Customer Success Story
Sperry Marine
Deltek WelcomHome™ portal creates a virtual “War Room” for global marine electronic leader Sperry Marine
The Challenge
A leader in marine electronics for more than 100 years, Sperry Marine recently gave one pilot eBusiness initiative a full-steam-ahead. After a successful pilot, Sperry Marine is moving into the production phase for the WelcomHome project portal to create virtual “war rooms” for collaborating on Requests for Proposals (RFP) and resulting projects. More than 1,200 people around the world work at Sperry Marine, a business unit of the global aerospace and defense giant Northrop Grumman. Many work directly on projects for military and commercial customers using Sperry's smart navigation and ship control solutions.
To improve enterprise project management, Sperry has been using Deltek Open Plan™ since 1995, initially choosing Open Plan due to its interface with the Baan® ERP system as well as Deltek Cobra™, a Deltek cost control and earned value management system. Because project planning actually begins with an RFP, Sperry uses Open Plan in its proposal phase, so that all schedule, resource, and budget data is in place when a program is awarded.
In 1999, Sperry identified the need for a web-based application to give project managers access to all proposal-specific data and to help streamline collaboration during the whole proposal process. That is when Sperry discovered WelcomHome.
“Schedule and resource information was in Open Plan, budgets and costs in Baan, and documents on public drives,” says Thea Yancey, proposal manager with Sperry Marine. “We wanted to pull the data together in one place, so when Welcom introduced WelcomHome, it was the perfect fit.”
The Solution
Having used Welcom's Open Plan and Cobra products for many years, Sperry was confident in the vendor they were selecting. “Welcom has always provided us with great customer service and has been responsive to our needs,” adds Yancey.
The Benefits
In November 2001, Sperry began evaluating WelcomHome on a pilot basis to provide a centralized, visible location for coordinated document storage, information, schedule tracking, and statusing. In less than six months, Sperry teams worked on 40 proposals and ten projects through WelcomHome, shaving significant time off previous collaboration and gaining ground on efficiency.
“Before using WelcomHome, people e-mailed back and forth or called to stay informed,” Yancey says. “The wrong version of a document could be passed to someone and team members might miss information if they missed meetings. Now everyone gets general information from the portal's home pages, reviews an up-to-date notice board, checks documents in and out, accesses process and risk information, and views live schedule and milestone reports.”
Web-based WelcomHome has proven especially helpful in creating virtual “war rooms” for responding to RFPs. With geographically dispersed staff, it is difficult to meet in a physical place to hammer out responses. Yancey says, “WelcomHome is useful in communicating not only with colleagues across the hall, but also with those in other cities. People appreciate being able to upload documents from home or access information while on the road as well.”
WelcomHome's security allows different people to log on to different areas of the product, based on their role. Some contribute only to the cost estimate portion, for example, while others develop documents. Managers access all areas and follow up on action items, and executives review reports or scan Sperry's master list of all proposals.
Sperry also collaborates with partners through WelcomHome. To respond to an RFP from a foreign Navy for a voyage management system, Sperry turned to WelcomHome to work with its local agent overseas. Thanks to the portal, Sperry needed to make only one initial trip overseas, resulting in very significant cost savings compared to typical overseas proposals. “With a time zone difference, it also helped immensely to upload documents and communicate any time of the day,” Yancey says.
“The night before the proposal was due, we were all in the WelcomHome discussion forum chatting and checking to be sure everything was covered,” Yancey says. “We were as close to being there as possible.”
Sperry customized WelcomHome in several ways to meet their specific needs. This included the creation of additional DataViews (real-time reports) that show which estimators are responsible for estimating different parts of a proposal. In Item Management, the company also added custom fields to capture risks for the proposal and lessons learned at the proposal's conclusion.
“The customization was very easy to do,” Yancey says. “We were able to present the data in the way people are used to seeing it, and to provide templates that help them comply with project standards.” “We really like the ability to use Open Items to show our process from start to finish, with folders including specific steps and general guidance,” Yancey adds.
Because WelcomHome is intuitive and easy to learn, Yancey says people are able to use it right away. Just-in-time training at a proposal kick-off meeting is usually more than sufficient to help staff members understand how to use the portal. There is always some resistance to change, but once the team sees how WelcomHome helps them do their job, the resistance begins to dissipate. Use of WelcomHome for proposals is just the starting point. Sperry plans to execute projects using the WelcomHome portal for data and document control, team communication, and real-time access to project schedule information Customers like the real-time access so they can project status and other project information.