BTC Group improves IT resource utilisation and business alignment with CA Clarity PPM.

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1 TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: SUPPORTING STRATEGIC GOALS WITH BETTER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT BTC Group improves IT resource utilisation and business alignment with CA Clarity PPM.

2 Table of Contents Executive Summary SECTION 1: CHALLENGE 2 Making the right business decisions Creating a unified organisation Understanding resource utilisation SECTION 2: OPPORTUNITY 3 Aligning IT with business strategy Centralised management for projects and business requests Supporting complex projects Optimising resources SECTION 3: BENEFITS 4 Enabling unification for greater profitability SECTION 4: CONCLUSIONS 6 ABOUT CA Back Cover Copyright 2008 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document As Is without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised of such damages.

3 Executive Summary Challenge Bulgaria Telecommunications Company (BTC) Group provides the full spectrum of telecommunications services to both residential and business customers in Bulgaria. The group is currently implementing a new business strategy to integrate six disparate companies into a single, more profitable, organisation. This massive undertaking has involved creating a new unified IT division, which is responsible for shifting the entire business to a single IT infrastructure, with standardized customer billing and accounting systems. To manage these and other projects which amounts to 40 million in IT resources and capital expenditure BTC s IT division needed an integrated management tool. Opportunity To create a unified platform for project and resource management, BTC implemented CA Clarity Project and Portfolio Manager (PPM). Approximately 30 projects and 100 business requests are managed via the centralised solution, along with the activities of 400 members of the IT department. CA Clarity PPM supports the delivery of highly complex projects that underpin the company s unification strategy, and enables the IT division to balance demand and resources more effectively. The reports produced by CA Clarity PPM have become crucial to the management of IT division, and enables it to demonstrate value to the wider business. Benefits Increased visibility of its IT projects and resources has enabled BTC to: OPTIMISE RESOURCE UTILISATION The reports provided by CA Clarity PPM enable BTC to prioritise the allocation of IT resources according to the strategic importance of a project. MAKE BETTER BUSINESS DECISIONS With CA Clarity PPM serving as a central information repository for resource, project and budgets, BTC can quickly and easily access the data it needs to support decisions about future strategic initiatives. This increased business intelligence will support BTC s ambitions for unification and securing greater market share in the Bulgarian mobile sector. TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: SUPPORTING STRATEGIC GOALS WITH BETTER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 1

4 SECTION 1: CHALLENGE With only separate instances of Microsoft Project and a number of complicated and disparate timesheet systems, it was difficult for us to gain adequate visibility of our resources. Iliya Stoychev Krastev Senior Manager, IT Programme Management and Control, BTC Group Making the right business decisions Successful business decisions require a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of what resources are available and how they are being utilized. Poorly aligned resources whether they are people or physical assets can affect not only affect operational functionality and customer service levels but also profitability. Visibility of resources is particularly important for IT departments. Although IT teams play a crucial role in supporting a business, they are often also a massive cost centre with responsibility for large numbers of physical resources and a high headcount. Bulgaria Telecommunications Company (BTC) Group has the largest IT organisation in Bulgaria, with 500 members of its 8,000-strong workforce employed by the IT division. As Bulgaria s leading telecommunications company, IT plays a fundamental role in the success of the business, with IT investments generating the company s second largest cost centre after the countrywide telecommunications network. Creating a unified organisation BTC provides a full range of telecommunications services to both business and residential customers, including fixed-line and mobile telephony, high-speed Internet and data transfer. Previously comprising six different companies, BTC is currently undergoing massive consolidation to create a unified organisation, under a single brand. The group began implementing this strategy, which is designed to increase profitability and improve competitive advantage, in January 2008, following the group s acquisition by American International Group (AIG) and the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). To support the newly unified company, BTC has merged its multiple IT departments to create a single integrated IT division located in a central office in Sofia. The IT division not only provides IT support services, but is also responsible for customer billing and the development of new products and services. This latter function is particularly important to BTC Group as it strives toward the goal of becoming the largest mobile operator in Bulgaria. To stay ahead of the competition and achieve this ambition, the company needs to offer low prices and innovative mobile solutions to its customers. Understanding resource utilisation BTC s new strategy for unification will also contribute to the company s future success in the mobile telecommunications market. The IT division has an extremely important role in this strategy, which involves creating a single IT infrastructure and migrating the company to integrated systems for accounting and billing. Each of these IT projects was previously owned and managed by different IT departments. With the new single division, the Project Management and Control Department has responsibility for managing every IT project enterprise-wide, including resources and budgets. This amounts to 20 million in operating expenses and 20 million worth of IT capital expenditure per year. 2 TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: SUPPORTING STRATEGIC GOALS WITH BETTER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

5 Due to the magnitude of this responsibility, IT senior management has fortnightly Change Review and Approval Board (CRAB) meetings with the business to reprioritize and optimize the IT resources based on recent developments and tactical change of business strategy. The re-organisation of the business and limited resources has made project management increasingly challenging. The team recognised that in order to maximise resource utilisation and drive efficiency it needed supplementary tools. As Iliya Stoychev Krastev, Senior Manager, IT Programme Management and Control for BTC Group, explains, With only separate instances of Microsoft Project and a number of complicated and disparate timesheet systems, it was difficult for us to gain adequate visibility of our resources. SECTION 2: OPPORTUNITY Aligning IT with business strategy One of the first steps in aligning the IT division with BTC s overall business strategy was to implement a single centralised solution for project and resource management. After investigating a number of options, BTC selected CA Clarity Project and Portfolio Manager (PPM) to address its needs. CA Clarity PPM offered the off-the-shelf functionality, price and warranty that met our requirements, comments Krastev. The solution was implemented in February 2008 with help from CA Services. In addition to ensuring a smooth deployment, CA Services provided training and knowledge transfer to enable BTC to manage the solution in-house on an ongoing basis. A team of two people currently maintains the CA Clarity PPM environment, with one person focusing on the technical requirements and the other on maximising the product s functionality. Centralised management for projects and business requests Eighty percent of the IT division now uses the CA Project & Portfolio Management solution on a daily basis to manage their activities, from IT operations to software programming and security. Even though the IT services team do not yet directly use the solution, the activities of these staff are later fed into CA Clarity PPM through integration with BTC s helpdesk tool. CA Clarity PPM enables us to create accurate timesheet reports that enable us to track our resources at a glance. Iliya Stoychev Krastev Senior Manager, IT Programme Management and Control, BTC Group Tasks, time and budgets are now all managed via the solution, which provides a single repository for BTC project data. To ensure the IT department can account for every hour of staff members time, training, holiday and sick leave are also recorded in CA Clarity PPM. Using CA Clarity PPM s timesheets, staff record time and resource usage associated with each activity they are involved in. CA Clarity PPM enables us to create accurate timesheet reports that enable us to track our resources at a glance. This helps us to ensure that resources are not incorrectly allocated or under-utilised, comments Krastev. CA Clarity PPM enables BTC to take a similarly detailed approach to tracking individual initiatives, these include: 30 concurrent projects An average of 100 smaller business requests, which can range from software upgrades to changes in customer tariffs IT support and maintenance activities. TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: SUPPORTING STRATEGIC GOALS WITH BETTER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 3

6 Supporting complex projects Many of the projects managed via CA Clarity PPM are related to the company s unification strategy. For example, BTC had multiple Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) systems that were used throughout its stores for different customer transactions. To simplify management, BTC was keen to consolidate to a single system. With assistance from external consultants, the marketing team and various other business divisions within BTC, the IT team has developed a solution that will provide a single interface for all sales activity. CA Clarity PPM helped BTC manage the finer details of this vastly complex project to ensure it was delivered in accordance with tight deadlines. Thanks to CA Clarity PPM, the IT division is able to participate more actively in forward planning with the wider business. Iliya Stoychev Krastev Senior Manager, IT Programme Management and Control, BTC Group CA Clarity PPM also provided crucial support throughout a massive project to update BTC s customer care and billing systems. This involved increasing the frequency of the company s billing cycle to twice a day. With some business accounts running up bills worth several million levs, this has had a vast impact on the company s financial operations. The project incorporated a wide range of resources from throughout the organisation and required re-configuration of a number of systems. By using Clarity PPM to track the resources and status of each task, the IT division was able to successfully deliver on the project objectives. Optimising resources As well as simplifying and streamlining project management, using CA Clarity PPM vastly improves resource management. Using the solution as a central respository for all IT resource requests from the rest of the business, the IT division is able to balance demand and resources more efficiently. The solution s accurate reports on resource utilisation enable BTC to identify problem areas in order to address resourcing issues, and structure the IT division to best meet the needs of the business. BTC is a dynamic organisation with constantly changing needs, comments Krastev. Thanks to CA Clarity PPM, the IT division is able to keep up with these requirements and participate more actively in forward planning with the wider business. The solution s reports have become a crucial tool for supporting management decisions. SECTION 3: BENEFITS Enabling unification for greater profitability Greater visibility of BTC s IT projects, resources and budgets has significantly increased its alignment with the business, thus empowering the organisation to make well-informed decisions and improve overall management of the IT division. The business now has a better idea of how the IT division operates, where we have resource issues, and where we are delivering value, comments Krastev. 4 TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: SUPPORTING STRATEGIC GOALS WITH BETTER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

7 CONNECTING IT AND THE BUSINESS CA Clarity PPM provides a vital link between IT and the business, enabling BTC s IT department to align its resources to the strategic requirements of the company and provide greater transparency around its work. FIGURE A In addition to increased transparency and improved project management, CA Clarity PPM has enabled BTC to: OPTIMISE RESOURCE UTILISATION The reports provided by CA Clarity PPM enable BTC to prioritise the allocation of IT resources according to the strategic importance of a project. MAKE BETTER BUSINESS DECISIONS With CA Clarity PPM acting as a central information repository for resources, projects and budgets, BTC can quickly and easily access the data it needs to support decisions about future strategic initiatives. SIMPLIFY TRANSFORMATION EFFORTS Using a centralised solution throughout the IT division reinforces the new organisational structure, and enables BTC to manage its IT resources holistically. With IT operating as a single unit, applying this transformation to the rest of the company will be more straightforward. IMPROVE IT GOVERNANCE AND CONTROL With detailed records of how staff spend their time, BTC can ensure that the correct procedures and standards are adhered to, and that the right people are assigned to the right projects. These factors will all help BTC execute on its future business plans and increasing market share in the Bulgarian mobile market. CA s solution has rapidly become a crucial application within the IT division, comments Krastev. Our new business strategy will help to improve competitive advantage and profitability, and CA Clarity PPM has a vital role in supporting this. TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: SUPPORTING STRATEGIC GOALS WITH BETTER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 5

8 SECTION 4: CONCLUSIONS Without in-depth knowledge of a department s day-to-day activities and resource utilisation, businesses are unable to plan effectively for the future. Centralised project, resource and budget management can provide the visibility organisations need to optimise and correctly prioritise their resources according to business need. By increasing transparency and improving project management, organisations can also align a department s activities to wider strategic initiatives, thereby helping to boost competitive advantage and profitability. To learn more about the CA Project & Portfolio Management architecture and technical approach, visit 6 TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: SUPPORTING STRATEGIC GOALS WITH BETTER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

9 CA, one of the world s largest information technology (IT) management software companies, unifies and simplifies the management of enterprise-wide IT for greater business results. Our vision, tools and expertise help customers manage risk, improve service, manage costs and align their IT investments with their business needs. Learn more about how CA can help you transform your business at ca.com