Health Ministry’s project management office upgrades to Microsoft EPM

When the Ministry of Health (MOH) became the first in the MEA region health care industry to implement and upgrade to Microsoft Enterprise Project Management 2013 software, it could hardly avoid noticing the Saudi population’s enthusiasm for mobile electronic devices.
The ministry’s Project Management Office (PMO) is responsible for the hundreds of IT projects needed to support a 10-year e-health strategy and realized that it could exploit the popularity of mobile communications to significantly enhance its oversight of the IT projects by upgrading from its Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) 2010 software to the 2013 version.
“The e-health strategy includes everything from a small IT system for a single office to ministry-wide projects. It requires a lot of time and attention and many risks and issues need to be solved, said Ahmed Alhedaithy, director, PMO at the MOH. “Therefore we decided to upgrade to EPM 2103 and our project managers are very happy with the tool, especially since they can now browse on multiple devices and can access Microsoft EPM 2013 from anywhere.”
Samir Noman, president of Microsoft Arabia, said: “The mobility aspect is one of the great features of the EPM 2013 and the MOH PMO made a smart move in deciding to upgrade to the new version.
“For example, with the Microsoft voice-over-Internet and instant messaging software Lync installed, contacts can be initiated simply by hovering over a name and content can be copied and pasted to Microsoft office products. Content can also be synchronized easily to the SharePoint collaboration software.
“It produces regular, detailed management reports and by allowing the PMO to highlight project difficulties, it helps project managers to pass serious problems to senior managers. Also we are very pleased that the PMO saw that the EPM 2013 includes a friendlier interface than its 2010 version.”