Daptiv is pleased to announce the “Get the Most Out of Daptiv” Webinar Series.

Over the next two months, Daptiv will host five free webinars targeted to Daptiv Customers. With topics like “Aligning Business Needs to Daptiv”, “Getting the Most Out of Scarce Resources” and “Defining & Optimizing Your Portfolio”, we know there will be a lot of interest. Panelists will include Daptiv Executives, and special guest David Blumhorst from Effective IT Group.

You can find out which topics interest you and sign up here.

David Mayorga of PMOpartners, Spain

1. What´s your professional background and your experience in working in the PPM area?

I joined PricewaterhouseCoopers nine and a half years ago as a junior consultant after completing a Business Administration Bachelors degree and while finishing a Law degree. In PwC, I developed my career in the CRM area both defining business processes (sales, marketing, services,…) and implementing Siebel for several international customers.

I worked for PwC for four years (the last year and a half for IBM since IBM acquisition of PwC consultancy division) and decided to move to Amvos Consulting a small CRM consultancy where I continued specializing in CRM processes and tools (Siebel, Datawarehouse, Microsoft CRM) for both private and public sector.

Around a year ago, I signed for PMOpartners a niche leading consultancy focused in developing and implementing PPM (Project & Portfolio Management) models and methodologies. We provide pragmatic solution to our customers combining accepted international methodologies and market best practices (PMI, ITIL, COBIT, 5PK,…) with leading PPM tools customizing them to our customer business needs. That is why a few months ago we decided to become a Daptiv partner.

2. How did you hear about Daptiv? What interested you in working with Daptiv?

The first time we heard about Daptiv was by the end of 2008, when we read a couple of well-known benchmarking studies (Gartner and Forrester MQ) that placed Daptiv in the leaders quadrant and a case study that showed a return of investment for a standard Daptiv implementation of only 2 months.

However, the key point for PMOpartners was that Daptiv is the first and leader in PPM on demand software which makes it different from any other competitor in the market. We strongly believe in collaborative software due to its flexibility, simplicity and adoptability and in Daptiv leadership for the PPM Software as a Service (SaaS) in next few years in Southern Europe.

3. In your opinion, what makes Daptiv different from other PPM software?

Since you see a quick demo of the product you see what makes Daptiv PPM a unique and exclusive tool:

• Easy to use
• Visual and flexible
• Rapid to implement
• SaaS business model
• Dynamic applications
• Powerful Work Intelligence

A deeper knowledge of the tool reinforces its uniqueness and exclusivity as the key to its past and future success.

4. What´s the market like in Spain for collaborative business software?

Traditionally, Spain is not been a “wonderland” for collaborative business software. We are most likely to own our properties (houses, cars, software,…) than to rent, lease or subscribe. We also tend to highlight our differences with our competitors or partners instead of reinforcing our common points which makes every business model, methodology or software implementation significantly different from each other.

However, in PMOpartners we are really confident in a trend change in the next few years. Collaborative software companies had been harvesting in the last 10-15 years and it is time to collect and increase market share. Furthermore, an accurate and effective project and portfolio management is becoming a “must” for major companies and hopefully it will spread to small and medium sized businesses. It´s time for PMOpartners and Daptiv to lead the future for Spain and Portugal.

5. What are the most common business issues and pain points your customers face?

PMOpartners experiences in project and portfolio management in previous years show that, frequently, all our customers face the same business needs and issues:

• IT investment alignment with business strategic objectives.
• Cost reduced budgets along with maintaining service level and increasing profitability
• Need of visibility over business
• High percentage of projects overdue with limited functionality
• Resources skills not aligned with management needs
• Need of best practices, homogeneous methodologies, processes and information sources within the company

These pain points are a clear proof that Spanish market is ready for project and portfolio (PPM) software and tools.

Often, a few months after you first begin using Daptiv PPM, there are things you’d like to change. Sometimes you ‘over configured’. Maybe you’d like to make some changes to help your users get more out of Daptiv, or maybe you’re ready to do some things that you just weren’t ready to take on when you first went live.

The Daptiv Tune-Ups are designed to help you clear out the gunk, and maybe even move into high gear with your use of Daptiv PPM. In both of these offerings, you and your Daptiv solutions consultant will review your existing Daptiv configuration, discuss areas that you’d like to refine, and areas you’re ready to implement or add into your Daptiv environment. The consultant will interview you to assess what’s going well, what you’d like to improve, whether there are processes that can be further optimized using Daptiv PPM, even whether there are dashboards or reports that you’ve been meaning to get to but just haven’t had time for.

Tune-Up #1

Come visit Daptiv HQ in Seattle, WA! This package provides customers with:

• 2 days
• Configuration assessment
• Modifications
• Training
• Also incluces 16 hours of remote coaching when you’re back at the office

A good time to do this is 3 or 4 months after your initial go-live. We’ll work with you to assess your current processes, reports, dashboards, templates, workflow and adoption to determine the necessary steps to get even more benefits from your use of Daptiv PPM.

Price: $6,500 in Seattle, $7500 at your location. Customer pays actual T&E costs.

Tune-Up #2

With Solutions Assurance 2, the Daptiv Solutions Consultant will work with you at your location, to actively assess your current product configuration, and interview other stakeholders within the organization. We'll assess your current processes, reports, dashboards, templates, workflow and adoption to determine the necessary steps for greater adoption and leveraging the value of Daptiv. As is often the case, our customers experience change within their organization, or need to begin leveraging Daptiv in new ways. We've discovered that assessing your configuration, after it's been in production for a period of time, is a recommended best practice for improving adoption and protecting your investment.

This package is meant to provide customers with additional onsite configuration assessment, modification and training, typically at the 3rd or 4th month after the initial deployment is complete, and followed by another session at around the 9th month. Solutions Assurance 2 includes:

• 4 days
• Configuration
• Assessment and/or training
• Modifications
• Also includes 40 hours of remote coaching and configuration consulting when you’re back at the office

Price: $15,000. Customer pays actual travel expenses.

To sign up for one of the Tune-Up options or for additional information, please contact a Daptiv Account Manager by calling (206) 341-9117 or emailing acctmgmt@daptiv.com.

President & CEO of Daptiv

I was born in Seattle and lived in Portland, Oregon and Glen Rock, New Jersey before returning to the Northwest halfway through the 4th grade. I lived in Washington State from then on until midway through 2006, when my family moved to Tucson, Arizona. We wanted to try living somewhere where it almost never rains, rather than somewhere where it frequently rains. We really enjoyed living in the desert, and took great advantage of the sunny climate. However, we ultimately decided that the educational opportunities offered in Seattle for my nine year-old son Cayden and five year-old daughter Allette, were notably superior to those available in Arizona. And so late this summer we moved back to join our friends and family in the great Northwest.

I went to Western Washington University way back in 1982 – 1986. I like to think I was on the ten-year plan, graduating from Western 10 years to the day after graduating from Federal Way High School. Along the way I also picked up a two year AA degree in electronics technology from Green River Community College. Between high school and college I had a number of jobs in a number of industries. I was in the graphic arts industry for a long time as a printing press operator and eventually managed a couple print shops. I got an AA degree in electronics and worked for Johnson Controls and Boeing as an electronics technician. I even sold vacuum cleaners door to door for a few months. Finally, I decided I wanted to go back to school to study software engineering and somehow ended up with a dual major in mathematics and economics.

After a brief 11 year career at Microsoft as a product designer and Group Program Manager I co-founded Qpass. That venture required 10 years to reach success in the form of a sale to a large public company named Amdocs. I'm hoping that success at Daptiv happens on a much shorter timeline than my previous two career steps.

I’m excited to be here at Daptiv. It’s a great collection of people and the opportunity in front of us is tremendous. The value of the Daptiv brand and the accumulated knowledge inside the business in the areas of collaboration and work management is world-class.

My hobbies include cooking, golfing and hanging with my family. In the past I've done philanthropy work with different groups around the city and I plan to become active in that area again once I settle into a routine at Daptiv.

Daptiv 90210: The City of Beverly Hills Uses Daptiv PPM to Manage Work Across Departments!

Beverly Hills is located in the middle of Los Angeles County, surrounded by the cities of Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Santa Monica and Culver City. Within its 5.7 square mile radius, Beverly Hills has approximately 35,800 residents with a business and commercial base that ranks next to cities with a population of several hundred thousand. Globally, Beverly Hills is known for its distinctive hotels, retail stores, restaurants and entertainment and headquarter businesses, but it also happens to be one of the safest cities in America. Its strong economy reaches approximately $20 billion with the convergence of retail, spending and earning power blended with strong employment forms the underlying foundation of Beverly Hills' economic strength.

Outgrowing an In-house Developed Tool

The City of Beverly Hills is comprised of nine different departments, which includes Policy & Management, Administrative Services, City Clerk, Community Services, Community Development, Police, Fire, Public Works and Information Technology (IT). The City's IT department had developed an in-house Access database, which allowed employees to input project data and create reports on a quarterly basis. However, the in-house database created some pain points – it was limited in functionality and difficult to generate reports from when needed, except on a quarterly basis. In addition, workflow processes weren't streamlined and each department had their own tracking mechanism so there wasn't any consistency in methodology. Reports were generated by a select group of analysts. “Staff was limited by the functionality of the database because they couldn't track the progress of the projects over time and they were not updating the progress of their project tasks until it came time for quarterly progress reports,” says Megan Roach, Senior Management Analyst. “We needed a solution that would facilitate process improvement for managing workflow and generate cross functional synergy.”

The City Council employs the City Manager to carry out Council policies and to serve as an executive officer for the City (a for-profit business equivalent of a CEO). It was critical for the City Manager to be able to create accurate reports as needed and the Access database hindered data visibility and ease of report creation.

Solution for Every Department and User

The City of Beverly Hills needed a solution that was flexible enough to work with 2 different types of users:

• Project Managers: Needed a solution that could help them set up a template tool to focus on work plans and capital improvement project updates. Particularly for these users, it was critical to have a standard process.
• Executives: Needed the ability to request status updates regularly from project managers and generate project progress reports.

The following solution requirements were top priority:

• Ease of use. It was important to find a solution that was easy to learn so that as resources shifted, there wouldn't be the burden of extensive training.

• Facilities collaboration. Allow different department members to work together on projects and overall improve synergy. An example is the City's efforts to enhance customer service through the development of guidelines and a training program, a project spearheaded by the City Manager's Office. Team members from every city department are involved in the project so it is critical that team members and managers collaborate together.

• Robust reporting capabilities and the ability to generate budget reports on the fly. This is critical for quarterly and yearly updates.

• Software as a Service (SaaS). The City didn't want installed or “packaged” software because they knew that SaaS solutions cut down on infrastructure and maintenance costs. Finding an on-demand solution became top priority to free the City's resources and stick within budget.

When evaluating vendors, the City of Beverly Hills considered several solutions, but found that most were not user friendly or intuitive. Then they evaluated Daptiv. “We really liked Daptiv PPM's ease of use, reporting capabilities and on-demand model that helps to facilitate cross-functional collaboration,” says Katie Lichtig, Assistant City Manager / Chief Operating Officer. In particular, the City's IT department was happy about Daptiv PPM's SaaS model. “City-wide, everything seems to be headed in the SaaS direction, so SaaS played a big factor in our decision to go with Daptiv,” says Lichtig. “As a municipality, we need to be fiscally prudent. Finding a solution like Daptiv that requires no maintenance, fewer staff hours, and adds convenience to our schedules…it's aligned with our need to reduce cost.”

Currently, the City is taking advantage of Daptiv PPM's Dynamic Applications capability to track data that was hard to capture before:

Capital Improvement Projects: Two Dynamic Applications were created to track detailed budget information, specific to project funding and the consultants (usually engineers and architects) hired to work on these projects.

Service Indicators: There are approximately 550 service indicators that the City currently tracks with Daptiv Dynamic Applications. Service indicators detail performance measures so the City can benchmark how they're doing. An example of a service indicator measured is the amount of grant funding secured by the City, and they can track this funding each quarter with the help of Daptiv Dynamic Applications.

“What's great about Daptiv Dynamic Applications is that not all data we're tracking fits into a „project' mold, particularly since we function differently as a municipality. But you can track anything you like with a Dynamic Application and it's incredibly quick to set up – we were impressed,” says Roach.

On-Demand Value

“Daptiv has taken the time to understand who we are and what our needs were, and this was important to us since the processes at municipalities are different from other companies who have structured PMO's. We're confident that Daptiv PPM would be helpful to other municipalities – the software is incredibly flexible in meeting our unique processes and we're building upon current functionality to expand on the value it's bringing the City of Beverly Hills,” says Lichtig.

In how Daptiv PPM has impacted the City of Beverly Hills, Lichtig comments, “We've seen the biggest improvement in standardization of processes, accountability and data integrity. We now see real-time information and people are being held accountable for ongoing work management. At any given point, we can log into Daptiv PPM and see updated tasks and know exactly where we stand and it has changed our perception of what project management is for the better. Overall, Daptiv PPM has changed our culture, and that has helped us to get more work completed than before.”

Reporting in particular has drastically changed from the days when the City had to generate reports from their Access database. “People are now very proactive and engaged with their work now that they're using Daptiv PPM and Daptiv Advanced Report Builder,” says Lichtig. The City Manager and other executive staff members can now see the status of projects, see important information in a simple view and pull reports at any time, without having to rely on a select group of analysts. Lichtig continues, “Residents of Beverly Hills expect to see results of our work and we can do that effectively with the help of Daptiv PPM by sharing city progress reports on our website. We're able to reach a broader audience through ease of use.”