The past few weeks this theme of the Cobblers Kid has no shoes has hit me so hard with some of the challenges we face at New Vision Project Solutions. New Vision is a Gold Certified Microsoft Partner that is vertically focused on working with project driven organizations. We strategically picked the project industry because we have found that as we improve our own internal systems that it gives us great solutions to offer to our clients, who face many of the same challenges. We have always been passionate to solve project challenges for project organizations. Project Organizations face some of the most challenging obstacles in running a successful business. Every project a company engages in, offers new opportunities for success or failure. Each project has different objectives, different risks, issues and budget challenges. Most companies we visit with struggle with having the right systems necessary to provide the right information, at the right time to the right project resources. Since we deliver project solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft Project Server, Microsoft SharePoint and many industry specific solutions that we have created over the years, we often get the opportunity to help people address these project solutions.
My concerns about the cobblers kid having no shoes comes lately with comments I have heard from clients of New Vision. I have had the opportunity recently to talk to a few of our clients and received comments about us doing a good job, but it often seems we have to work so hard to implement our solutions successfully. As we grow as a company, many of the key employees have gotten older as well. We don't seem to have the energy that we have had in the past. Yet, we still seem to have to "put out fires" to successfully implement project solutions. We have seen a lot of improvement over the years in the way we manage project solution implementations for our clients. Whether it be implementing Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft Project Server, we utilize Microsoft SharePoint as a back-end solution to help both project accounting and project management personnel to have information when they need it where they need it so they can make project decisions in a timely manner. A few years ago, we began utilizing a Project SharePoint site as a common project collaboration site for every New Vision project. This has provided a great tool for project collaboration, however, it seems like we have the site, but aren't using it effectively with our clients. Whether our clients don't understand SharePoint, are uncomfortable using new tools, or just trust New Vision to manage the projects, the SharePoint sites haven't been as effective as they could be. We are beginning to experiment with new ways to help our clients better use the SharePoint sites to provide Project Reporting back to their management teams. It seems like we spend a lot of time making sure our clients get everything they need to see how their projects are working, whereas we tend to neglect our own need to manage projects using project solutions that we deliver.
So being that we are the cobblers kid that has no shoes, we are embarking on a process to ensure that New Vision uses the same tools to make decisions as we teach our clients to do. If we don't have the information we need when we need it, it must mean that having these solutions alone is not the key to effectively managing projects. We use Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft Project Server and Microsoft SharePoint for every implementation, however, we don't let what we do operationally drive financial transactions. There must be processes to go along with these software packages that make the total project solution work. We should be using Project Portfolios in Project Server to drive status of project, Resource Planning in Project Server to ensure we have the right resources at the right place to ensure our clients meet their deadlines. We should be using Microsoft Business Portal to display data dashboards for project resources to make the right decisions at the right time.
We have some deadlines over the next 60 days to make sure that we change our processes to match our solutions and begin using our own project solutions effectively. We have confidence that we can help our most difficult client of all, ourselves. As the founder and leader of New Vision, I can't wait for these improvements over the next 60 days, because without shoes my feet are really hurting.
