American Insurance Group (AIG) – Global eBusiness Group

Client Situation

David Crow, COO asked Pinnacle to help the Global eBusiness Group, which includes approximately 240 total staff all involved in development activities. The Global eBusiness Group was interested in implementing Project Portfolio Management to improve resource utilization and efficiency and solve the following business problems.

They wanted to improve their ability to:

• Understand the real cost of projects;
• Track utilization of labor resources, both internal and external to the eBusiness group;
• Determine true profitability of eBusiness projects being performed for internal and external clients, taking into account the actual labor applied;
• Improve resource capacity planning based on more realistic views of labor utilization, availability and efficiency, in order to help improve workload planning, estimating and to support hiring and staffing decisions;
• Improve the visibility of high-priority projects;
• Better identify and understand the inter-dependency between projects.  

Current methods for job costing, resource tracking, resource capacity planning and measuring resource effectiveness were viewed as ineffective and hampered good decision making. In addition, The Global eBusiness Group had selected Primavera enterprise product suite to help in solving these critical issues.

Pinnacle Approach

Following a short assessment of the The eBusiness Group’s situation, Pinnacle proposed a two-phased approach to implementing Primavera TeamPlay together with the necessary PPM processes:

Phase I - Implement basic TeamPlay functionality for collecting timesheets and recording all projects in a consolidated project register. At the same time, create basic process documentation as well as a “quick reference” user guide for timesheet use, and provide training for all users.

Phase II - Implement more complete project planning & tracking, along with the necessary project management processes & procedures.

Both phases had clear objectives and measurable deliverables and provided a pace of implementation that the organization could absorb.

At the end of the first phase there was a refinement of the going-forward plan and specific options and decisions for management to make. Based on the results of these reviews, Pinnacle refined the scope, schedule, resource and cost plan for the project as a whole. AIG had regular opportunities to adjust these parameters throughout the implementation with a complete understanding of the impact of any decisions made.

This approach ensured that Pinnacle addressed the key implementation challenges and risks and allowed AIG management to clearly understand the cost and time implications of decisions.

Results Achieved

Pinnacle is pleased to announce that The eBusiness Group now has more than 240 users are successfully using the system for project planning and resource tracking. Approximately 200 projects are in the project register with all 240 users managing their weekly timesheets using Primavera.

As a result, AIG has realized considerable benefits and cost savings in being able to now:

• Accurately track the true costs and profitability of each project
• Have a complete picture of the resource utilization
• Have a “360 degree view of all projects, resources, costs and profitability allowing better prioritization of work and improved alignment with strategic objectives”
   

About AIG

American International Group, Inc. (AIG), world leaders in insurance and financial services, is the leading international insurance organization with operations in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions. AIG companies serve commercial, institutional and individual customers through the most extensive worldwide property-casualty and life insurance networks of any insurer. In addition, AIG companies are leading providers of retirement services, financial services and asset management around the world. AIG's common stock is listed in the U.S. on the New York Stock Exchange as well as the stock exchanges in London, Paris, Switzerland and Tokyo.