northgate information solutions plc

Northgate Information Solutions (formerly Hays CSG) implements Asta Teamplan to power financial and resource management within key government programme

A National Management Information System (NMIS) is being implemented for use in every Police Force in England and Wales and by the Home Office. This initiative is central to the government's plans to modernise the way management information is collected and utilised by the UK criminal justice system.

The biggest compliment I can pay Asta is the speed and efficiency demonstrated when implementing the system.

Northgate Information Systems (Northgate) is using Asta Teamplan to underpin project & resource management of the entire IT programme. Northgate is recognised as a leading provider of IT services in the UK.

New opportunities
The information provided by the NMIS will be used to plan, control and monitor events across the entire police service. It will improve the production of automated statutory reports for the Home Office and provide a new opportunity to link data, ask questions and allow informed decision making at a level hitherto impossible to achieve. In short, it will provide the link between inputs (resources), outputs (activities) and outcomes (results).

The system will eventually provide the capability to compare performance data from all 43 police forces of England and Wales and a central electronic system for reporting Management Information. The programme is a key element in the government’s plans to transform the UK criminal justice system, as well as improving the collection of statistics.

Each Force implementation will involve up to 700 individual activities and take between 12-18 months to complete. To handle the size and complexity of the project, Northgate has set up a Programme Support Office (PSO) comprising of a programme manager, and PSO manager and two project support staff. Six resource managers assign resources and six project managers work remotely, sharing a common pool of resources.

The challenge
Keith Boxall, who was programme manager at Hays CSG before Northgate's aquisition , commented: “We needed tighter control over our resources and costs to ensure successful programme delivery. Changing our approach to programme management mid way through was a huge undertaking but we felt we had no option. The 'boxed' solution we had been using to date simply could not handle the scale and complexity of this programme. We decided short-term disruption was worth it to ensure successful programme delivery in the long term. We needed an enterprise level, project, programme and resource management solution to address all our issues. Asta met this criteria.”

Hays CSG ( now Northgate) implemented Asta Teamplan when its existing ‘off the shelf’ project management solution proved unable to cope. They could not obtain a single overview of all the projects, so it was difficult to accurately allocate resources and track budget levels. In addition, time sheets and project progress were manually recorded. This time consuming process meant that data was often out of date by the time it had been transferred into the master plan and there was limited visibility of resources across the programme.

Speedy implementation
“ The biggest compliment I can pay Asta is the speed and efficiency demonstrated when implementing the system. The initial consultation with Asta took place on 25th March 2002 and the system was live by the end of May. Asta worked with Hays CSG (now Northgate) to ensure that the changeover between systems was as smooth as possible, supported our change management programme, and guided project managers through any technical difficulties they experienced,” Keith added

We have greater management control and can accurately track our progress against our deadlines - which will be vital to our success.”

Asta Teamplan is now deployed at Northgate Information Solutions and the programme planning process is being transformed.

The outcome
Keith Boxall explained: “Management now has a real-time picture of what is happening at each site. Any project slippages are highlighted and dealt with immediately. We have greater management control and can accurately track our progress against our deadlines - which will be vital to our success.”

Northgate replaced its existing time sheet system with Asta Teamplan’s integrated time sheet module. 48 users at Northgate now use Asta Timesheet to view details of their work assignments and record progress. Timesheets are submitted weekly, approved by resource managers, and then incorporated into the master plan.

Keith Boxall concluded: “Having a single overview of projects, aligned with resources, has proved invaluable - the management now has complete visibility of whether or not our projects are on target financially. We have streamlined our costs by allocating resource more effectively, controlled our resource management issues and improved communication across the group.”