Press information
Augsburg, May 30, 2008 – California's Franchise Tax Board drives modernization program with IME™
The Franchise Tax Board (FTB) of the State of California advanced their modernization efforts to further the efficiency and ability to support its constituencies with its current IT infrastructure. The FTB is one of the trend setting public sector agencies partnered with the global solution providers IBM and Cost Xpert to advance the standardization, access and data management of its intra-agency, transparent, and user friendly systems. Cost Xpert, the world wide leader in Methodology Based Estimation of effort, time and cost, worked on a previous project for the FTB, along with IBM, to their fullest satisfaction. Since the beginning of April Cost Xpert has been the strategic and reliable partner for accurate estimation of this large scale project.
For the development of this standardized, cross-platform system for the FTB’s partner agencies, such as the Department of Child Support Services and local child support agencies, complex migration and comprehensive integration were necessary. The overall objective is the overall reduction of 58 localized systems into one, integrated, standardized solution. The complexity of this modernization effort was further increased due to the system’s interaction with 21 other State and Federal agencies’ data management applications. The current climate, in regards to public sector funding, cost accountability and budget justification, inspired and challenged the chosen solution providers who proved to be reliable partners and successful implementers.
Cost Xpert determined before, and during, the project’s execution the real value equivalent of the delivered functionality/services. This further strengthened the trust level between the partnering organizations. The market leader in the area of estimation delivered reliable and accurate results on an ongoing basis for effort, schedule, time, cost and resources, including potential risks and defects, for the entire lifecycle, in addition to professional consulting services they provided. The resulting transparency increased the planning security for this project, in its entirety. Initial comprehensive What-if and risk analysis also allowed for a solid decision basis to be established up front. Cost Xpert provided the agency valuable support for project oversight through its constant review and analysis. Ongoing monitoring shows, for every phase, role and activity of the project - whether or not - the actual progress lies with in the previously established objectives. Due to this process, and the unique attributes of the project, further fine-tuning and calibration of the methodology for this type of government IT project was accomplished. This assured that the methodological support given by Cost Xpert provided the accurate basis for the targeted pursuit and delivery on clearly defined milestones. This paved the way for successful modernization, within budget constraints.
Based on scientific methods and models, Cost Xpert developed an industry- and technology independent methodology (IME) for the realistic estimation and planning of effort, time, cost and resources, including risk, defects and documentation page count, for the entire Lifecycle - before and during the project’s execution. As such, Cost Xpert’s expertise represents a practice proven, intelligent solution for the realization of individual organizational objectives, the optimization of customer specific processes and services and the creation of value.
