The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Extends Visibility into IT Projects with Integrated Project Portfolio Management and Financial Planning Solutions
 
 

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Extends Visibility into IT Projects with Integrated Project Portfolio Management and Financial Planning Solutions

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The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, which marked its 70th anniversary in 2011, is one of the world’s most respected centers devoted exclusively to cancer patient care, research, education, and prevention. It is located in central Houston on the campus of the Texas Medical Center. MD Anderson was created in 1941 as a part of The University of Texas System. It is one of the nation’s original three comprehensive cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Act of 1971 and is one of 40 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers today. In 2011, U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Hospitals” survey ranked MD Anderson as the top hospital in the nation for cancer care.

As an innovator in cancer care and research, MD Anderson increasingly relies on a sophisticated and growing IT infrastructure to support its end-to-end operations, from care delivery, to research and education, to core business processes. To efficiently manage its rapidly expanding portfolio of IT initiatives and to ensure their on-time, on-budget completion, MD Anderson required greater visibility into and more rigorous governance over these projects, including improved information about budgeted versus actual expenditures each month. In addition, the Project Support and Coordination Services group looked to automate key workflows and reporting processes, improve team productivity, and allow more time for analysis. It also wanted to be able to identify where various projects might have synergies or conflicts to optimize resources and avoid unnecessary delays.

MD Anderson deployed Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management and built Web services to Oracle Hyperion Planning to extend visibility into and control over the progress and costs of its IT projects. MD Anderson has also automated key project workflows, such as project set up and steering group assignment, and has significantly streamlined reporting using scorecards.

Prior to integrating the two systems, MD Anderson’s portfolio managers spent up to two days each month transposing data from the Hyperion financial system to paper spreadsheets. Now, financial information is available instantly, freeing managers for value-added activities, such as project analysis.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

  • “By integrating Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management and Oracle Hyperion Planning, we have achieved a whole new level of transparency and governance for our IT investment initiatives—improving our ability to deliver our projects on time and on budget. We’ve also freed our portfolio managers to spend more time on valuable analysis and troubleshooting.” – Patti Layne, Director of Project Support and Coordination Services, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

  • Gain greater transparency into the growing organization’s extensive IT project and investment portfolio —which spans clinical care and operations, technology and infrastructure, research and education, business enterprise applications, data services and enterprise internet strategy domains—to help ensure on-time and on-budget completion
  • Enable greater and more rapid insight into forecasted budget versus monthly actuals to improve governance of IT projects as they progress
  • Accelerate project reporting processes to enable managers to spend more time engaged in project analysis

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Implemented Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management and integrated it with Oracle Hyperion Planning to provide greater visibility into the progress and cost of IT projects that the project support and coordination services group conducts on behalf of the organization’s technology and infrastructure, research and education, business enterprise applications, data services and enterprise internet strategy, and clinical care and operations sectors
  • Improve productivity of team members by automating the set up of projects and their assignment to the appropriate governance committee within the organization
  • Implement the use of Oracle’s Propose Web form, which allows individuals across the institution to enter new project proposals
  • Automated key reporting processes and reduced reliance on unwieldy paper-based documents, enabling managers to develop, at the push of a button, comprehensive scorecards on project status, issues, scope changes, milestones, budget, variances, and more
  • Saved portfolio managers and financial analysts up to two days each month and reduced the potential for errors by eliminating the need to transpose data from the financial reporting system to paper reports—as the systems are now electronic with integrated data that is available on demand
  • Freed up time for portfolio managers to focus on analyzing project progress and issues as well as budgeting concerns
  • Gained new flexibility in providing governance committees with the data they request—whether by project, funding source, percentage completed, or start and/or end date—to meet varying information needs
  • Improved ability to look across all projects in a portfolio or across various portfolios to identify and capitalize on synergies and interdependencies—such as projects to support the federally mandated transition to the new ICD-10 medical coding standard, which impacts both clinical and research operations—and to spot potential conflicts early on to avoid delays and unnecessary costs
  • Empowered project steering team members and other executives with the ability to access project scorecards on demand.
  • Provided a solid foundation to enable MD Anderson to improve future project planning with accurate information on how long specific projects take to complete, how much they cost, and lessons learned, as well as the ability to query across project portfolios

Why Oracle

MD Anderson considered several options when selecting a project portfolio management solution. One of the features that set Oracle’s Primavera Portfolio Management apart was its governance approach. It offered a top-down versus bottom-up governance model, which fit the organization’s environment and existing processes, according to Patti Layne, director of project support and coordination services, MD Anderson. The level of visibility and detail that it affords are also important to the institution, as is the flexibility to make scorecards for any group of projects. In addition, the organization looks forward to leveraging the solution’s electronic signature capabilities in the future.

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