Success Story #1
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Accelerate your ability to create results.
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“Paula is an outstanding leader – highly intelligent and extremely adaptable to ever-changing project environments. Through her management efforts, she turned around a client’s serious problem, under seriously adverse conditions. Paula went into a very difficult project in an extremely remote region of Siberian Russia, several hundred miles from the nearest road. Paula showed a remarkable teaming effort that was essential with such a diverse, international group. Where most people would pale, Paula excelled.”
– Robert Dyer, VP, Pacific Rim Operations (Retired)Morrison-Knudsen International, Inc.
– Robert Dyer, VP, Pacific Rim Operations (Retired)Morrison-Knudsen International, Inc.
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Success Story #2
Paula Ruffy's insightful analysis and influential communication with leaders saves college $1million on enterprise-wide IT projects.
One of the nation’s largest community colleges, the Salt Lake Community College provides degree programs and courses for thousands of students. Plus, this tax-funded institution oversees a statewide workforce training program. Due to her cross-functional skillset and interdisciplinary management experience, the college contracted with Paula Ruffy for several years on a variety of large projects, including overseeing critical aspects of complex, enterprise-wide software implementations. Paula’s key activities included business process analysis and implementation, interdepartmental integration, change management consulting, organizational communications consulting, and staff training and development.
In her first assignment, the revenue department manager who emerged as a central figure in a multi-million dollar Oracle software implementation contracted Paula to write business process procedures for his department. Soon, Paula and the manager recognized that a massive effort would be required to successfully roll out this state-of-the-industry software throughout the finance department – as well as implement modules in all other departments that relied on financial data. The manager expanded Paula’s scope of involvement, tapping her to collaborate with the software provider and to oversee and contribute to every facet of the implementation. Backed by an MBA, accounting skills, and a depth of IT capabilities, she had the right skillset and the insight to guide this challenging process and to team with leaders and employees throughout the organization. |
“Thank you for applying the hours and hours necessary to so thoroughly understand a process this complicated and far reachining...
It is essential that we improve turnaround... It sure appears this goal has been accomplished. Congratulations and thank you for your personal dedication to the improvement of our ... implementation and processes. ” – Kent Ferrel Comptroller, (Retired) Salt Lake Community College |
Paula played a critical role in coordinating and setting up processes, recommending innovative functional changes with the software vendor’s VP of development, guiding end-to-end batch processes, developing and delivering workshops for over 100 managers and staff members, providing one-on-one coaching to managers, and ensuring a timely and accurate implementation. Paula was given unprecedented access to run queries and reports to extract data and analyze information. In addition, she stepped up as the advocate for the college to ensure it received the full range of services it had purchased from the software vendor.
Critical to her approach, Paula left no stone unturned. Her goal was to ensure the college’s strategic goals were met and executed at the tactical level. This required a depth and breadth of perspective to see the whole picture. With this approach, Paula identified critical issues that had been overlooked and, more important, identified and handled distracting concerns that were irrelevant to the project’s success.
This was the case for another key Salt Lake Community College project. A manager hired her to conduct an independent feasibility study to address a specific need. Through her investigation, she uncovered a $500,000 proposal by a vendor to design-build a software system to meet that need – a proposal being championed by a high-level director at the college. The institution was in negotiations with this vendor, nearly ready to ink the contract for this expensive software solution. Paula’s thorough due diligence revealed that decision-makers were unaware of a $50,000 off-the-shelf program, which would meet their specific need and included additional attractive upgrades for their current system.
Committed to saving significant tax dollars, Paula tactfully yet rigorously brought this issue to light with the leadership team. In the end, the college purchased the $50,000 off-the-shelf program – instead of the $500,000 design-build software – and saved $450,000. This was only one of several cost-saving measures totaling over $1,000,000 that Paula realized for her client while at the same time preserving the college’s standards for quality and productivity.
Critical to her approach, Paula left no stone unturned. Her goal was to ensure the college’s strategic goals were met and executed at the tactical level. This required a depth and breadth of perspective to see the whole picture. With this approach, Paula identified critical issues that had been overlooked and, more important, identified and handled distracting concerns that were irrelevant to the project’s success.
This was the case for another key Salt Lake Community College project. A manager hired her to conduct an independent feasibility study to address a specific need. Through her investigation, she uncovered a $500,000 proposal by a vendor to design-build a software system to meet that need – a proposal being championed by a high-level director at the college. The institution was in negotiations with this vendor, nearly ready to ink the contract for this expensive software solution. Paula’s thorough due diligence revealed that decision-makers were unaware of a $50,000 off-the-shelf program, which would meet their specific need and included additional attractive upgrades for their current system.
Committed to saving significant tax dollars, Paula tactfully yet rigorously brought this issue to light with the leadership team. In the end, the college purchased the $50,000 off-the-shelf program – instead of the $500,000 design-build software – and saved $450,000. This was only one of several cost-saving measures totaling over $1,000,000 that Paula realized for her client while at the same time preserving the college’s standards for quality and productivity.