Advanta Automates Project Management in International IMC Montana Group

2023: Introduction of Advanta Project Management Information System

ADVANTA announced on March 17, 2023 that the ADVANTA project management information system has been implemented in the international group IMC Montana. This allows the company to make transparent work with counterparties, organize projects in a single register, manage the timing and loading of experts, and, accordingly, carry out more projects with the same resources.

The tasks that were set for ADVANTA were to increase:

• Project manageability
• informativeness at all stages of project work;
• efficiency of work of specialists;
• interaction of all project participants.

At the same time, several dozen projects are in operation, ranging from resource assessment and quality control of geological exploration work to support investors mining enterprises and the development of bank feasibility studies. The company is actively developing, and the number of projects continues to grow.

Working in the previous conditions became more and more difficult and for the implementation of projects on time, as one of the options, it was necessary to expand the staff of administrative employees, which entails significant additional costs. Silently storing and untimely updating project information complicates reporting and takes days to weeks. This, in turn, affects the control, analysis of information and the speed of management decisions.

The company's management needed to have a general up-to-date picture on all projects, correctly allocate resources between them, and quickly interact with contractors. The most important thing is to create a unified environment for project teams and optimize their work so that they cope with the growing flow of projects, minimizing the involvement of personnel and evenly distributing the load between existing specialists.

To solve these problems, an integrated ADVANTA system was introduced. The IT solution attracted IMC Montana management with a quick launch, wide functionality, acceptable cost and flexibility of settings that do not require programming. The main contours - basic project management processes, contract and resource management were implemented in 3 weeks. Users and top management switched to work on target processes and indicators of projects in a month and a half.

At this stage, in the configured solution, the customer shall:

• Project planning. Project schedules are maintained in the ADVANTA system. When you change dates within projects, the system notifies you of a date shift, so any deviations from the original plan have become transparent;
• Accounting of TCP, financial and legal documents on projects. The system records the status of contracts and closing documents (acts), incoming and outgoing correspondence. This allows you to conduct high-quality document management, minimize risks when working with counterparties;
• Control of actual and planned loading of employees on projects. The system has set up reports that show the distribution of participants to current projects with a color indication by workload. They also reflect data on the movement of employees. Management sees the current load and plans resources, excluding downtime;
• The time sheet allows you to see the load of each employee at the current moment, allocate resources more efficiently to projects, and avoid overloading employees;
• Summary reporting is automatically generated online. Prompt receipt of information on the entire portfolio and individual projects allows you to increase the speed of decision-making by 2-3 times;
• The archive of project documents and a unified knowledge base for projects are available 24x7, saving time to search for the desired document in the system.

The system allows you to structure goals and tasks, effectively act without going through a lot of tasks in your head, and most importantly, have constant interaction with the entire team of the group, regardless of the location of specialists. Project managers and engineering workers understand the current activities of the company, receive feedback from management and administrative personnel, which means they work in a stable and less stressful mode, combining various tasks, life and work, said Sergey Nikishichev, director of IMC Montana.