Case Studies

An outsourced IT department responsible for supporting 3,000 employees received emails requests that ran the gamut - from application development and infrastructure routers to firewalls and extra RAM. Keeping track of the ad hoc customer requests required an average of 8 - 12 hours a week creating Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft Project plans, juggling deadlines, getting status from staff, and generating metrics for senior management.

Managing the ad-hoc email requests was by far our biggest problem.

Understanding the simple fact that its customer would always want to use the easiest way to communicate their needs — in this case, Microsoft Outlook — the IT department set out to find a way to manage the ad hoc activities and address two main issues: decrease the risk of missing a deadline and gain more time to work on strategic initiatives. "Managing the ad-hoc email requests was by far our biggest problem," says a Senior Group Manager of IT. "Getting a firm grasp of the constantly changing tasks was taking away from the more important strategic initiatives."

Prolify's intutive interface ensured that IT was up and running in less than 15 minutes. Immediately the IT Senior Project Manager was responding to ad hoc activities and had eliminated the need to create and maintain an Excel spreadsheet. With Prolify, the team had visibility into the status and life cycle of each request. "It is very helpful and, sometimes surprising, to actually see how work is being deployed and to have instant access to status without having to ask anyone," said the Senior Project Manager.

It is very helpful and, sometimes surprising, to actually see how work is being deployed and to have instant access to status without having to ask anyone.

An added benefit was the ability to distribute a corporate policy change as a task with a due date was assigned. IT was able to manage a Sarbanes- Oxley corporate compliance project within email — tracking who completed the policy change with the added benefit of gaining an audit trail. And all just by sending a single email.