Mid-Office Transformation: Taking Complexity out of the Equation

Daptiv, the leader in On-demand collaborative business software takes a closer look at how they allowed two very different customers to take a very similar approach to transforming their mid-office business operations across projects, departments and teams. With increased visibility comes accountability models for managers, teams and organizations.

Case Study One:
Chase Paymentech needed a service that was easy to deploy, easy to configure and easy to implement company-wide. They were specifically looking for productivity improvements and needed a collaborative solution that could helped them not only to manage specific projects, but to uphold accountability and gain visibility into total costs and initiatives within the company. Now, with Daptiv PPM, Chase Paymentech is able to manage business processes more effectively to capture exactly where they’ve been and where they’re going.

Chase Paymentech Gets Productivity Payoff with Daptiv

Needs
Chase Paymentech Solutions, LLC, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is a leading global payments firm and he world's largest merchant acquirer, transacting payments in 140 currencies. In 2006, the privately-held company processed approximately 18.2 billion payment transactions, with more than $660.6 billion in annual bankcard and debit volume. Chase Paymentech's customer base reflects the most respected brands in the world, including 70 percent of leading ecommerce business and more than 600,000 merchants in nearly 1 million locations worldwide.

In 2006, Chase Paymentech began looking internally at different processes and charters and examined project management solutions. The company needed an environment that was easy to use and easy to configure, allowing multiple divisions to focus on collaborating and communicating more effectively.

Implementing an environment that wouldn’t be complex or difficult to deploy was top priority for Chase Paymentech– and that’s why they began looking into companies that specialize in SaaS (Software as a Service). “SaaS is extremely beneficial when leveraged with the right business partner”, says Tom Bannon, Group Executive, Chase Paymentech Enterprise Project Office. “Our internal technical organization was strapped to support business growth, so SaaS provided the ability to proceed with implementation of a tool without impacting other key corporate initiatives.”

Solution
Chase Paymentech needed something more than a project management tool to facilitate the management of the various project areas within the company. They began looking into Microsoft® Project Server™ but quickly turned the search to more robust products like Daptiv. After many discussions and demonstrations with various companies, Chase Paymentech chose Daptiv as the core for their solution. Key factors in their decision included a hassle-free implementation process, along with the collaborative, easy-to-use product environment that Chase Paymentech desired. “The key to Daptiv’s value is its simplicity,” says Bannon. “With the various configurations we were able to create for our multiple business areas, we gained value to our processes through the basic workflow, information collaboration, consolidated reporting modules and custom dashboards. This provides a huge impact on our teams and the company.” The decision to implement Daptiv throughout the company’s numerous organizations was much easier knowing they could provide value outside of the traditional “project management” tool expectations. Providing an easy-to-use tool that was supporting business processes for the team and enabling information controls and collaboration was a selling point to the organization.

Value
Chase Paymentech envisioned their implementation would provide much more than a project management solution with Daptiv. Bannon says, “Our rollout plan for the company was to not present Daptiv PPM as a project management tool. Daptiv goes way beyond project management – it’s a collaborative environment for us to gather the information we need to understand and manage our business initiatives across the company. Resources are a premium and we need to be able to understand our priorities and staff them appropriately.”

Comparing Chase Paymentech’s previous business processes before implementing Daptiv, Bannon says, “Our previous workflow was driven by emails and verbal communications that could potentially be lost or misplaced. Several internal systems were in place with few power users and limited access to key information. With Daptiv, we can capture and validate workflow processes that are all accessible within a single environment.” As a result, Chase Paymentech’s mid-office is working smarter, not harder.

Multiple areas within Chase Paymentech have adopted Daptiv:

• Enterprise Project Office
• FDCS Project Management Team
• Merchant Implementation Group
• Merchant Projects Group
• Merchant Conversion Group
• Gift Card Conversion Group
• Learning and Development Organization
• Marketing Organization (staged for implementation in January 2008)
• IRM Certifications (staged for implementation in February 2008)
• Retail Project and Product Implementation (staged for implementation
• in February 2008)
• Other departments planned for Summer/Fall 2008.

The result is an increase in collaboration between groups. “Our whole company can track requests, stages, time issues and risks, and collaboration across teams. Managers no longer have to dig through information because now it’s within a single environment.” The result is an increase in productivity, with an ability to scale company initiatives. “Because people can get immediate visibility into projects throughout the company, 30-40% of a person’s effort is now channeled more productively than before. This has a tremendous impact.” Daptiv also helps Chase Paymentech employees engage in the overall business impact of each project and each division. “We can now manage business processes to capture where we’ve been and where we’re going. With Daptiv, we can see the total efforts associated with company-wide initiatives, holding each division and individual accountable.”

Quotes
“Because workflow controls and a common communication media for organized initiatives can be leveraged in every teams daily activities, team members are able to channel their efforts for major productivity gains. A reduction in one area by 30-40% of a person’s effort has allowed less focus on project administration and more focus on management and execution. This has a tremendous impact in the workforce.”

“We can now manage business processes to capture where we’ve been and where we’re going. With Daptiv, we can see the total efforts associated with company-wide initiatives, creating not only visibility but accountability models for the managers, teams and organizations.” - Tom Bannon, Group Executive, Enterprise Project Office

Case Study Two:
After using Microsoft Project for schedules, Excel spreadsheets and other documents, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City wanted to implement a new process to manage capacity planning and resource allocation in addition to automating their workflow and gaining visibility into their business processes. With Daptiv PPM, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City is now able to assess different processes to improve on weaknesses and work more productively while reducing database administration and staffing costs .

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City Gains Visibility into Business Processes and Cuts Additional Staffing Costs with Daptiv

Business Issue
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, a health insurance company, serves nearly 900,000 members in 32 counties in greater Kansas City, northwest Missouri, and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas.

Nationally, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield system – composed of 38 Blues Plans – serves 100 million people. One in every three Americans carries a Blue Cross and Blue Shield member card in his or her wallet. More than three quarters of Fortune 100 companies and half of all Fortune 500 companies offer Blue Cross and Blue Shield coverage to their employees.

Prior to using Daptiv PPM, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City utilized Microsoft Project for  schedules, along with a shuffle of papers and Excel spreadsheets. The company needed an automated, collaborative way to manage projects and in Fall of 2006, began looking to implement a Project Portfolio Management tool. “The old way of managing projects and business processes was too much work – it was incredibly time-consuming and inefficient,” says Tammy Ault, Sr. Project Manager. “Not everyone had access to projects and people started duplicating information and there was redundancy.”

With Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City’s IT department working on 75-80 active projects, such as assessment, compliance and infrastructure projects, it was important from a resource management perspective to automate as much as possible and steer away from manual, resource-intense processes.

“We needed to develop an assessment process within IT to determine weaknesses and areas for improvement, including resource allocation,” says Ault.

Solution
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City chose Daptiv PPM as a way to automate work flow and increase the overall visibility into their business processes. “We use Daptiv’s dynamic applications to track project risk, feedback, sign offs and change management – such as changes in scope of work or changes due to external events,” says Barb Shepard, Director of the PM Office.

With Daptiv PPM, the company is now able to assess the processes within IT to pinpoint weaknesses and other areas of improvement. “We use Daptiv to plan large initiative investment projects. For example, we planned for new insurance products, such as HIPAA compliance, using Daptiv dynamic applications, capacity planner, reports, project plans and documents.” Team members, project managers, resource managers and executives all use Daptiv to increase visibility into business processes. Project forms are created online so data syncs with the budget, allowing the company to modify resource requirements that are needed to executive initiatives.

In addition to the IT department, the finance department also uses Daptiv PPM to assign lines of business to each project and reallocate that time back to the lines of business, avoiding a multi-step, drawn-out process. About 100 other business people within Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City also utilize Daptiv PPM to manage their business processes, such as project updates and reviews.

Value On Demand
Implementing Daptiv’s Software as a Service (SaaS) Project Porftolio Management made the most sense for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City because their IT resources can be shifted from application maintenance into more critical projects. “Because Daptiv is a hosted solution, it cuts out the technical expense tied to administrators and support personnel in-house,” says Ault. “We like the fact that we don’t have to bring on the additional staff to work on technical issues or infrastructure maintenance, and our current staff can work more productively on their projects.”

With Daptiv PPM, there is visibility into projects and resources that didn’t exist before. “Being able to see resource allocation has impacted the company in a significant way,” says Shepard. “Before, resource allocation was limited to resource managers – now, from a PMO perspective, we can see allocations to understand how estimates pan out for planning and forecasting.” Gaining insight into different projects and activities is simple, allowing for increased communication and productivity. “We use custom dynamic applications for requests and sign offs – which takes about five minutes to create and we can measure risk, feedback, external events, deliverables and project changes. This enables us to manage resources and plan for upcoming initiatives seamlessly,” says Shepard.

An added value that Daptiv brings to the table, according to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, is the level of product innovation and responsiveness to clients. “We relay product suggestions to Daptiv’s support team and engineers and we see the impact of those suggestions in a short amount of time, which boosts our return on investment,” says Ault. “They are very responsive.”

Quotes
“We like the fact that we don’t have to bring on the additional staff to work on technical issues or infrastructure maintenance, and our current staff can work more productively on their projects.” -
Tammy Ault, Sr. Project Manager

“We use custom dynamic applications for requests and sign offs – which takes about five minutes to create.”

“Being able to see resource allocation has impacted the company in a significant way. Before, resource allocation was limited to resource managers – now, from a PMO perspective, we can see allocations to understand how estimates pan out for planning and forecasting.” - Barb Shepard, Director of PM Office