In an environment driven by ever tighter deadlines and fierce international competition, Canadian business managers are changing the way they view the work that goes on in their organizations. An increasing number of Canadian businesses are turning to enterprise project management (EPM) to find ways of increasing efficiency, driving visibility and reducing costs. Project management is crossing over from the project professional's office to the general business arena – and this is great news for the channel.

A big opportunity also exists for the channel in providing bridging solutions that work with EPM software from major vendors. Fujitsu Consulting has been hearing requests from customers that they needed improved project predictability and control.

Customers were looking for a tool to enable informed decision making for strategic project portfolio management. As a result, Fujitsu partnered with Microsoft to create EPMSuite, an add-on to Microsoft's Project Web Access, which was recently demonstrated by Fujitsu at ProjectWorld 2004.

"We created the solution in order to be able to respond to customer demand for a tool that would transform their EPM environment into a powerful performance support system not only for the entire project team," says Marcel Druin, Vice President, Knowledge Management Program Fujitsu Consulting. "We're seeing a real need among Canadian businesses for easy access to reliable and timely project information at all levels, from team members to executives."