»With Blue Ant we have found a solution that fulfills all the requirements of a project management solution,« summarises Markus Klaer, Geschäftsführer vlf Brandenburg.«
Company Profile
The vlf Brandenburg, Association for Rural Development Brandenburg and land reassignment, is a statutory body under public law. Land consolidation is the main method used for rural development. Besides being in charge of reassigning the land, rural development also includes everything from road construction to village modernization, water management and soil and nature conservation, as well as landscape conservation and other infrastructural plans. 102 vlf employees work for the future of Rural Development in Brandenburg.
Project Goal
The vlf Brandenburg came to realise that it needed a specific software that could support their project management, as well as help organize the workforce on the 74 different real estate projects which were taking place in six different locations all over Brandenburg. The communication system between the different departments of a project, such as the construction, environment, accountancy and legal departments, needed to be better organized to ensure that the various employees could work efficiently together. The company’s management put the focus on supervision and process control. Because of the loss of information in the past, the company was looking for a solution to avoid this problem in the future. To achieve these goals, vlf Brandenburg looked for a simple, yet efficient software, like Blue Ant.
The requirements for a project management solution were:
- Minimisation of information loss within running projects
- Linux-compatible, web-based, central access
- Time sheet and automated authorisation procedures and therefore simplification and unification when recording expenditure for time and money within projects over different locations
- Improved overview of active and planned projects and their particular status (project progress control)
- Simple and intuitive usability
- Better planning of resource availability / workload
- Minimum administrative complexity (installation and maintenance) by an intranet-based application
The search for a suitable and integral solution began. The first personal approach was made in 2004 during the CeBit. »Both the overall solution and the integral approach that Blue Ant offers have convinced us,« said Markus Klear, managerial head.
»We were glad that Blue Ant had already integrated the so called »gut feeling« (subjective progress) feature, since we’ve been working with a similar method for a long time,« Klear continued.
Conversion and Implementation
»Because Blue Ant is essentially self-explanatory, we have didn't have any difficulties with implementation and our employees' feedback has been very positive,« said Markus Klear. Blue Ant was implemented in 2004, after a successful pilot phase. Today, 102 employees record their working hours with Blue Ant, and around 60 in projects. Because of the simple, intuitive usability of Blue Ant, further software training for the employees was not needed.
Result
Blue Ant has fulfilled all of the requirements of the project management solution. »That is not only due to the fact that proventis has an excellent and efficient support team. The response of the support team is always fast and the solutions provided are always helpful, something not always found in this field of work,« said Markus Klear, six months after the implementation of Blue Ant.