Bangkok--22 Oct--Absolute PR
Bluebik Group Company Limited, a leading consulting firm specializing in strategy development, program management and digital transformation, which has extensive experience and expertise in developing digital strategies for sustainable competitive, pointed out the trend of Thai organizations expediting growth amid high competition by launching various diversified projects with hopes of forging innovations towards the Industry 4.0 Age, and suggested that those organizations should avail themselves of the so called "Program Management Office (PMO)", the department that helps manage and supervise projects for successful and seamless operations. The company also highlighted 3 main guidelines to move businesses forward efficiently through the implementation of PMO, stressing that any organization learning how to conduct PMO faster will be able to win in the battleground of competition.
Mr. Pochara Arayakarnkul, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bluebik Group Co., Ltd., shared his opinion that nowadays businesses face ever more intense and stiffer competition, and many of them thus see that progressing forward quickly to accommodate changes would result in their competitive advantage. However, growing businesses at high rates does not always guarantee a company's success over its competitors. Also, moving fast but on the opposite direction from the overall organizational goal might result in a higher income at a higher rate overwhelmingly offset by a compound increase in operational costs.
One of the key techniques to the success of an organization in achieving its goal is to manage business through the application of a central unit or "Program Management Office (PMO)" which shall be responsible for supervising program management matters for an enterprise. Leading national and global organizations are currently seeking ways to support their management and supervision of different programs to ensure that these programs can be jointly carried out according to organization-wide strategic objectives and goals in an effective manner.
Mrs. Chantacha Suwannajitr, Chief Operation Officer (COO) of Bluebik Group Co., Ltd., stated that the concept of establishing "PMO" for program management within an organization has been out there for a long time, and there are 3 models that have been widely put into use and proven practicable by leading organizations as follows:
Model 1 Enterprise PMO (Strategic): The concept is about a central functional unit of an organization having the main role and duties to determine and lay down strategic plans and to participate in selecting and prioritizing programs or projects to implement. This central functional unit plays a major role in managing the overall picture to ensure that the undertakings of different projects within an organization are aligned with its corporate objective, vision, mission, and strategic business plan, and supervising standardization of different project implementations.
Model 2 Division PMO (Tactic): The concept is about a functional unit or a working team having the role of managing and supervising the operations of different projects under responsibility of a specific division. This is to ensure that projects under such divisions are conducted according to divisional objectives. This model leads to the integration of practices of project implementations by different functional units and the exchange of knowledge under a specific division.
Model 3 Project PMO (Operational): This concept is about a working team assigned to manage large-scale and complex missions or projects that involve several functional units across an organization. This model has become popular as it has been employed in projects which business people have heard of frequently, such as an IT-related ERP system development project.
Nonetheless, establishing all 3 PMO models is not a piece of cake. We found out that more than 60% of the organizations trying to integrate uses of the all 3 PMO models have faced failures in setting up or using the models. The main reasons for such failures include the lack of understanding in the role and duties as well as the scope of responsibilities and the inadequate knowledge about the relations between each model. PMO failures mostly encountered are in the following forms: [1] PMO failing to focus on the whole picture/links within an organization and instead focusing on audits of different project operations to ensure uniform organizational standards, resulting in the projects undertaken without a clear direction, [2] PMO being viewed as a "Paper Tiger", meaning that it is given a task but does not have real authority to carry it out, and [3] PMO not having enough potential for driving an organization due to a lack of qualified people joining the PMO team.
Therefore, in order to enable PMO to be a functional unit/working team that can help drive organizations effectively, leaders or management members must understand the 3 core values of the PMO as follows: [1] A sound PMO must help leadership access and see an overview of all project information for more accurate decision making; [2] A sound PMO must act as a coordinator to create connections between different functional units in order to drive the main projects toward success quickly as well as to ensure that all operations are conducted jointly and seamlessly on shared objectives and goals because everyone will not get lost once they have a clear picture; and [3] A sound PMO shall enable us to see the interconnectivity between the resources used by different projects within an organization. This helps reduce the number of redundant projects and enhance the organization's efficient and effective use of resources.
"Although PMO is not an income-making function for an organization, unlike a sales function, nor is it a product-creating mechanism such as a production function; PMO is considered a key piece of the jigsaw in the field of management. With management's understanding of PMO and ability to retrieve it for use at proper places and times, PMO will ultimately become a tool to assist a company in claiming a victory in the battlefield of competition." said Mrs. Chantacha.