Digital Project Management and Enterprise Transformation in Cyprus

 Navigator Consulting and the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry are organising a strategic training programme in Pafos on 5-6 February 2019. Entitled Digital Project Management and Enterprise Transformation in Cyprus, this 2-day training addresses the key challenges faced by small enterprises in adapting to and competing in a digital world. Interested executives should contact Mr. Christos Tanteles at the Chamber, tel. 22-889-840, for further information. 

 Introduction 

Digital transformation is the process of adapting corporate processes to an online operating standard. According to Wikipedia:

Digital transformation is the changes associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society. Digital transformation may be thought of as the third stage of embracing digital technologies: digital competence → digital usage → digital transformation, with usage and transformative ability informing digital literacy. The transformation stage means that digital usages inherently enable new types of innovation and creativity in a particular domain, rather than simply enhance and support the traditional methods.

Through digital transformation, small enterprises gain a number of benefits:

1. The importance of physical space and physical delivery or sales systems becomes less important as consumers and supplier interact online. A good supplier no longer needs to invest in a branch network to the same extent this was needed in the past.
2. New market segments in Cyprus and internationally can be opened. This approach is critical for numerous businesses in key segments in Cyprus ranging from tourism and professional services (lawyers and accountants involved in international company formation and management) to forex firms, engineers and architects and other professions.
3. A greater number of communications channels can be employed. The rise of smartphones and the growth of mobile browsing is changing how consumers search for and purchase goods and services.
4. A greater suitability for specific consumer segments, such as B2B professionals who have limited time available, or millenials (consumers who are 35 years old or younger, and are considered digital natives).

In order to compete today, Cypriot managers must master three related disciplines:

1. Digital Transformation: How organisations and teams change around a customerfocussed, technology-driven, 24/7/365 environment;
2. Digital Project Management: How executives manage diverse teams with internal and external stakeholders and vendors to deliver digital and ICT projects;
3. Vendor Management: How executives will manage external suppliers of digital and ICT services, such as web designers, online advertisers, SEO specialists, and others.

With this in mind, we are implementing a 2-day training programme followed by 1-day company consultations, start in Nicosia, Cyprus on 14-15 November 2017. The training agenda follows.

 Training Agenda Day 1 

5 February 2019

 Module 1: Digital Transformation 

08:50 – 09:50 | 60 minutes

Digital transformation is affecting consumers, suppliers and governments all over the world. Today, citizens, consumers and visitors to Cyprus expect digital interaction with the country, for functions ranging from where the best pizza in Cyprus can be found, to ordering a taxi, to paying the annual Company Levy online. As well as communicating in person, young Cypriots communicate using Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger. As well as than watching TV, Cypriots watch Youtube, embedded video clips on Facebook, and movies on Netflix. The first stop for information is no longer calling Directory Assistance: it is Google (or any other online search engine).

This session will cover:

• Digital Transformation for Small Enterprises.
• Customer demographics: What is a digital native? How do different demographic groups operate online? How do we measure their activities?
• Working in Internet Time: Internet time is 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. Customers interact online across all channels.
• How is technology changing? How will the Internet of Things (IoT) and the semantic internet affect consumer interaction?

 Module 2: Digital Strategy and Commitment 

09:50 – 10:50 | 60 minutes

On order to succeed, enterprises must make a serious commitment to digital operations. This requires strong leadership, organisational transformation and deep cultural change. This session will cover:

• Leadership of digital transformation across organisational silos and barriers.
• Enterprise, unit and individual accountability and responsibility.
• Corporate culture: Work and customer prioritisation and focus.
• Aligning company strategy and positioning with online presence.
• Accountability at different levels in the organisation.

 Module 3: Principles of Digital Project Management 

11:10 – 12:10 | 60 minutes

This session introduces project management for digital projects. The training subjects include:

• Introduction to project management
• Project management frameworks, including PMI, Waterfall and Agile
• Identification of Enterprise needs
• Distribution into one or more projects, defined as contracts
• Specifications documents and tenders (RFP / RFQ), including budgets
• Tender awards and contracts, including price / quality / time tradeoffs
• Project planning: Gantt charts, timelines, milestones, deliverables
• Meetings and reporting
• Completion process and verification
• Project activities after the project completion
• Service level agreements (SLA)
• Understanding Hosted Services
• Understanding Online and Offline Hybrids (Server versus Cloud)
• Understanding Copyright, Data protection, and confidentiality

 Module 4: Waterfall Project Management: Part 1 

12:10 – 13:10 | 60 minutes

Introduction, Project Requirements, Contracting

• The five phases of Waterfall Project Management
• Defining Project Requirements
• Drafting a Request for Proposals (RFP) / Request for Quotes (RFQ)
• Differentiating between Inputs and Outputs
• Defining Milestones and Timelines
• Allocation budgets in terms of time and costs to milestones and deliverables
• Preparation needed from the contractor side and the vendor side
• Holding a tender
• Awarding a tender
• Contracting

 Module 5: Waterfall Project Management: Part 2 

14:10 – 15:40 | 90 minutes

Specifications, Analysis and Design

• Analysis and mapping of business logic and commercial processes
• Drafting the Project Specifications Document
• Identifying deviation between RFP and Project Specifications Document
• Revising budgets and work allocation
• Software / Internet design processes: Wireframe drawing and mock-ups
• User experience / User interaction / customer experience management
• CMS and ecommerce issues
• Data security
• Data back up and disaster recovery

 Module 6: Waterfall Project Management: Part 3 

16:00 – 17:30 | 90 minutes

Implementation, Verification & Maintenance

• Project implementation
• Reporting and management
• Milestone completion and budget release
• Alpha testing: best practise
• Beta testing: best practise
• Verification
• Handover training
• Post-project maintenance and support
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

 Training Agenda Day 2: 6 February 2019 

Module 7: Agile Project Management 

08:50 – 10:50 | 120 minutes

This session presents Agile project management. Items covered include:

• The Agile Manifesto
• Agile project lifecycle / adaptive project lifecycle
• When to choose agile as a project management method
• Advantages and disadvantages of iterative design
• Advantages and disadvantages of self-organising teams and groups
• Impact on agile project management and project budgets
• Scrum & kaizen processes
• The role of the project manager or scrum master in agile projects
• Risks of using agile in Cyprus
• How to choose an agile technology vendor in Cyprus

 Module 8 Digital Outsourcing and Contracting 

11:10 – 12:30 | 80 minutes

This session provides an in-depth view at writing digital contracts for specific projects as well as larger outsourcing initiatives. It covers elements that enable a company to “own” and to control a digital initiative, such as web design, pay-per-click marketing, etc. Several contracts will be presented and their clauses explained. Components include:

• “Make or buy” decisions: When to outsource; when to hire full-time capability
• Role of the outsourced service provider / role of the contractor
• Verifying vendor capabilities: how to differentiate hype from reality
• Contract structure
• Content ownership
• Intellectual property rights: own content / vendor platforms / third party providers (for instance, digital photographs or media)
• Best practise in contract management
• Best practise in digital asset management
• Contract milestones and clauses
• Penalties and break-up clauses for non-performance
• Service-Level Agreement (SLA) contracts, including defining critical incidents, level of impact, response times, and performance levels

 Module 9: Using Project & Team Management Software 

12:30 – 13:10 / 14:10 – 14:30 | 40 + 20 minutes

This session reviews different options for online project management and team management. This is an effective tool for managing digital projects and initiatives for small enterprises, as it allows for multiple users to login, track progress, assign tasks, etc. We will review:

• Choosing online project management software
• Asana
• Basecamp
• Jira

 Module 10: Budgets & ROI 

14:30 – 15:40 | 70 minutes

Many enterprises cannot adequately measure digital project budgets and return on investment. This session will provide a detailed structure and analytical framework for budgeting using Microsoft Excel.

Expenditure calculations:

• Contracts
• Cost overruns
• Financial versus time expenditure
• Opportunity costs

Income calculations

• Revenue
• Intangible benefits
• Long-term revenue opportunities

Return on Investment (ROI) methods

• Net cost basis
• Terminal / asset value basis

 Module 11: A 5-Year Plan to Digital Transformation 

16:00 – 17:30 | 90 minutes

We review the core digital operations needed for online competition in Cyprus today. These include:

• Website development and core website features and functions
• Social media management and advertising
• Electronic Newsletters and email marketing
• Online advertising (PPC and branded)
• Search engine optimisation
• Online customer care
• Analytics and monitoring

We look at how rapidly the environment is changing, and how we anticipate Cypriot companies will be operating five years from now. Key issues that will be faced in the future include:

• Big Data: How will enterprises store and extra value from big data? What types of analytics will be mined for product / service discounting, customer account regeneration, product selection and evolution?
• Customer profiling: How will databases use artificial intelligence to general customer profiles, consumption propensity, predictive marketing and tailoring special offers to customer profiles?
• Internet of Things: The IoT embeds intelligent agents into items. In the future, everything from food packaging to office materials will be tagged. Items will be traced en route, in storage and in consumption, including disposal. This fundamentally changes how suppliers view and predict ordering, replenishment, pricing, promotions, value chain, buffer stock levels, and all other related activities.
• Artificial intelligence and Intelligent agents: Right now, we depend on human agents, e.g. in a call centre, to handle customer requests. In the future, artificial intelligence will handle that automatically. This requires a standardisation of functions and much greater attention to commercial logic pathways and decision-making.
• Consolidation of Online Data: Right now, there are too many channels available, and all channels are fragmented. It is impossible, for instance, to integrate Facebook chat information and customer profiles with a standard ERP. In the future, integration will occur automatically, creating new challenges and opportunities for suppliers.

 Target Group 

The target groups for this programme are:

• General and functional managers of small enterprises that understand the need for digital transformation of their enterprises. This is a multi-sectoral need, and involves everything from the need to relate to diverse customer groups on social media, to the need to settle transactions online. It covers the full range of online services, including payroll and HR management, salesforce management, customer relationship management (CRM), online marketing and advertising, customer research (online polling and surveys), demographic segmentation and management, social media branding and marketing, etc.
• General and functional managers of small enterprises that are contracting digital services, such as web design, web applications development, search engine optimisation, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, branded online advertising campaigns, Facebook advertising campaigns, and similar services.
• Managers of small companies contracting software development and implementation projects, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), salesforce, human resources, stock and inventory control, accounting and financial management systems and equivalent projects. These may be server-based or cloud-based, or hybrid systems.
• General and functional managers of web design and IT firms that require a systematic project management methodology for delivering IT-related and web development projects. These include web designers, digital marketing agencies, search engine marketing firms, and others.
• General and functional managers of media and advertising companies that offer digital marketing services, and are interested in improving their project management skills and methods in this area.

 Training Objectives 

The key training objective of this programme is to reinforce the capacity of Cypriot small enterprise managers to:

1. Strategically prepare for digital transformation, or the process of adapting a significant share of corporate operations to the internet. Digital transformation initiatives include preparing organisations, teams, business processes and corporate culture to orient around a customer-focussed, technology-driven, 24/7/365 environment;
2. Successfully implement critical digital projects, such as web design, online marketing campaigns, ERP or accounting platform development and installation, and other related online or server-based initiatives. Two specific forms of digital project management will be taught: waterfall and agile.
3. Manage external vendors of digital and ICT services, such as web designers, online advertisers, SEO specialists, programmers and others more appropriately, in order to maximise benefits to the organisation.
4. Understand the technological trends which are transforming the modern economy, in sectors as diverse as banking, e-government, tourism, retail, B2B suppliers, customer service, online security, big data and Internet of Things.
5. Understand how international and Cypriot consumers, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders are adapting to the internet in the process of becoming digital natives.
6. Systematically prepare own operations for digital transformation by adapting a 5-year strategic development plan which maps which business processes and value chain components must be migrated online.
7. Develop a comprehensive knowledge of waterfall project management techniques based on a standard 5-phase approach to project management.
8. Develop a comprehensive knowledge of agile project management techniques, based on the Agile Manifesto, the role of scrum master and self-organising teams engaged in iterative, continual improvements.
9. Understand, develop and apply digital project management techniques and tools, including specifications and business analysis, software and digital architecture, tendering process via RFP/RFQ, implementation by phases (including Gantt charts, milestones, and reporting tools), alpha and beta testing, verification and service/support via Service Level Agreements.
10. Understand how to contract, work with and manage the relationship with ICT and digital contractors across multiple disciplines.
11. Develop effective budgeting processes and return on investment (ROI) methods for digital and ICT projects