I have recently been charged with developing a solution to my department's antiquated "project tracking system" and I'm a little overwhelmed by the myriad options seemingly available to me, and figuring out if and how they would apply to my situation. If you'll indulge me, I'll spell out what I'm looking to do, and I'd like your feedback regarding viable solutions and/or other options or things I need to consider.
First, a little info about me. I was given this task because I'm the "tech" guy on our team. In other words, I enjoy gadgets, stay current on tech trends, and have developed a few tools for our department with VBA. Somehow this qualifies me for this task.
So, onto the meat of the problem... I am a member of my company's marketing team. The team consists of about 20 members spread across 5 locations nationwide, and we have about 15 locations company-wide. Account managers at any of these offices request projects from the marketing team.
Our current project request process:
Currently, requests are submitted by email, with no set structure, to our boss who then decides who to pass it off to. She simply forwards the email to the appropriate team member, and it is their job to contact the requester to fill in any holes in the request. In addition to this, the team member is also supposed to enter the project parameters into an Excel spreadsheet for tracking. This spreadsheet then serves as our team's sole guide for completed and working projects.
Desired project request process:
Account managers go to a company intranet site, fill out a dynamic request form that, based on their input, allows only certain selections to be made (I imagine this to be back-boned by a series of tables and sub-tables). Upon submission, the tool then automatically notifies necessary parties of the request via email or similar. I'd like the people notified to be determined by criteria entered on the form (e.g. certain people on the team complete certain projects, so it should go to them and/or based on the number of projects on a person's desk at the time). In other words, the tool will also act as a sort of Traffic Coordinator.
I imagine from here the request data is also entered into a database. This db would need to be accessed from any member of the team, at any time, and be able to extract reporting from it, manage time-lines (Outlook calendar?), etc. Reporting would consist of projects per month, break-down by type, turnaround time, etc.
Upon completion of a project, the team member would return finished product to the requester. If possible, I'd like it done via this tool so that "Completed" status is entered automatically.
This is what I've envisioned so far, though I'm sure it'll evolve as we move forward. I am completely open to any ideas or insights as to how best to handle this. Thanks in advance for any and all help!
First, a little info about me. I was given this task because I'm the "tech" guy on our team. In other words, I enjoy gadgets, stay current on tech trends, and have developed a few tools for our department with VBA. Somehow this qualifies me for this task.
So, onto the meat of the problem... I am a member of my company's marketing team. The team consists of about 20 members spread across 5 locations nationwide, and we have about 15 locations company-wide. Account managers at any of these offices request projects from the marketing team.
Our current project request process:
Currently, requests are submitted by email, with no set structure, to our boss who then decides who to pass it off to. She simply forwards the email to the appropriate team member, and it is their job to contact the requester to fill in any holes in the request. In addition to this, the team member is also supposed to enter the project parameters into an Excel spreadsheet for tracking. This spreadsheet then serves as our team's sole guide for completed and working projects.
Desired project request process:
Account managers go to a company intranet site, fill out a dynamic request form that, based on their input, allows only certain selections to be made (I imagine this to be back-boned by a series of tables and sub-tables). Upon submission, the tool then automatically notifies necessary parties of the request via email or similar. I'd like the people notified to be determined by criteria entered on the form (e.g. certain people on the team complete certain projects, so it should go to them and/or based on the number of projects on a person's desk at the time). In other words, the tool will also act as a sort of Traffic Coordinator.
I imagine from here the request data is also entered into a database. This db would need to be accessed from any member of the team, at any time, and be able to extract reporting from it, manage time-lines (Outlook calendar?), etc. Reporting would consist of projects per month, break-down by type, turnaround time, etc.
Upon completion of a project, the team member would return finished product to the requester. If possible, I'd like it done via this tool so that "Completed" status is entered automatically.
This is what I've envisioned so far, though I'm sure it'll evolve as we move forward. I am completely open to any ideas or insights as to how best to handle this. Thanks in advance for any and all help!
