Client interview : Territoire de Belfort

The Department of the Territory of Belfort practises in territorial missions of which it has competences in the various fields of solidarity, secondary school, publics roads, culture, etc ... The objective is multiple: allow to the inhabitants of the department a better live on a daily basis and maintain the dynamism and attractiveness of the Territoire de Belfort (Culture: the Eurockeennes, Tourism: the Ballon d'Alsace, Technological: high-speed coverage, etc.).

Béatrice Periard, head of the projects department of the Information Systems, Innovation and Steering Department of the Territory of Belfort, gave us her testimony on her user experience and that of the 4 project managers under her supervision.

What kind of projects can you manage with Gouti?

"All the projects managed by the projects division since 2020 are integrated into Gouti. We have 2 types of projects in Gouti:

Usual projects: every project manager have projects under its supervision according to the area of skills, priorities (job, IS evolution or regulation, public policy…) These projects have start date, a continuity and an end date. We need to be able to follow progress, organization, resources, etc…
Annual projects: we have set up these projects in order to measure the part they take for IT Project Managers, all their “maintenance” or user assistance activities on the business software for which they are responsible and which are no longer in project mode. This also allows us to monitor the software that consumes the most Human Resources."

Why were you looking for a project management tool?

"As steering and project management are our core business, we were looking for a tool able to answer to our expectations.

The goal was to have traceability on our projects by avoiding above all a tool in a ‘white elephant’.

We wanted to be able to summarize as well as do activity reporting with ease."

Have you had any experience with any other project management software? What are the differences with Gouti?

"Before knowing Gouti, I tested a project management tool locally on my workstation, but it wasn’t satisfactory. In addition, it was difficult for me to share information with my collaborators with this system. It was after this analysis that we set out to find an easy project management tool, offering features for collaboration and immediately usable. It was this process that enabled us to find Gouti."

What benefits do you get from using Gouti?

"Finally, we have a real-time visualization of our hub's projects and their progress. It’s much easier to become aware of the real workloads of a project. That’s allow us to better measure the next projects in the future. This visibility allows us to better manage the slides of current projects. For example, seeing that a project isn’t progressing indicates that there is a blockage somewhere, and therefore it allows us to collectively define the actions to be put in place to unblock the situation. Plus, Gouti makes the activity reporting of our hub easier thanks to the features of monitoring collaborators and projects. This tool is a real added value for the hubs’ projects."

Which features of Gouti have real added value for you?

"There are many features that deserve to be mentioned, however I will retain 2 in addition to those mentioned before:

Project monitoring: Gouti becomes the recall of the progress of our projects.
Collaborative and mobile method: the tool is accessible from anywhere and all users with rights to projects have the right information when they want it.”

How did the integration of Gouti take place in your organization?

“The integration was very simple, the handling easy. From the start of Gouti's implementation, we set a framework. We defined how we were going to use and format the projects. Initially, we had the idea of making project models according to the requirement (implementation or market procedure with implementation ....). Finally, everyone has their logic and builds their own model which they reuse to initiate a new project in their portfolio. The main thing is readability on the progress, the issues, the monitoring of the project. So, integrating Gouti into our organization was easy and playful for the whole team. Another positive point reported by the project team is the possibility of being able to easily rename, correct and modify project and constituent information. "

What feedback have you had from members of your team who use Gouti?

“The team appreciates the tool for its simplicity. As we are still in the phase of adjusting our practice on the tool, we don’t yet have the reflex to integrate it into everyday life and therefore to enter information on projects and our activities gradually. We do more post-entry data entry, which I think creates an overload of work. In order to improve this area, I ask my collaborators to check their entries at the end of each month, in order to be able to make quality reporting on the activity of the division and the progress of projects. Being responsible for the hub, I also created an annual project on Gouti to manage and analyse my own activities. "

What do you think of CG Project Management's responsiveness to your requests?

“The CG Project Management team has always been very responsive. I appreciate that the solution is constantly evolving. The team is implementing new features that bring added value to the tool, such as the project portfolio for example. "

If you had to define Gouti in 3 words, what would they be?

“If I had to define Gouti in three words I would say: easy to use, pragmatic and comprehensive. "

Jade LEJUEZ - Monday June 21, 2021