The work collaboration platform for everyone
Functional overview
Verto makes work collaboration possible
Verto 365 is a cloud-based solution that provides a work collaboration platform for the entire organisation.
It manages everything from simple day to day tasks through to major initiatives right across the organisation.
It is entirely user configurable supporting multiple workflows and business processes and provides a central repository and single version of the truth for all project and work management requirements.
Key features
Fed up of reading long-email chains and not being completely sure of what stage activities are at?
Project confusion where communications are spread across email, instant messaging and other cloud-based document systems.
Confused with using separate tools for document sharing, task management and managing projects?
Verto is quick to setup and easy to use and can enable you to work collaboratively with your teams across the business and with other organisations in a secure manner.
Tailored features that suit individual needs
Kanban Boards
The Kanban board functionality within Verto 365 allows you to create as many personal or shared boards as you like. Create lists to contain cards of activities at similar stages of completion, for example, and move them around as the activity progresses. Cards can hold information such as statuses, due dates, members, custom tags, additional documents and much more. A variety of templates can help you get started, but you can create your own templates as required.
Every board can be filtered for help finding specific data. For example, you can easily filter a board to only show cards you are a member of, or with a status of red, that is also due in the next 7 days etc. As well as this, all board data can be aggregated and summarised within our dynamic dashboard, providing even more opportunities to filter and group cards across multiple boards at once.
Dashboards
The Verto 365 dashboard provides a real-time, aggregated view of all project & programme information, focusing on what means most to you, be it milestones, risks, costs or anything you’re recording in the system. You can create and save as many dashboards as you wish and share them with colleagues whenever necessary.
The dashboard is interactive at every level and can be fully customised using extensive options of widgets, which can be tailored into several formats (bar charts, line graphs, containers, data tables etc.) to suit your preferences. Each widget can be filtered using any relevant field, providing full control over the management information you would like to focus on at any time.
Reporting
Verto 365 boasts powerful reporting functionalities at multiple levels that allow for reports to be produced based on any and all information within the system. All reports can be exported in a number of different formats including Word, Excel, PDF, CSV, TIFF, and more.
All our reports are run in real-time, ensuring that only the latest information is presented. Users can take advantage of our subscription service so that real-time reports are received by users in their inbox, eliminating the need to access the system to run a report. We use ‘tags and filters’ to ‘slice and dice’ the data as much as required, to further enhance the reporting capabilities.
We also produce specific data extracts for reporting tools such as PowerBI, Tableau and QlikView.
Workflow Configuration
Verto 365’s workflows are fully configurable, which allows workspaces and projects to move through a defined set of stages and approvals. The workflows can be set up in multiple ways by different teams and departments across the organisation according to project size and complexity. They can be customised to incorporate PMO or SMT sign off at any stage. All changes, requests and approvals are recorded providing a complete audit trail.
Risks Management
Verto 365 provides comprehensive, configurable Risk and Issue Management functionality that can be held against both the Programme, Project or Workspace and aggregated up to Programme and Portfolio level. Owners can be assigned to individual risks and issues, along with proximity dates and mitigating actions (amongst many other field options). The fields contained both within these functions and others throughout the system can be configured so they perfectly match the registers currently used by the organisation and support governance.
Planning / Gantt
Project plans and schedules can be created simply and managed easily within the system using Verto 365’s planning feature. Multiple views are available for users to customise how they view and update plans.
Verto 365 has a Gantt feature embedded within the planning module that provides a visual assessment of project plans. The Gantt view is interactive, allowing for all elements of the planning module to be amended in this format. An ‘offset dates’ feature is available when an entire plan needs to be pushed back or brought forward as required. Users can import MS Project Plans into Verto 365 allowing them to use their preferred tool whilst supporting team collaboration.
Dependency Management
Verto 365 has a feature called ‘VertoSense’ which allows for dependencies to be identified against any two objects in the system.
This allows for comprehensive dependency networks to be produced from those connections made. For example, connections can be made between a project risk and a project milestone, to identify the dependency that risk may have on the associated milestone.
These dependencies can be selected within the system, which then brings up the fields linked with that dependency. These fields can be amended and updated without having to enter that section, if the user has the correct permissions.
Benefit Realisation and Cost Management
Verto 365 records quantitative and qualitative benefits which are then tracked and reported against at multiple levels, via the dashboard as well as utilising our comprehensive reporting functions.
Verto 365 provides full finance management capabilities, allowing users to track cost profiles over time, providing full transparency on project spend. Financial integrations with systems such as SAP, Oracle, Pegasus, Agresso, can be achieved to ensure Verto 365 remains the central repository for analysis / reporting purposes.
Audit Trail
Verto 365 has a comprehensive audit log that is automated against every field in the system. Every change is recorded and is easily viewable by the users.
Changes to fields are also supported by a ‘track changes’ feature so you can more easily see what’s changed between versions.
Custom Notifications
Verto 365 can provide user-defined automated risk alerts and notifications that appropriate to the level of involvement, including approvals, missed dates and other tasks and milestones.
Users can be notified of any changes or updates to any field within the system, including risks. This applies to every field within a risk so nominated users are always notified immediately after relevant changes are made by others. Common notifications are,
but aren’t limited to, a change to the ‘proximity date’ or ‘current risk rating’ of a risk.
Storage
Unlimited, cloud-based storage is available for each entity (e.g. project, programme, portfolio) to manage documents and each document store is independently secured, so that only users with the appropriate permissions have access to it.
External links such as a SharePoint archive can be inserted, however Verto 365 also integrates directly with SharePoint, so you can continue using the current storage solution you are familiar with.
Resource Management
Verto 365 contains comprehensive resourcing functionality which has been designed to ensure you can find the right people for your projects based on availability, skill set and any other information you want to use.
Verto 365 gives you the ability to search across all your resources to see who’s available, who’s been allocated to which project(s) and when they may be overallocated.
You can search on any criteria you need, be it job title, team, project role, location, specific skill etc., Verto 365 supports your own views/groupings of the resource pool. You can plan as far ahead into the future as you need so you can avoid clashes.
The main resourcing page gives you an ‘at a glance’ view of a person’s allocations across an entire year, making it easy to identify issues and resolve them ahead of time.
If needed you can then review each person individually to ensure you have the right person for the job.
Individual rates are then calculated so you can get a true picture of the cost of your project. Used in conjunction with the timesheets module you’ll be able to see the expected and actual costs of all the time spent.
Timesheet Management
Users can complete timesheets within Verto 365 to reflect the actual time spent on completing a task and there is logic built in to make this as quick as possible for the end user. The system knows which projects an individual user is assigned to and will only show the relevant tasks to ensure quick but accurate time recording.
The submissions will then go through an approval before the time is added to the project record.
Performance Management
The Verto 365 performance management module can be utilised to measure project performance and be reported against using our reporting feature. Pre-set thresholds can be assigned to a KPI that can then be used to measure performance of projects against a particular KPI. Both projects and non-project activities can be assigned to a KPI, to further support performance analysis against projects. Performance groups/objectives can easily be created to ease the management of multiple KPIs that form part of the same objective.
The ability to compare performance against other organisations or services is also available, so you can track your progress against others.
We have a performance management report that is part of our standard suite of reports, however custom reports / plans / graphs can be produced and tailored to suit each organisation’s needs. Within the system, a quartile graph is included for each KPI however custom charts / graphs can be produced if required.
Security / Access
Administrators have full controls to tailor each user’s access and involvements within the system. Roles can be assigned to users, to ensure they have access to the correct system elements.
Restrictions can be placed throughout the system, so users will only ever see what is relevant to them. For example, administrators can choose to restrict a user’s access from a particular stage, or even to the reports section of the system if required. Verto can be accessed using browsers on mobile devices.
Credentials
Our preferred method of authenticating credentials is using Single Sign-On where we delegate the authentication process to the customer’s active directory. Where this is not possible users can provide username/password with 2 factor authentication.
Integrations
Verto can be integrated with any accessible system. Our integrations are typically tailored to suit the competing requirements of each client. We have integrated with numerous financial systems (SAP, Agresso, Oracle) as well as numerous identity providers (including active directory) and timesheet management systems.
Verto 365 can be fully embedded within Microsoft Teams. This allows users to manage projects, end to end, within MS Teams without the need to leave their Office 365 suite of tools or log into another system. The synchronised calendar allows for items such as project tasks, milestones, risks, and issues to be overlayed within the same diary of events and meetings in your MS Teams calendar view. Synchronised document storage allows you to continue managing your documents within SharePoint via Verto 365 and MS teams.
Multiple Kanban boards and dashboards can be added to each project directly within MS Teams, extending collaboration opportunities and providing management information at the user’s fingertips.
External Forms
External forms are used to gather data into Verto 365 that is initially generated outside of the system. Examples would be project idea forms, funding applications and company engagement forms. These submissions can be completed by anyone, they don’t need to be a Verto 365 licence holder, so the possibilities are wide-ranging.
Those who complete these external forms will receive an email upon starting a form with a link to give them direct access to pick up where they left off, so they don’t have to complete the form in a single sitting. These forms would be configured by your administrators using the same 6,000 plus fields available when configuring stages within Verto 365, within Verto 365. This means they’ll always perfectly suit your requirements.
All the data submitted will be added directly to the Verto 365 database which means there’s no need for re-keying anything, no duplication of effort. It’s all reportable and can progress through the normal project stages if needs be.
Cost and Licencing Model
Verto 365 is an entirely cloud-based work collaboration platform available via user licences. User licences are available either on a perpetual licence purchase or an annual licence basis. The licence purchase option provides the lowest cost of ownership for organisations using the service after 2 years. All user licences can be assigned and reassigned to individuals both inside and outside of the organisation as often as required.
As organisations increase their user base the cost of user licences previously purchased or rented are deducted from the cost of new licences.
