Platinum DB Consulting
Delivering Innovative Solutions to Accelerate Time-to-Value

With the high adoption of smart devices across the enterprise, solution providers are forced to rethink the whole dimension of User Experience (UE) when designing solutions for their customers. Simultaneously, businesses are demanding immediate payback for their investment in process improvements - not least in the area of project and portfolio management. Platinum DB (PDB) Consulting, an EPPM specialist based in Chicago, IL, has for almost 20 years been delivering innovative solutions that address such market dynamics with the primary goal of accelerating time-to-value. PDB has progressively introduced accelerators in the pursuit of this goal through software and services solutions like Desktop Analyzer and their Advanced Innovation Centre (AIC).

PDB partners with SAP and consults companies on the full spectrum of EPPM business use cases–capital, NPDI, revenue-generating and IT– offering Business Services, Technology Services, Education and Training, plus value added solutions in response to each customer’s requirements. During the course of several hundred engagements, PDB has researched the core problems that have traditionally contributed to low system adoption and found that while inadequacies in the User Interface (UI) were often cited as being the root cause, this dimension of UE was only one contributing factor. The most significant issue was a failure to align the UE with the role and class of the user. The key to high adoption is to clearly identify the profile of every participant then serve them with the experience that best fits their skills and knowledge, frequency of use and information input and consumption needs.

The design of Desktop Analyzer epitomizes this philosophy through the delivery of a role based, MS Excel interface that can be used for a

comprehensive range of functions from resource supply and demand analysis to financial what-if modelling. Additionally, the Desktop Analyzer provides an Excel front-end to SAP’s Portfolio and Project Management application, allowing users to quickly update and analyze large quantities of data.

PDB’s AIC hosts customer systems and houses multiple EPPM landscapes that are leveraged for a wide variety of uses—from prototyping innovations to “art of the possible” demonstrations, even full proof of concepts. Through AIC Services project implementations are less cumbersome; for example, Live Blueprinting enables clients to model requirements before they are committed for full implementation; early discovery of issues made during Live Blueprinting net significant cost savings.

PDB President, Anthony DeRosa states, “Investment in PDB infrastructure and people is my priority. SAP uses the AIC because we are the only partner that has the landscapes capable of encapsulating all of their EPPM ecosystem applications.”

Varian Medical, a manufacturer of medical devices, has historically used MS Excel to capture project planning and forecasting data; some of which was then manually entered into SAP. However, the standard functionality in the SAP applications is designed for power users that could not enable Varian’s cost center managers to do FTE (full-time equivalent) level resource management. Varian turned to PDB for its highly automated solution as it could provide a tool that could easily be used by a wide range of users in their global engineering organization. “They now have the ability to support facilitylevel FTE calculations with global and facility-level visibility into demand and supply by resource type through an MS Excel-like interface,” claims DeRosa.

Going forward, PDB envisions continuing its innovation of valueadded solutions for SAP-centric EPPM. Also, the company’s SAP partnerled Rapid Deployment Solutions will see increasing adoption by customers demand for implementations based on fixed price, scope and timeline.