Project Description

Excerpted from a customer-led case study presented by Cindy Capodagli, VP Operational Effectiveness, Océ North America.

“Chateaux Software came highly recommended. They were selected based on their strong reputation as a service provider. We found that they had a lot of experience with different data sources as well as working with other large companies. As we were going through our initial installation of our project, we worked with two of their principals as well as a data quality expert. The data quality resource possessed a lot of expertise, was very committed to our project, and worked to understand our data and our project goals.

“There are three points regarding Chateaux that I’d really like to highlight: their commitment to a successful project; their level of expertise and ability to overcome obstacles; and their professionalism.

Commitment to a successful project

“We [Océ] had received another estimate from a previous vendor and Chateaux, based on their experience and expertise, believed that it was underestimated. There was no way that we could really implement our deliverables in that time frame. Despite our insistence on adhering to the existing project plan and timeline, they maintained that point, and they were willing to walk away from the project. They were not willing to sign
up for something that they could not successfully deliver. And I, quite frankly, give them a lot of credit for
that. We worked with them to understand the effort involved and their level of expertise, signed them on, and initiated the software implementation process.

“As I mentioned, we had another consultant in place and the idea was that Chateaux would leverage that consultant’s design; however, Chateaux found pretty quickly that the design was flawed and would never work. Chateaux proactively came to us, raised the concern to us, and put together a very detailed, professional document explaining why it wouldn’t work. They had the inhouse expertise to come up with an alternate design, and basically presented the design to us. Again, we accepted the ramifications.

“Near the end of our design phase, we had to swap out our Chateaux resource. A project manager’s nightmare is to lose a key resource but Chateaux really worked to ensure that resource completed the design phase; provided all the deliverables that met our expectations; brought in additional resources that had the proper expertise and experience; and made sure the transition and knowledge transfer happened appropriately. We are very happy with our replacement resources. The build is going as planned, and we are in a good place.

“As with all projects, we’ve had issues, but Chateaux handled them professionally and ensured that the project continues to move forward for mutual success.”

Chateaux will support both on-site as well as off-site development. When it is important to work face-to-face they’ll come to our location and when it is not, they’ll work offsite, which saves on travel expenses and all for the project. They assign a project manager who manages the tasks and ensures the deliverables are achieved and met on time. They provide weekly status reports with weekly team meetings to go through the status and deliverables, open issues, as well as an opportunity for team discussion. They also have knowledgeable, personable resources that are very easy to work with. I have a principal, Mark [Montanaro], who from time-to-time checks in with me to make sure everything is going ok; he does, within reason, whatever it takes to keep things moving forward.
Cindy Capodagli, Océ North America