Services Portfolio Management

"The demands on the IT organization are never ending and are critical to the success of the organization in managing its portfolios. It is important that the right resources are allocated to the right projects and that there is visibility to manage resources properly."

- Lori Ellsworth, SVP and GM, Compuware Changepoint

Resource Management

Resource management is an important component of services portfolio management and must be factored into all stages of the investment life cycle. When planning the portfolio, organizations need to forecast the type and quantity of resources that will be required for each potential investment. Projects that are underway require accurate information about committed, actual and forecast work for each resource. And the application portfolio will require allocation of resources for the operational tasks associated with maintaining the applications, therefore drawing down availability for new project work.

Changepoint’s resource management software provides the functionality to forecast, assign and track resources throughout the organization, by providing: 

  • accurate resource demand and capacity analysis across all stages of the life cycle
  • flexible, powerful resource searching and assignment
  • management of resource skills and competencies.

Demand Management

Changepoint’s demand management capabilities create a single point of entry through which all IT investment requests are gathered, evaluated, categorized and prioritized according to your organization’s business processes. Demand on IT can be evaluated from the client, application and project perspectives, as well as from other key business metrics. Changepoint’s Project Portfolio Management (PPM) lets you identify and communicate business trends revealed by monitoring demand over time, giving you unique visibility into future demands on your IT resources. Demand management also provides:

  • a single integrated portal to receive all demands on IT
  • easily generated graphical portal views, improving your ability to analyze demand
  • the ability to drive requests for strategic projects into a portfolio planning process
  • automated workflow for request-driven work, enabling seamless evaluation and distribution of work to the appropriate individuals and teams.

Project and Budget Management

Changepoint’s web-based project management capabilities accommodate needs ranging from quick project creation to a highly detailed breakdown of work structures and budgets. Key functionality includes configurable project workflow to enable best practices; support for task and project dependencies; and issue, risk and change management. Changepoint also provides:

  • project scheduling and graphical status reporting
  • allocation-worksheet views of work plans by fiscal periods or days
  • complete budget management to track cost, effort and change history and contingency planning.

Financial Management

Changepoint’s Project Financial Management capabilities provide the information necessary for IT organizations to demonstrate the value delivered to the business. This financial information helps IT create a “closed loop” where requests for IT functionality are linked to the work required to deliver the functionality and the associated costs. Using Changepoint, IT staff can generate meaningful charge-backs and financial analysis through the accurate allocation of all costs to clients by:

  • tracking all time centrally for effective cross-charging and cost allocation
  • budgeting for capital versus operating expenditures
  • analyzing past and future financial performance.