Artemis 7

Investment Planning and Control Framework

Artemis 7 web based software supports the key business processes and roles associated with each of our industry focused solutions, and enables deployment of multiple solutions on a common platform, ensuring seamless integration, consolidation and analysis of all investments.

Click on each module of process map for overview Artemis 7’s unique functional architecture incorporates a fully integrated set of top-down and bottom-up processes enabling stakeholders to concentrate on key business decisions.

Translate strategy into an integrated portfolio of investments Achieve the right balance and mix of investments to reach business goals Prioritize and fund the most valuable investments to generate maximum benefits Reconcile portfolio & organization budgets to align strategic and operational objectives Increase visibility on resource requirements and optimize skills usage to keep costs down Ensure execution, benefits achievement, and performance are in line with objectives

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Artemis 7 uses its unique investment and project management methodology templates to provide integrated workflow control. These governance templates contain the steps, milestones and stakeholders involved in the lifecycle approval and funding process for each investment including review, approval and authorization steps. The application uses workflows to prompt identified stakeholders to formally review and approve different milestones and stages throughout the lifecycle of investments, programs and projects. The project methodology template performs the same workflow role, but at the project execution level, where project team members are required to review, complete or approve key milestones, deliverables and project phases. The workflow can be modeled through various stages of each investment or project by transfer of ownership based on the user definable roles and the release status. Artemis 7 tracks changes to key project information, such as methodology milestones, stage dates and other key performance indicators including project cost, benefit, schedule and risk. User definable triggers can be set based on changes in key project information. These triggers send alerts within the Artemis 7 platform or via email to defined project stakeholders, providing instant notification of critical issues.

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Define and classify investments

Artemis 7 manages all investment information centrally for rapid recall. This information can include planned and actual costs, schedule, financial and qualitative benefits, resource requirements, risks and issues, dependencies and all documents associated with the investment.

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Prioritize the investments
Proposed investments, once captured, can be quickly and easily scored and ranked using any combination of investment attributes including strategic fit, financial return, risk, and availability of resources. These techniques ensure selection of the best mix of investments given the strategic goals and financial and resource capacity.

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Maintain visibility of budgeting and resource allocation decisions Artemis 7 incorporates funding approval workflows to ensure that funding decisions remain visible, and stakeholders are accountable for the complete lifecycle of each investment. To support the annual budgeting process, Artemis 7 allows investment owners and budget owners to jointly negotiate and approve funding of investments from organizational budgets. At a glance, budget owners can see which investments they have agreed to fund and to what degree.

Regularly review the portfolio
A rapidly changing business environment demands a disciplined and regular review of the portfolio. Artemis 7 provides personal scorecards that show the current status of investments from multiple perspectives including cost, schedule, expected benefits, risk and user defined Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Return on Investment (ROI) may be constantly monitored together with Net Present Value (NPV) results.

Through e-mail and dynamic homepage alerting, Artemis 7 automatically informs investment managers and other stakeholders where to focus effort. Faster reaction times accelerate decisions, saves costs and maximizes opportunities. Model alternative investment strategies Successful organizations are able to react to change faster than their competitors. Artemis 7 provides sophisticated “what-if” analysis of alternative investment strategies that model cost and headcount implications of potential portfolio changes.

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Record investment risks and issues
Artemis 7 allows investment risks to be identified, quantified and tracked. Key to risk management is the assignment of responsibility to individuals who, in collaboration with others, document appropriate mitigation strategies. Again, through proactive alerting and subscription mechanisms, stakeholders can monitor the status and resolution of issues and risks.

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For organizations that require an automated mechanism for collecting, analyzing and progressing organizational demand, Artemis 7’s demand management module provides a fully configurable solution. Using a graphical work-flow modeling capability, multiple demands like product ideas or work requests can be defined and processed through simple or complex role based reviews and approval steps. This module allows organizations to manage the full life cycle of incoming demands of any type and optimize their fulfillment according to their business objectives and priorities. This allows ideas to be converted rapidly into new product initiatives, or work requests to be embedded into existing projects, or generate new investment proposals. The Demand Management module can be deployed standalone or integrated with the portfolio management capabilities of Artemis 7. The workflow graphical designer is fully compliant with the standard dictated by the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) and Object Management Group (OMG).Process Management Initiative (BPMI) and Object Management Group (OMG).

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Linking funding to expected results

In addition to managing the financial approval and on-going monitoring of multi-year investments, Artemis 7 also provides unparalleled capabilities to help organizations build operational budgets that reflect their priorities and objectives, a process we refer to as Performance-based Budgeting.

Performance-based budgeting leverages the investment performance information to support the resource allocation decisions and to build and revise operational budgets, but more importantly PBB establishes a clear link between funds and results. This way budgets truly reflect strategic and operational priorities and can be closely linked to measurable output targets, whether financial or otherwise. Artemis 7 meets the needs of all those involved, from the investment managers seeking funds across the organization, to the budget holders committing budget to all or part of each investment, and the financial controllers who provide the ultimate arbitration on funding decisions. Artemis 7 provides these roles with clear precise information relating to their budgeting requirements, funding decisions and expected benefits from investments and projects. The result is a dynamic and agile budgeting process delivering true performance-oriented budgets.

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Artemis 7 supports an easy-to use program and project planning approach covering the entire project lifecycle, from initiation through to project close-out. Our approach enables program and project managers to plan top-down, initially defining high level phases, milestones and resource requirements and then providing increasing levels of detail as required during the lifecycle of the project.

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This approach offers substantial benefits compared to bottom-up planning, which requires detailed and complex project planning before it is required, or before enough information is available to plan accurately and effectively. Artemis 7 allows investments to be broken down into programs and projects and assigned to one or more program or project managers, depending on the level of complexity and the control level needed.

Program, project and operational costs may be rolled-up for comparison with top-down budgets and consolidated bottom-up forecasts. For organizations or departments that require a more detailed level of planning, Artemis 7 provides task level planning in two ways:

• A Project Plan editor, which provides a sophisticated graphical interface for complex multi-project planning and resource scheduling
• Bi-directional integration with Microsoft Project

Through both interfaces, Project Managers may allocate project teams members to discrete project tasks if required and update project plans with progress from those team members. This level of planning is ideal for project communities to collaborate on work execution and project deliverables. Artemis 7 also provides comprehensive resource rating and timesheet capabilities enabling the project costs to be automatically calculated and compared with planned expenditures and headcounts.

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Program Managers can roll-up and compare the agreed program level budgets for costs and headcounts, with the forecasts from the underlying projects.

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A key requirement in any knowledge worker environment is the effective assignment of resources to project teams. Artemis 7 provides a straightforward mechanism for securing team members for projects through a pragmatic resource search and assignment mechanism.

Resource requests and allocation Areas of the organization may operate a more formal resource requesting and allocation process, involving Project and Resource Managers. Artemis 7 helps Project Managers articulate the types and quantity of resource they require and allows Resource Managers to make proposals based on existing commitments and the skill sets requested. Through innovative graphical techniques, this process can accelerate resource allocation and ensure ciritical resources are employed efficiently. Resource Managers are provided with an intuitive means of performing “what-if” scenarios on their teams, helping them to optimize staff productivity

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Personal workspace and time reporting for individual resources

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Artemis 7 provides a personal workspace for resources to search for and contribute to project and non-project based work. In addition to task management, document management and alerting capabilities that manage work execution, an integrated time reporting capability ensures that resource costs are accurately calculated. Updates to project status are also captured and risks, issues and discussion threads may be shared across the project team.

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To improve visibility and accelerate decision making, Artemis 7 provides a full set of standard dashboards and unlimited analytical capabilities on investment portfolio management, budget and cost control, benefit measurements, resource usage and project management. In addition to multiple scorecards and other on-line key performance indicators, Artemis 7 offers a unique web based integration with Microsoft Excel, making this popular spread-sheet package a full component of the dynamic reporting capabilities.

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An unlimited number of Excel based reports can be created through pre-defined templates and fully integrated in each user environment while respecting data security requirements. Artemis 7 also facilitates use of other third party Business Intelligence tools by providing access to a set of ready to use reporting data tables, which can be automatically generated on a periodic basis. Artemis 7 can be integrated to any company portals through standard APIs to provide managers with a single point of visibility and control for making more informed decisions

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Artemis 7 provides a comprehensive collaborative capability, allowing stakeholders and contributors to store and share information.

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The integrated document management capability allows documents and data to be linked directly to the target investment, project or work item, whilst the discussion area provides an informal process for threaded comments and notes. Risks are more easily monitored and controlled through the shared Risks and Issues Register. Users may subscribe to specific documents receiving updates through email and home page alerting.

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Artemis 7 is a fully extensible solution, allowing integration with existing systems and the capacity to extend standard system functionality. Custom Plug-ins enable event driven extensions, whilst the Artemis 7 Application Program Interface (API) provides for more complex integrations and extensions. In addition, Artemis 7 provides a complete Import/Export XML schema to aid custom data transfer. Configuration Management
Artemis 7 offers a highly configurable solution, with a web-based architecture designed to support distributed environments. Role based security ensures that the user is presented with an intuitive, easy to navigate interface, while ensuring that users are only exposed to information appropriate to their role. Artemis 7 supports the majority of popular platforms and environments, maximizing the investment in deployed technologies. Designed for global deployment using multiple currencies, Artemis 7 provides multi-language support including DBCS and is available today in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Korean...

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