Presidio builds a unified solution on Microsoft Project for the web to streamline its project management

A tale of complex data

Good solutions to complex problems often require complex solutions. As a global digital services and solutions provider, Presidio is very familiar with this principle, offering technology solutions to its clients at the speed of disruption. But with a dedicated team of over 150 project managers working on more than 1,700 simultaneous projects, it also means that Presidio has complex problems of its own.

While project managers specialize in delivering outcomes, they had been dealing with non-standardized management tools for some time. Team members were using multiple systems to track individual projects, which left important data like equipment needs, timelines, and staffing requirements sequestered and often inaccessible. Presidio was using Microsoft Project desktop client and Microsoft Excel as tracking tools, but still found themselves sharing files manually and in other ways. Moreover, leadership had no insight into projects at a glance, which meant eating up working time with meetings just to find out what was going on.

Paul Scheiman, the vice president of program and project management at Presidio, believed that a cloud-based solution could help the project managers get more done and spend less time on redundant work. He turned to Microsoft Project for the web along with Project Accelerator to build a holistic solution Presidio could employ for all its project management needs.

The process of unification

When Scheiman first arrived at Presidio, he found the company ready to drive more standardized processes for setting up and delivery of projects. Even after he had created a standard flow and practice, the lack of a unified system holding everything together made it hard to stick to that process. “We didn't have an easy way to make sure that everybody knew the same steps and could execute them consistently,” he explains. Scheiman knew that Microsoft had amazing tools, but needed a solution that could be configured just for Presidio.

Using Microsoft Project for the web as a backbone for the solution would give project managers an easier-to-use and more accessible solution. This would allow the team to operate across a wide variety of platforms while also keeping data storage and access universal. Furthermore, the tools for app development were available so that Presidio could build a portal and system that served the project management team’s specific needs.

Presidio built the Presidio Project Portal, or P3 for short, using Project for the web with the Project Accelerator add-on as the platform, along with Power Apps, Power BI, and Microsoft Teams integration. P3 serves as a unified program and project management tool for the entire project management team.

One tool for unified collaboration

According to Scheiman, P3 has already streamlined and improved the process of starting a new project. Rather than building documentation from scratch, project managers can simply go into the system and copy an existing template, then fill in the precise information for the project after the initial setup. The managers are thus able to get started faster and have important information in place and accessible immediately.

With everything aligned on P3, the project management team is empowered to do far more in terms of collaboration. “Now that we have a unified system with Project for the web, when a project manager is sick, leaves the company, or has to swap to another task, all of the data is preserved and easily accessible,” says Scheiman. He also notes that projects and data can be shared quickly over Microsoft Teams, giving managers insight and guidance about fields they may be unfamiliar with.

P3 also gives Presidio leadership a centralized view of its overall project state. It’s easy to access real time reports and see which projects have hit roadblocks, as well as which projects are off-track and may need additional attention. With this insight, the team can do more than simply react to a crisis but proactively address potential blockages before they occur, resulting in smoother workflow and more consistent turnaround times.

Scheiman is also more than happy with the fact that the tool doesn’t require him to build everything himself.  And because Project for the web is built on the Microsoft Power Platform foundation, it can be adapted as needed. “Back in the day, I dealt with systems where custom code and building your own solution could be a nightmare as systems upgraded,” Scheiman explains. “But Microsoft Project for the web along with Power Apps is a configurable system. I have all the components of what makes a good project management system that I can edit as I need, and it’s ultimately configurable and cloud based. And so many of the necessary functions like Power BI action items are already integrated.”

The way that the Presidio project management team is using Microsoft Teams also demonstrates the flexibility of the components. Originally, Scheiman had Teams in place so that it could serve as a document repository for project managers, a storehouse of templates and important reference material. However, some clients of Presidio use Teams primarily as a communication tool, and because P3 is integrated with Teams, the project management team now use it as a collaboration tool to give status updates and share data with clients more efficiently.  

Opportunities for the future

While Presidio has transitioned many of its projects to P3, some still need to be moved over. Scheiman is hopeful to continue seeing more features rolled out to Project on the web so that the project management experience can be even more efficiently standardized.

He’s also excited about how P3’s core software is built for collaboration and development into the future. Scheiman sees the partnership with Microsoft as one wherein both he and the developers are committed to building the best possible technology and tools. “We have the vision, and Microsoft has the ability and drive to support us,” Scheiman says.

He's also excited about how P3’s core software is built for collaboration and development into the future. Microsoft Copilot integration is something he’s eager to have hooked into Project for the web. “Copilot has the potential to make the system itself the assistant for project managers, and I can see how that will help us. We have the vision, and Microsoft has the ability and drive to support us,” Scheiman says.

There’s no way to build a piece of software to account for all the various ways problems can arise in the middle of large-scale technology projects. But Presidio is using Microsoft tools to make project management the best it can be so that when problems arise, specialists can solve them quickly, and they have a better chance of avoiding them altogether.