Project management is crucial for effective project delivery, for ensuring that project goals are met and business objectives are achieved.

It is estimated that less than 3 percent of companies successfully complete 100 percent of their projects, the primary reason cited for this being a lack of proper project management.

According to a survey by the Project Management Institute (PMI), less than 60 percent of organisations realise the actual importance of project management. Similarly, less than 25 percent of companies use standardised project management practices.

Project management is important because it brings leadership and direction to projects and ensures that the project helps in fulfilling the strategic alignment of the organisation.

If your organisation does not have good project management you may be risking your ability to deliver on your strategy. Poor project performance and failure to achieve project goals and deliver the project objectives can also waste an organisation’s money, time and resources.

We are able to offer IT Project Management support and services to organisations of all sizes. While those skills are transferrable to a variety of industry verticals our primary industry sectors include Information Technology, Telecoms and Local Government.

Why use Yellow River Projects?

Broad industry sector experience

Project governance expertise

Cross-functional and onshore/offshore team leadership

Third party/supplier management

Agile/Waterfall project delivery

Full software delivery lifecycle

Stakeholder management

System integration

Infrastructure and application projects

Management/business information projects

System/cybersecurity

Transition to operational support

There are very few organisations trading today that run without some element of Information Technology, and purchasing and implementing IT can be a significant investment.

For most, IT is critical to the operation of the organisation and maintaining and improving an organisation’s IT can provide commercial benefits.

An Ecommerce site can offer an organisation’s products and services to a much wider audience than a traditional shop. Effective communications can help increase productivity, allow for better business decision-making and help an organisation expand into new territories or countries. Work flow systems, shared storage and collaborative work spaces can increase efficiency and allow employees to process a greater level of work in a shorter period of time.

IT systems can be used to automate routine tasks, make data analysis easier and store data so that it can be easily retrieved for future use. Technology can be used to answer customer questions via email, in a real-time chat session or through a telephone routing system that connects a customer to an available customer service agent.

The challenges of implementing a new IT system can be magnified many times where it is necessary to upgrade or replace an existing system which is in daily use by the organisation.

We have expertise in Infrastructure and Applications Projects, Business Transformation Programmes, Data Warehousing / Management Information / Business Information Projects and System Integration including the Full Software Development Lifecycle.

Our primary expertise in the Telecoms sector relates to Business Support (BSS) and Operational Support (OSS) systems.

BSS underpins commercial activities and handle customer-facing interactions. BSS include systems such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Order Management, Mediation, Charging and Billing, and Call Center Automation.

OSS are systems used by telecoms service providers to manage their networks. They assist operators in designing, building, operating and maintaining their communications networks. OSS primarily provide network-facing or network-operations-facing functionality. This includes fault and performance management , customer activation, asset management, inventory management, configuration management, network security and others.

We have provided Project Management services to a number of the major UK Telcos covering Contact Centres, VOIP systems, Citrix migrations, Server Infrastructure deployment, Mediation System upgrades, Data Warehousing and software development.

The challenges of managing projects in the Public Sector are very similar to those in the Private Sector, with the addition that you are spending public funds.

A focus on transparency, accountability, efficient and effective usage of public resources, implementation of policies and changes is key. Value for money must be at the heart when purchasing infrastructure, negotiating contracts and choosing suppliers.

We have provided Project Management services to a number London Councils covering projects such as Contact Centres, Digitisation of Council Services and Web Analytics.

In today’s modern enterprise the network perimeter has expanded dramatically with increasing numbers of users, devices and mobile applications. Combined with ever increasing volumes of data, much of which may be sensitive or confidential, and Information Security Regulations such as the GDPR, it means that cybersecurity needs be a critical component of an organisation’s security policy.

In addition, cyber-attacks are growing in volume and sophistication meaning that cybersecurity is becoming more complex. Methods of attack are constantly evolving as hackers probe for new vulnerabilities to exploit. This, along with the need to support employee mobility, remote access and cloud-based applications, means that there are more and more devices, data and applications to secure.

Migration of data and applications away from the traditional data centre to the Cloud means that hackers have another set of systems to attack. While you may transfer the responsibilty of securing those applications and data to your Cloud provider the accountability stays with you.

As the IT landscape becomes more complex and diverse, security technology providers offer more and more systems to address certain aspects of cybersecurity. Unfortunately, even with an unlimited security budget, there is no way to protect your organisation from every threat out there.

It is better to take a considered, straightforward, layered approach to cybersecurity. Instead of deploying a complex mass of security technologies consider implementing an end-to-end approach to security. Assess the risks, understand the strengths and weaknesses of your existing IT infrastructure and identify the most crucial areas to protect. Make protection of those areas a priority.

Make sure that any system that you implement enables you to detect intrusions early. The longer a hacker remains undetected on your network the more chance they have to exfiltrate your data before they can be stopped.

Make sure that you are in a position to respond quickly if a breach is detected. A quick, agile response is crucial to identify and neutralise the threat, limiting data loss and minimising disruption to the business.

The cost of a data breach is not just due to the cost of recovering IT systems and data. There is also the cost of possible Regulatory fines, of lost business in the short term and of cost of lost customer confidence in the longer term.

Any cost of putting in place systems and policies to protect your organisation against cyber crime needs to be considered along with the risk and potential cost of suffering a breach.

Through our partnership with EnterpriseRed Cybersecurity (http://www.enterprisered.com) we are able to provide customers with solutions, support and advice on organisational cybersecurity.