Weld Done

  Estimating   ProjectsAtWork  

After integrating Project Server 2002 with a Solomon PSA solution, professional services organization Edison Welding Institute tightened project estimates, reduced overspends and improved resource management.

Edison Welding Institute provides materials-joining expertise, including training and contract R&D, to organizations spanning the manufacturing, defense and energy sectors. At any given time, the government-academic partnership is managing up to 200 projects. But until recently, the welding specialist was experiencing a few "joining" challenges of its own, as EWI headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, tried to manage engagements and 80 technical managers across the globe with a jumble of disconnected software, spreadsheets and databases.

In an effort to get a better grip on its projects, from reporting to data sharing to resource allocation, EWI began to internally develop a variety of web-based systems. But it wasn't all that cheap, and it wasn't coming along very quickly.

In 2002, EWI got some timely advice from project consulting group AccuNet, based in nearby Westerville, Ohio. "They needed an enterprise system — they were using Microsoft Project on a superficial level but not on a centralized server," says Mike Milligan, president of AccuNet, a Microsoft Business Solutions reselling partner. "I realized they could accomplish about 80 percent of what they wanted with one…

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