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 Challenges
Why Choose the Microsoft Office System?
Microsoft Office System Products
ChallengesBusiness executives require accurate and timely information about how their businesses are performing in order to make adjustments, plan for the future, and correct serious failures. Today, an executive dashboard typically contains sales, operations, and financial reports, but it does not contain status and resource utilization trends across key enterprise projects, resulting in: | • | No visibility. Project information is locked inside various data repositories created and supported by mid-level project managers. | | • | Complex processes. Managing the details of scheduling and balancing resources within a single project is a daily task of project managers armed with an array of tools designed exclusively for this purpose. | | • | Lack of cross-organization view. Managers translate tactical project information (such as completion dates, risks and mitigation techniques, material resource consumption, logistics, and human resource scheduling) into a business-oriented summary for executive managers, but these project summaries lack a context for understanding individual project performance against all enterprise projects and their alignment with changing organization strategies. | | • | Delayed action. The process of reporting and rolling up information is time-consuming and susceptible to subjective analysis before reaching the executive, resulting in: | — | Projects that suddenly slip their schedules. | | — | Projects that exceed their budgets. | | — | Key resources that are either underutilized or diluted across multiple projects. |
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Why Choose the Microsoft Office System?Using an IT governance executive dashboard solution built on the Microsoft Office System, organizations can align their IT spending with their business strategies; automate activities such as project management, resource management, and collaboration; and accelerate business success. The Microsoft Office System is an ideal platform choice for an IT governance executive dashboard solution because it provides the following benefits: | • | Takes advantage of your software investment by using familiar business productivity applications such as Microsoft Office Visio 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2003, and Microsoft Office Excel 2003. | | • | Reduces IT costs with applications that are designed to work together without extensive customization and configuration. | | • | Positions your organization to respond effectively to business growth and changes in the marketplace with the Microsoft .NET Framework and the open, extensible Web services architecture—without ripping out and replacing existing systems. | | • | Lets you gain the adaptability necessary to take advantage of new revenue opportunities. |
Microsoft Office System ProductsThe Microsoft Office System is an integrated set of products, technologies, services, and solutions that enable customers to increase their organizational, team, and personal productivity. For an executive dashboard for IT governance solution, these are the common technologies that could be used: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Microsoft Office Professional 2003 Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Microsoft Office Project Web Access Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003
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