Success Stories

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Cyber Internet Services Drives Standards, Process Automation and Visibility with Daptiv PPM

CYBERNET is the largest Internet and Data Communication Network Service Provider in Pakistan and has made a name for itself as one of the leading ISP’s in the country.

In addition to providing the Internet to the user, CYBERNET focuses on its corporate clients providing them with end to end solutions including web hosting, email hosting, VPN, IP backhauling, Voice / Video over IP, and security solutions. The company is comprised of over 600 employees.

Business Issue

At Cybernet, every initiative is treated as a project and their portfolio of projects includes both internally and externally facing initiatives. Cybernet’s internal projects vary in nature from strategic operational and regulatory compliance. Their external projects involve the provision of WAN Connectivity for various enterprise and SMB customers.

Prior to selecting Daptiv, Cybernet was using a custom workflow application that didn’t facilitate project management. Various project managers were using MS Project or MS Excel spreadsheets for their planning needs, but there was a need for a structured, collaborative environment and a standard project management methodology. “Project managers would update project metrics using spreadsheets. This was quite cumbersome as geographically distributed teams found it difficult to update in parallel. As a result, there were a lot of inconsistencies in project reporting,” says Faizan Mustafa, General Manager, PMO.

In 2007, Cybernet decided to streamline their project management processes across the company. At that time, various project teams were working in silos and no standard method of project management methodology existed. Management craved the need for visibility into various ongoing initiatives and project teams felt desperate for a collaborative solution to help them plan, execute and, most importantly, communicate with each other.

Solution

In Cybernet’s prequalification process, they went through a comprehensive exercise comparing various PPM offerings against their project management needs. “We found that you either have players at the very high end both in terms of price and complexity, such as IBM or HP, or at a very low end like MS Project, which is a good desktop application for project planning but fails to provide a collaborative environment for project teams,” says Mustafa. “We decided to choose Daptiv PPM as it met all of our basic requirements and it is very easy to use.”

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Daptiv PPM’s on-demand model allowed for Cybernet to get up and running very quickly, “We were up and running in less than a month, which was quite pleasing for all of us," says Mustafa. "Our rollout process was simple and straightforward – subsequent to the remote training and configuration exercise where our environment was customized per our specific project needs, we rolled out the application in phases. In fact, because of the ease of deployment, the introduction of Daptiv in our environment was so subtle that project teams had zero problems accepting this change – they hardly noticed it.”

The company is currently using a range of Daptiv PPM functionality, including Daptiv Work Intelligence™. “We are using Daptiv Dynamic Applications to automate various activities. An example is our Capital Expenditure Form (CEF). We used to have a paper-based system where for every project we used to fill out these forms which were routed to various approving authorities. If any one of the approving authorities happens to be out of the office, the whole cycle used to stop – resulting in delays in budget approval. With Daptiv Dynamic Applications, we have automated the whole CEF process and now the application is routed within Daptiv using the preconfigured workflow. The approving authorities can login from anywhere and approve or decline the request which has resulted in reduced cycle time for our projects,” says Mustafa.

Current individuals and departments within Cybernet that are using Daptiv PPM:

• CTO
  
• COO
  
• PMO – GM PMO, GM Business Development
  
• Radio Frequency Department – Radio Frequency Engineers
  
• DSL Department – DSL Operations Engineers
  
• Network Operations Center – NOC Engineers, Network Configuration Services
  
• Finance – Procurement specialist, Procurement hardware/software

Value

Cybernet has seen a huge impact overall on their business, thanks to Daptiv PPM. “With Daptiv PPM, we have seen a remarkable improvement in how we manage our projects,” says Mustafa. “Daptiv has brought about the kind of discipline that we so desperately needed in our project environment by enforcing a standard project management methodology. Now every project follows a prescribed workflow ensuring that all the key touch points are being addressed along the way. Project requests are being initiated and approved with prerequisite documentation and tasks are being planned and notified to various team members in a simple and easy to use collaborative work environment. Project communication has improved drastically with the implementation of Daptiv and status reports to both our internal and external customers are being auto-generated at scheduled intervals. With the introduction of Daptiv, the management team now has the visibility about the health of all ongoing projects with respect to time and cost. Daptiv Dashboards give key decision makers accurate, timely information at their fingertips.”

Daptiv Dynamic Applications have given Cybernet a level of process sophistication that they didn’t have before. “The fact that you can create custom applications using a wizard-driven process clearly gives Daptiv an edge over other PPM applications in the market. We intend to use this feature in much more intuitive ways to create applications that can automate project as well as operational activities. The idea is to bring every activity within Daptiv PPM and then use work intelligence to build insightful reports required for various strategic decisions,” explains Mustafa.

The company also thinks that Daptiv’s Software as a Solution (SaaS) model has had a powerful impact, saving both time and money while providing an excellent product. “The fact that we didn’t have to spend on any hardware or database licenses meant that we were up and running without a huge initial investment. Daptiv has been able to ensure excellent uptime for the application and they’ve proven that embracing SaaS was one of the best decisions we made; we’ve never looked back,” says Mustafa.