Institute for Sustainable Futures

The Client

The Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) is a consulting and research organisation that advises clients on sustainability strategies and issues. It sought advice from the UTS MBA team on a future strategy for its in-house software system—Project Information Management and Monitoring System or PIMMS.

Institute for Sustainable Futures is located within the University of Technology Sydney. It conducts project-based research for government, commercial and community clients in Australia and internationally. Its objective is to ‘create change towards sustainable futures’.

Institute for Sustainable Futures runs a commercial consulting model, in which clients are delivered on-time advice and invoiced for that advice on a time and materials basis. In order to manage its processes more efficiently, Institute for Sustainable Futures developed PIMMS in-house. Many enhancements had been made to PIMMS over the years in order to enable Institute for Sustainable Futures to keep pace with its growing client list and range of activities.

The Challenge

The UTS student team was asked to explore the viability of commercialising PIMMS and entering the market for ERP systems in Small and Medium Enterprises.

The Solution

After conducting intense quantitative and qualitative research, the UTS student team recommended that ISF should not pursue the commercialisation of PIMMS. The research revealed that:

• Market competition was intense in terms of features, price, and differentiation
• New business models had emerged and were dominating

The students provided two alternative strategies for PIMMS:

• Enhance PIMMS
• Replace PIMMS with a third-party product

For each option, the student team gave ISF a detailed ‘roadmap’ of issues to address and methodological processes to follow in order to execute its chosen strategy effectively. This included a detailed ‘how-to’ guide to implementing the DSDM approach to 'Agile'.

“The students’ work was both thorough and impressive, giving us tremendously valuable market research.”

- Stuart White, Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures