The Importance of Data Analytics in Project Management - 2022

Digital Projects Apr 1, 2022

Every company thrives in its business when there is proper project management in place. This, however, is seen seldom, because of the large amount of project failure rates. Project managers have slowly run out of options but to turn to data and data analytics for help.

In any organization, data plays a critical function. Managers and executives can use analytics to spot early symptoms of budget, cost, and timeline slippages and take corrective action. Managers can also use analytics to capture the velocity of work, making it easier to estimate whether a project will be completed on schedule.

Project management can be cumbersome, if taken in the traditional approach. However with proper study and use of data, the cumbersomeness can be taken out of the equation. With the help of data, the project managers, who play a pivotal role throughout the entire lifecycle of the project until project completion, can eliminate tedious work and manage projects in an organized way, resulting in increase in efficiency.

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AI, BI and BA

Gartner has put its thoughts in place, saying that

80 Percent of Today’s Project Management Tasks Will Be Eliminated by 2030 as Artificial Intelligence Takes Over

Artificial Intelligence is key to data analytics in giving suggestions to improve the project success rate throughout the project lifecycle. Business intelligence refers to the procedural and technical infrastructure that collects, stores, and analyzes the data produced by a company's activities. Business analytics refers to the skills, technologies, and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning based on the data derived.

On deep study and continuous assessment of results put forward by analyst firms, it is easily inferred and derived that Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence and Business Analytics act as the pillars for successful project management and data management in today’s modern and fast moving world.

Impact of data analytics on project managers

The project manager has the highest dependency in line with project management. This encloses the initial process of project planning to proper management through all the phases of the project until project completion. He/she has a set of roles and job responsibilities which headline the pass/fail status of a project. Some roles and responsibilities of a project manager when it comes to project management in general are:

  1. Matching resources
  2. Allocating the best resources to the stakeholders
  3. Scheduling available resources.
  4. Managing real time data
  5. Managing risks, issues and test cases, etc.

All these tasks performed by a project manager, become continual and tedious, when they are taken forward with traditional methods and approaches like the use of excel sheets to retrieve data. However, with the help of data and analytics derived from the existing system, projects of any altitude can be driven efficiently.

Talking about projects of any altitude, a large project like a conversion project from ECC to S/4HANA has much more elaborate and stretched list of deliverables, and without data analytics, it would turn tedious. To know more about the roles of a project manager in SAP S/4HANA project conversion, click HERE

Product extraordinaire for project management

To help companies and large scale B2B enterprises manage their extensive and intricate digital transformation projects, the Digital Transformation as a Service (DXaaS) model was brought into existence. Click HERE if you are new to DXaaS.

KTern.AI is the ultimate cognitive digital workplace which eases your project management with its data-driven Digital Projects stream. All the information that one could get from AI, BI and BA tools for the successful management of a project can be collectively received from KTern.AI. Especially, data analytics plays a vital role with respect to project management, when it comes to large and complicated projects like your SAP digital transformation projects. However, such large and complex projects including the RISE with SAP transformation projects, S/4HANA transition projects are made simpler with KTern.AI Digital Projects.

KTern.AI Digital Projects is a unified workspace where not only the project manager, but the employees and stakeholders involved also find it easy to smoothly navigate through the project. Some of the features in Digital Projects where data analytics plays a vital role include

  1. Everyday work item analytics
  2. Test analytics
  3. Business process insights
  4. Sprint reports
  5. Project signoff reports
  6. Project and process reports etc.

The Sprint report provides a detailed report of each and every sprint that has been completed or is still running. It provides the details of the sprint, sprint planning and the users that are involved in the sprints. The project timeline feature provides the users with a detailed view of the plan and the tasks to be completed throughout the course of the project. The project signoff report gives a detailed analysis of all the approved and unapproved tasks with respect to the particular stakeholder involved.

An integral part of project management in Digital Projects, is the control center. This is the central hub, where the entire project can be controlled, so to say, a project manager's paradise. Here, based on all the data analytics presented to the project manager, he/she will be able to create, monitor and assign tasks effectively.

The dashboard provides a detailed view of all the data with respect to the tasks and the stakeholders associated. This makes the life of a stakeholder very easy.

Along with the help of data mining and data analytics insights, KTern.AI Digital Projects exhibits its uniqueness in,

  1. Smart project charter and Intelligent risk management to improve the Communication and Scope control for the Project Execution.
  2. Project auto-simulation planner and Timeline auto-tracker with insights for better version management linked to the Project Milestones.
  3. Sign-off approval auto-orchestrator and Q-gate auto-integration for conformance to compliance and auto validations.

To know more about the advantages that KTern.AI can offer over your competition in data analytics and business intelligence with respect to project governance, check out this detailed webinar on Reimagining SAP Project management with Digital Projects.

Market prediction

It is predicted that the market for data analytics and business intelligence is only going to grow in the future. Records and sources say that the scope and demand for project managers with digital automation skills will be skyrocketing in a few years. With these many facts stating the obvious, it is only right that the usage of data analytics to improve the business efficiency, starting with project management, should be the ultimate goal to master from hereon, and KTern.AI is the right way to move forward in this respect.

Are you someone who wants it easy with project management? Are you feeling the pressure of embarking on SAP Greenfield/Brownfield implementation projects? If so, get started with us by scheduling a demo. If you wish to know more, feel free to contact us.

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Krithik Sharavan S

Enthusiastic about the concept of digital transformation and assisting businesses and B2B organizations in successfully carrying out their SAP digital transformation journey.