The United States Postal Service IMAQ group needed to provide their employees and project teams a simple, web based project management and collaboration tool which could be used as the central location to manage dozens of large program initiatives.  Information, data, documents, tasks and issues needed to be shared between multiple groups within the Postal Service as well as between the Postal Service and outside vendors and partners.  In particular, the ATLAS and EDL program, which standardizes and manages all barcoded label production at USPS facilities nationwide as well as and the entire Mailing Industry, needed a way to both manage the ATLAS/EDL programs at an project management level as well at the operational level, coordinating, monitoring, and managing ATLAS & EDL component and system activity throughout the USPS enterprise network.  USPS employees then needed a way to be automatically notified and alerted of any mission-critical issues and failures that occurred anywhere in the national ATLAS & EDL system.  USPS managers and executives need automated reports and notification of performance metrics within all facilities nationwide.

 

USPS chose the IBN Full Suite as the solution to solve both their project management, communication, and collaboration issues as well as the problem of monitoring and maintaining the national ATLAS & EDL program.  The IBN Full Suite had an immediate impact on the way people and groups enterprise-wide at USPS communicated and shared information.  It has allowed people to work more efficiently and better manage initiatives through the entire system/software development lifecycle, including planning and design through development, quality assurance and implementation.  Groups within and external to the USPS were able to share version-controlled documents and files, track, manage and assign issues from a central repository, view a unified online Gantt chart depicting task progression, utilize a project-centric calendar, and receive automatic notification of any changes, updates, or additions to any item, issue, field, file, document, or component of the IBN Full Suite.

In addition, to help manage the ATLAS program, Mediachase added customization to the standard IBN Full Suite platform to create the USPS IBN-AMS or ATLAS Management System.  The IBN-AMS collects data from over 450 USPS facilities, over 900 individual information and transactional servers, 50,000+ mail processing machines, 8000+ label printers, and the 1.2+ million labels printed daily – all in real-time.  This data is compiled and organized through the IBN Full Suite’s robust API and Web Services layers, and displayed in a user friendly format and AJAX enabled interface that provides the Postal Service with a value-added solution.  It give system administrators the ability to monitor the overall system in real-time, receive automatic notifications of any errors throughout the ATLAS & EDL system, as well as the ability to coordinate and collaborate on any efforts to correct/react to those issues and errors.  The IBN-AMS also dynamically generates automated reports and delivers to managers and executives specialized performance metrics and executive-level operational information. 

It has become a central system that USPS employees (from maintenance personnel from the plant floor to executive vice-presidents), and its suppliers and vendors utilize in its every day operations and project management needs.

Mediachase’s Services Performed

Mediachase is supplying program management, application development, training and education, implementation and support services for the IBN Full Suite, USPS IBN-AMS, and the ATLAS program.  Mediachase originally provided training material and resources to educated USPS users on how to install and use the IBN Full Suite, but has also done so for the USPS IBN-AMS.  Additionally, Mediachase consultants have been involved in the ongoing support and management of the ATLAS program.

Mediachase Solution:

 

“Out of the box” solution, nearly instant installation, increased cost savings, secure and stable platform, single web-based portal for internal and external users, easy to use.

Benefits of the IBN Full Suite and IBN-AMS

The IBN Full Suite, which was installed in a matter of a day, allowed USPS and its IMAQ group to immediately improve team collaboration and project management among distributed people and organizations.   Since its implementation, IBN Full Suite has proven tangible results in better management throughout all project phases, and increased efficiencies in and outside of the ATLAS & EDL programs.  It replaced the outdated processes of using e-mail, shared network drives to distribute, share and manage version histories for files and documents.  It gave the ability to centralize issues tracking and monitoring, task management