—threatening productivity and elevating the need for technology that can meaningfully connect team members to maintain coordination and quality.

The Microsoft Office EPM Solution provides an infrastructure that strengthens collaboration and accountability among all levels of the organization by introducing tools to:

• Empower managers and project teams to make timely, informed decisions by giving them Web-based access to real-time business-critical project data.
• Increase participation in the project management process by enabling team members to easily manage, track, and report on their project activities through familiar tools, like the Web and e-mail.
• Realize greater accountability through a central tracking system that enables project teams to record, assign, and resolve issues.
• Gain higher quality and efficiency by jointly developing and organizing project-related deliverables using a central document repository with version and editing control.

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Why use WGA for your EPM implementation needs?

A powerful tool or solution such as EPM needs to be customized to your business processes through configurations such as templates, outline codes and dashboard creation. Whereas traditional enterprise solutions have historically required months of design followed by an expensive implementation program, the design and implementation of the Microsoft Office EPM Solution can be done in a few weeks. Thereafter, any required changes after the rollout can be easily incorporated in a matter of hours.

William George Associates (WGA) has the ability and expertise to cost effectively and quickly design and successfully implement a Microsoft Office EPM solution for your organization. Our experienced Consultants will also train your staff – from executives to project team members- on how to effortlessly use the EPM solution for their respective needs.

WGA Consultants:

1. Possess extensive Project Management expertise based on their own real life corporate experience, and have the tools, knowledge and techniques to adapt EPM to your processes. They specifically:
   • Know business processes and how to map EPM to meet your needs.
   • Understand and help create the required relationships within a corporation to make the use of EPM successful.
   • Have a thorough knowledge of the technology.
2. Understand business objectives and problems to solve in various industries and functions, including:
   • High Tech
   • Semiconductor
   • Construction
   • Financial
   • Manufacturing
   • Software
   • Information Technology.
3. Help clients overcome the typical problems of rolling out EPM at the organization or enterprise level by working as part of your team.

4. Have extensive experience in training and coaching at all levels of an organization and will help develop EPM champions within your organization.

5. Embrace the quality of the EPM rollout as the true measure of success

A WGA implementation of the Microsoft Office EPM Solution is sensitive to the many challenges faced in successfully implementing projects. We recognize these challenges and create solutions that satisfy your needs.

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