Akelon Projects

Project management is a relevant task for many companies. Despite existence of project activity as such, degree of its regulation and automation often is at the insufficient level that leads to a low performance. In the market there is a set of the ready systems for automation of project activity, but often they do not locate the worked processes of interaction of project participants, such as routes of approval and signing of project documents, uniform storage of all documents on the project, etc.

Business solution "Akelon: Project management" is own development of the company. The solution is created on a basis ECM- the system DIRECTUM which is differing in ample opportunities on development of application solutions and also being one of the most popular ECM systems in the Russian Federation.

The solution is focused on small and medium business in which project management is already used. It includes all necessary elements for effective management of projects:

• documentary support of the project – creation of full-fledged archive, easy and quick search of the project in a system;
• problem definition and control of execution to final contractors – expert evaluation of the project, approval and the approval of the project with use of the EDS, approval of the regular project report;
• business intelligence – assessment and the analysis of project activity of the company, efficiency analysis of activity of the employees, assessment of their loading;
• ensuring calendar and resource planning – creation of structure of stages and tasks, cast of project participants, planning process automation.

Together with an ECM system which in this case is used for documentary ensuring project management and support of business processes only the large companies and the enterprises at which project activity is the main generally are able to afford use of full-function solutions for planning. The cost of such integration solutions is high that forces the companies to look for simpler solutions in which it is not necessary to buy licenses of two systems at once with the limited IT budget. Therefore specialists of Akelon developed for licensing reduction in cost and also reliability augmentation and simplification of accomplishment of standard scenarios of works to the Editor of the Project component. It is one of crucial elements of the solution which gives the chance to work with the schedule of the project in a graphic view with a usual planning tool – the chart Ganta. A component allows to create structure of stages and tasks, to set time frames, to specify contractors.

2013: Version "Akelon: Project management"

On August 12, 2013 the Akelon company announced release of the new version of business solution "to Akelon: Project management".

Key innovations

The new version includes a number of the updates directed to increase in functionality and convenience of work. The solution supports work with the project plan in a graphic type. It is for this purpose used specially developed the Editor of the Project component. This independent application is intended for calendar and resource planning.

• Hierarchical stages allow to structure project tasks with the required level of decomposition.
• Export to MS Project allows to unload all structure of the project, including calendar and resource plans.
• High-speed performance is increased, reached due to use of new approach of interaction with the DIRECTUM platform and caching of the project on the client computer with a possibility of preserving at any moment.
• Display of course of execution of tasks allows to estimate on the chart Ganta a current status of separate tasks, stages or all project in general.
• Segmentation of a resource pool allows to limit lists of available resources for appointment.

Editing in a web

Expansion for web access of DIRECTUM will allow:

• display the register of projects and a card of projects;
• set a mark about accomplishment of tasks;
• display a set of tasks of the specific project and their cards;
• receive notifications on purpose of tasks;
• display structure of documents according to the specific project.

There is possible a work of remote workers, contractors of projects. Using the notebook or the tablet the employee will always obtain the tasks, accompanying information and will be able to give a mark about execution.

Typification of tasks is expanded

Opportunities for types of accounting of execution of tasks are expanded. For tasks planned labor costs which can be corrected by the project manager or a system within automatic calculations, for example at the actual exceeding are established. The mark about execution can be specified in the actual hours, percent from accomplishment or in boolean values (it is executed / is not executed).

2014: Akelon Projects version

On April 17, 2014 the company Akelon announced a release of the new version of business solution "to Akelon: Project management", intended for project management within ECM- systems DIRECTUM.

Business solution "Akelon Projects" is a new version of business solution "Akelon: Project management" (PM.Now). Business solution represents a versatile tool for management of project activity without binding to any specific direction or the industry.

Main innovations

• Full calendar and resource planning is executed in the editor of projects without switching in DIRECTUM. Including offline.
• Repeated increase in high-speed performance due to change of architecture.
• Accounting of labor costs on project tasks.

Solvable business challenges

Project portfolio management The unified register of projects of the company allows to create the solution that gives following features:

• maintaining the general information base on project activity of the company;
• quick search of the project by a set of available criteria;
• differentiation of access rights to projects according to privacy policy in the company;
• collecting of primary analytics of project activity of the company.

Calendar and resource planning The solution has broad tool kit for project planning that allows:

• construct structure of stages and tasks;
• cast and record responsibility of project participants;
• work with the project plan in a graphic type by means of the chart Ganta available in the Editor of Projects application *;
• consider the actual labor costs of contractors.

• The basic functionality of the Editor of projects includes: a movement/copying/insert of tasks and stages, storage of history of transactions with a possibility of return, adding of exceptions of the calendar, a possibility of multiple replacement of resources in appointments, imposing of communications between tasks.

Management of project lifecycle Within the solution the basic processes involved in project activity are implemented:

• approval and approval of the project;
• project completion and leading of its results.

Documentary maintenance The solution uses extensive opportunities of the platform for work with documents for the purpose of creation of full-fledged archive of project documents. Each document created within the project is identified with all project, its separate stage or a task that allows to find easily it in a system using search. Besides, for each project its folder in a system with a certain structure using which it is possible to find quickly any interesting document connected with the project is automatically created.