Kickstarting projects with the right first impression

Precision Project Partners fosters client trust with Office Timeline

Project planning falls outside the expertise of most non-IT companies. Precision Project Partners, a small customer-centric IT consulting agency, bridges the gap by managing all planning aspects for companies in industries such as oil and gas, telecommunications, banking, and fast-moving consumer goods.

These clients prioritize their core offerings, so investment in this area is driven primarily by its potential to achieve cost savings and improve operational efficiency. This creates a dual challenge for the team at Precision Project Partners: proving the business value of effective planning while reassuring clients they’ve chosen a trusted service provider for the job.

Having seen Office Timeline deliver impressive results in the past, Jamie Christer, founder and director, knew this tool would empower his team to deliver professional planning visuals and build trust from day one.

Need for an efficient planning visualization tool

Before becoming a contractor and founding Precision Project Partners, Christer worked as a PMO & planning consultant for the European branch of Wipro, a global information technology and consulting company. During that time, he learned firsthand what every seasoned consultant knows only too well: no two days are alike.

Unexpected challenges can pop up at any moment, whether due to new client priorities, project roadblocks, or changing dependencies. Regardless of the situation, Christer had to adapt quickly and ensure he delivered the promised outcomes.

When he was asked to create a last-minute planning visualization for a client’s transformation program, he soon discovered that the timeline built in Microsoft Project was too complex for an executive audience. "When you're presenting to various people, they don't understand plans at that level. You need to bring it to a level that's more in layman's terms," says Christer.

With the deadline looming closer, adjusting the heavily detailed timeline in Microsoft Project wasn’t an option. Neither was presenting it as-is, as this would have made communication with the client difficult and prolonged the meeting.

Putting Office Timeline to the test

Christer looked for a user-friendly tool that could condense complex plans into easy-to-understand, professional visuals and help him save time. That’s how he came across Office Timeline and decided to use it to build the planning visuals for the client. He was so impressed with the quality of the visualizations that he became a fierce advocate of the tool from that moment on.

A decade later, Christer continues to rely on Office Timeline for clear planning visualizations. However, this time the tool helps his own team make a strong first impression and position Precision Project Partners as a leading consulting partner. With almost 85% of Christer’s time focused on planning and supporting project managers in this area, Office Timeline has become an indispensable part of his workflow.

Above all, the tool’s intuitive interface and its seamless integration with Microsoft Project and Excel make it a perfect match for the company's daily operations. "The main positive definitely is the tool’s usability – the way that it presents clean, crystal clear images of milestones, tasks, and other details," says Christer. He and his team use Office Timeline to build detailed weekly project plans as well as high-level reporting visualizations for monthly delivery and dependency forums.

As a consultant, Christer uses his personal license for projects but always recommends that companies purchase the tool themselves to fully leverage its capabilities. That’s how one of their clients in the energy sector also became hooked after being shown how quickly they could create a professional plan in Office Timeline. "That was a good example of where someone who's not used the tool before saw its capability and basically said they needed that," he says.

Saving time and improving project communication

For Precision Project Partners, Office Timeline is their go-to project visualization solution as it allows them to minimize manual work and improve client communication. "Using this tool has saved me a lot of time and I’ve been able to get the right visualization for the client, depending on the nature of the meeting, whether that's an executive board meeting, a SteerCo, or a weekly team update meeting. It's the best tool out there for planning visualization," he says.

Working with various clients, Christer has the chance to test other similar solutions, but none have come close to Office Timeline in terms of outcome quality. Key features like the drag-and-drop interface, task dependencies, sub-swimlanes, what-if scenarios, and the ability to tailor the level of detail to the audience set it apart in his eyes. 

"Even with ServiceNow and other PPM tools, the visualizations of the plans are nowhere near as good. [...] You'd have to spend quite a bit of money on development to bespoke that with some of the PPM tools on the market to bring it to that standard of quality."

Overall, Office Timeline helps Precision Project Partners streamline project planning for clients across different industries and management methodologies. "Project management is pretty much the same in any industry. There are different methodologies, but you're always going to need a plan regardless. Plans drive everything and Office Timeline offers that, even through the templates you've pre-defined," says Christer.

The ready-made timeline, roadmap, and Gantt chart templates further optimize the planning process, allowing him and his team to focus on higher-value tasks like expanding their client network.

About Precision Project Partners

Precision Project Partners specializes in providing expert PMO, project management, and planning consulting services aimed at enhancing clarity, efficiency, and results. The team offers strategic insight and hands-on experience to support the successful execution of new initiatives, the navigation of complex changes, and the optimization of existing operations, ensuring projects are completed on time, within budget, and with precision.