R2O is a consulting engineering and planning business based in Auckland, New Zealand. Its directors have used ProjectPartner.com’s software in their previous businesses, and immediately approached us when forming R2O to bring the same advanced measurement and analysis tools to the new consultancy.
R2O have embraced software-as-a-service (SaaS), and implement ProjectPartner in an On Demand environment, i.e. accessing it from our secure web servers over the Internet. This means that they need no special hardware or software to take full advantage of ProjectPartner’s powerful management and analysis.
In this document, references to R2O also include its directors’ previous engineering consultancy businesses.
Before they started using our software, R2O used a combination of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project to budget, track and assess productivity and profitability. Data extraction from these sources was not automated, and was therefore subject to human error. The data that could be mined from these sources provided little usable information without significant manual manipulation and analysis.
“Our familiarity with its predecessor product [Time Disciple], the new features and improved usability of ProjectPartner, and the transparency of information is what compelled us to select ProjectPartner as our project portfolio management solution,” says Richard Osborne, Director of R2O. “We also greatly value their approachability about additional development and implementation ideas – which, of course, then becomes available to all customers.”
R2O has found that the instant availability of ongoing development of a software-as-a-service solution gives them an advantage. Adoption of a browser-based system also provided seamless and cost-effective integration with their internal IT systems.
“As we grow and take on more projects, I expect that we’ll make ever-increasing use of ProjectPartner’s newest features,” Mr Osborne says. “Based on previous experience with Time Disciple, we expect that ProjectPartner will significantly improve our time accountability and greatly assist the project management function of the business as the size and nature of our business and current work streams change.
“But already, ProjectPartner’s multidimensional analysis tools have enabled us to effectively – and, most importantly, efficiently – assess the operation of our business. ProjectPartner’s ability to pictorially represent data has significantly reduced the [time and effort required for] analysis of business performance.”
