Fusion Productions - Integrating Meetings, Learning & Technology

Organization

Project Management Institute provides global leadership in the development of standards for the practice of the project management profession throughout the world.

Challenge

PMI promotes three congresses per year each for a different geographic location: North America, Europe and Latin America. A fourth congress, in Asia, is planned for 2005. Each congress receives over 400 presentation submissions to fill an estimated 75 presentation timeslots.

Prior to the development of the Call for Presentations application, the submission and review process was performed entirely via standard mail delivery. This required substantial time for PMI to receive submissions and, in-turn, resend submissions to assigned reviewers. Additional time was needed to receive reviewed submissions back from reviewers. As each presentation was assigned to multiple reviewers, multiple copies of a presentation were required — each being mailed separately to assigned reviewers.

With, in some cases, over 400 submissions for a single congress and the possibility of 4 congresses per year, PMI needed a more efficient method to accept and review submitted presentations.

Solution

Fusion collaborated with PMI to develop an online registration process — allowing users to login to a CFP application and submit multiple presentations for any scheduled congress event.

• The CFP application allows PMI staff to schedule concurrent congress events — each with a unique submission window.
• Potential speakers may submit multiple presentations during the submission window. At the end of the submission window, PMI staff will then assign each presentation to a series of Reviewers — held in the applications system.
• Presentation reviewers may access each presentation online — as well as assign a score and, if necessary, communicate to the submitter for content clarification.
• All communication is performed via the CFP application or via email. All communication between the reviewer and submitter is blind; presenters are not aware of the identity of the reviewers.
• PMI staff then selects the best presentations for publication and presentation and the next Congress event.

Best Practices:

• Performed a needs assessment of the old presentation workflow — analyzing each step performed by presentation submitters, reviewers and PMI staff.
• Tested and refined the new online submission and review process with a variety of user types.

Results

• Presentation submitters are now able to submit presentations online — are also able to return and edit a previously submitted presentation.
• PMI staff is now able to track each submission through its entire workflow.
• Presentation reviewers are able to review each assigned presentation online.
• Reviewers may also stop and start review process allowing them to fit reviewing responsibilities into their own schedule.
• Timeline for review process has been substantially shortened. From an estimated 18month process using the old process to 9 months using the online process. This includes the duration that the submission process is open for submissions.