The Benefits of Consolidating Your Project Portfolio Data

Portfolio data may contain information regarding dozens of projects or programs, and the amount of information can easily cause problems. However, consolidating your project portfolio data can benefit your workload and organization in six ways.

1. Consolidated Project Portfolio Data Helps You Take Informed Risks

Consolidated data enables project managers to base all decisions on existing data and information. This helps to keep project managers aware of the likelihood of a risk becoming an actual problem, and it can help project managers define better strategies for responding to problems. Furthermore, consolidated data from previous projects can be leveraged to identify unforeseen risks when assessing new potential projects.

2. It Creates a Path to Prioritization

Data consolidation is also important in creating priorities in a project. In a sense, consolidated data units result in better assessment and prediction of durations and costs associated with different tasks and activities.
More importantly, previous data can be leveraged to define what parts of a new project result in better outcomes when completed in differing orders. Ultimately, you can prioritize your schedule better.

3. You Can Avoid Creation of Organizational Data Silos

Data consolidation helps to avoid the creation of data silos. When information is not consolidated, it becomes susceptible to deterioration or being lost permanently. In some cases, relevant data may not even be accessed for working on a current project.
As a result, consolidated data helps you collect and organize relevant data for use and prevents you from overlooking details from past or current projects.

4. Increases the Responsiveness From All Parties

The responsiveness of stakeholders, team members, program managers and all involved parties in your project is directly related to the success of your project. Therefore, you need to make sure all parties have the most updated, thorough information about their responsibilities, but the data should not provide a hindrance. In other words, the data should be consolidated to reflect the needs of each party.

5. Provides Better, Centralized Security

When data is kept in different locations and on different servers, the risk to security increases. Every physical location represents another vulnerability in the storage of data as well. However, consolidated data should be kept in a centralized resource, such as a secured cloud environment. This helps to provide better, centralized security, and any potential data threats can be identified earlier.

6. Enhances Allocation and Use of IT Resources

Similar to providing better security, the consolidation of data makes for better allocation and use of existing IT resources. Ultimately, your organization can free up space on your servers by eliminating old, repetitive data through consolidation.

Today’s computing capabilities have generated an entire virtual world of data, and the amount of information can be overwhelming. However, consolidating your project portfolio data can enhance your projects’ outcomes across your organization.

Key Things to Remember

• Consolidated data leads to better risk management and prioritization of your project.
• Data consolidation prevents data from being mishandled, isolated or forgotten.
• The responsiveness of all parties is improved when relevant data are easily accessible and used.
• It reduces physical and virtual risks to cybersecurity.
• Data consolidation also improves the allocation and use of IT resources.