EPK-Suite Portfolio Management

EPK-Suite

EPK-Suite is a resource and capacity planning, project and portfolio management, collaboration, and timesheet system built on .NET 2.0 and Microsoft SQL Server architecture, and integrated with Windows SharePoint Services. You use Microsoft Office Project for major projects, and a browser based planning capability for less complex projects. The functions available are:

· Portfolio Management - manage all effort in your organization through the stage-gates of your business processes, from wish list/idea to close out. Support and operational work, as well as projects with detail task schedules can be handled. Flexible views allow you to ensure alignment with your corporate objectives. The initiation, approval, execution, and controlled review of all work can be configured with the stage-gate based workflow.

· Resource Management - carry out capacity planning to meet resource demands, and assure that the staff assigned to any effort is actually available at the time of the commitment. Search for the skills needed to staff any request, operations, or projects. .

· Timesheet - full functionality timesheet with approval by both line managers and project managers, charging of hours to all effort including projects, operational support, and non-working time. Flexible and comprehensive viewing/reporting of current and historical time charges is included, and the ability to interface with help desk systems, and financial/billing/chargeback systems.

· Collaboration – view issues, risks, document data across projects and other efforts. Create team workspaces for support and operational work. Use the powerful views generator to report problem areas across the organization.

· Reporting – The system includes a powerful views generator which allows comprehensive reporting of all data including time-phased costs and resources. Graphical indicators and Gantt bar are supported in views that can be printed from the web browser. All views can be printed or exported to Excel and other applications which support XML. And all EPK pages can be presented as web-parts. The documented, open database, with directly accessible time-phased data enables the use of SQL Server Reporting Services and other reporting tools.

EPK-MPPlus

EPK-MPPlus enhances an organization’s utilization of the world’s most popular project scheduling system: Microsoft Office Project. EPK Group applied its years of experience in the project and portfolio management field to produce a system which enhances an organization’s investment in its project scheduling software. The functions available are:

· Consolidation of Project schedules. Managers and executives can now see the current Microsoft Office Project schedule detail task plans simply using just their web browser. Any number of projects and all levels of detail can be viewed quickly.

· Enables management by key milestones. The system has a variety of milestone symbols to identify milestone level and progress against the baseline dates is clearly shown by color coding of the symbols.

· Comprehensive Budgeting/Cost Management. Easily budget your projects with a user definable Cost category structure. Project budgets can be broken down by Labor (with Employee/Contractor breakdown and further breakdown by Role/Skill), Hardware, Software, Overheads, and Contingency.

· Multiple Rate Tables. EPK-MPPlus allows rates to be established at each level of your Cost Category structure, and also allows rates to be set by Role/Skill, Job Title, or for an individual resource. This means that your initial budget may have just one rate for Employee Labor and another rate for Contract Labor. But when your detail Project Plan is created, the time-phased cost for resources can be based on the rate for each resource on a task by Role/Skill or that particular resource’s rate. And all rates can vary by timeframe .

· Compare Budget costs and manpower vs. the cost and manpower of the detail Project schedule in Microsoft Office Project .

· The documented, open database permits the use of standard reporting tools such as Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services. Sample SQL Reporting Services RDL files are available to allow you to quickly develop comprehensive production reports.

· Integration with Windows SharePoint Services. Centralize your MPP files on WSS. Create views that show issues/risks (or any WSS “list”) across multiple projects. These views can show graphical symbols for items that are late using the powerful views generator included.

· A sophisticated security mechanism that is easy to administer allows control of what data can be viewed/edited, and what functions are available to specific users or groups of users.

· EPK-MPPlus supports the import/export of data with other applications and reporting systems.

· Works with any version of Microsoft Office Project after 2000.

· Affordable licensing. Just $9995 for 50 users. Includes support, maintenance, and new versions for 1 year. Full credit for EPK-MPPlus license fees paid toward upgrades to EPK-Suite.

· Fast implementation. Get production results quickly. EPK-MPPlus installs in less than an hour and includes a Guided Tour and matching sample database which walks you through system functions and gives you a head start for creating your own Cost Categories, views, etc. The Guided Tour database can be accessed at any time as your production configuration of the system is enhanced.