Global Project Planning Guidelines

Description:

Global (or multinational) projects are inherently more complex than single-country engagements. The Project Manager must interface with more stakeholders and manage more complex plans, risks, and logistics than in a typical project.

Project Participants – Roles and Responsibilities:

The PM should ensure these groups are represented on their planning team, and that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. The following section will outline some additional planning activities supported by these team members.

Global Account Management Consultants (GAM) from the Business Units GAM function

Support discovery of the customer’s global business requirements
Provide global business consultation and account planning support
Analyze projects and recommend appropriate transaction structure
Engage areas resources to support global opportunity
Monitor implementation of global opportunities
Act as an escalation point
Contract Managers (CM) / Law
Assist in developing an appropriate Statement of Work
Source expertise regarding disparate legal systems or contract content from the various participating countries
Review and help negotiate contract terms and conditions in the

Master Agreement and addenda

Corporate Tax
Ensures VAT is properly addressed in the plans
Manage Permanent Establishment (PE) risk
Export Compliance
Validate compliance of proposed import/export transactions
WCS Account Support Manager
Develops the global Account Support Plan and represents WCS

Worldwide Field Operations (WFO) retains responsibility in the following areas. The GAM Consultant will help the PM identify a WFO representative to participate in risk assessment and planning for:

Assigning a Global Customer Identifier
Compensation
Contract Management
Order Processing
Invoicing
Global Selling Fee

Additional Project Management Considerations by TSP Phase:

Account Planning:

The GAM Consultant works with the Account Director to develop a Global Account Plan and get the project properly entered into the Global Account Management processes. The PM may participate, but in any case they should obtain account planning information at the beginning of Opportunity Qualification activities.
The GAM Consultant maintains current knowledge about COMPANY’s process and capabilities, and serves as an SME to the account and project team.

Opportunity Qualification:

All multinational projects are ‘complex’, and therefore require a PM to engage early in this TSP phase.

The PM identifies additional sources of project information, including:
Integrated Account Planning Global Account Addendum
Holden ValuGuide
Customized Global Customer Requirements Questionnaire
Global Virtual Account Team composition plan
Global Opportunity Profile

The PM works with the GAM Consultant to identify appropriate members for a planning team, including sales and PM functions in the home and destination countries. They may include PS Project Managers, WCS PMs, or Implementation Coordinators, depending on project content and complexity.

The PM understands how the GAM Consultant and SSS have classified the opportunity according to an accepted Global Transaction Model. The PM considers the proposed activities, responsibilities and risk for:

Order management
Invoice generation and management
non-standard shipping and logistics
Staging
Import /export
Third parties involved in import or export process

The PM engages the entire team in the Risk Assessment. Refer to the list at the end of this document to help identify common risk events observed in multinational projects, and ensure mitigation strategies exist for each.
Support Global Bid Review as a member of the Bid Team

Project Plan / Proposal Development:

The PM leads the team in developing the WBS and preliminary project plan. This plan includes specific and unique logistics, order and billing activities resulting driven from the Global Transaction Model.

The PM solicits plan input from project management resources in each destination country, including WBS, risk, schedule and budget input.

Contract / Order Management Phase:

The PM must engage a Contract Manager to review the SOW, Master Agreement and Multinational/transactional Addendum. They ensure the contract addresses items such as:

Participating Affiliates – list, performance guarantee
Pricing – price changed, freight, duties, taxes
Orders — location
Invoicing and Payment – frequency, currency, location
Warranty
Dispute Resolution — Arbitration

Delivery / Installation Phase:

The PM ensures WFO-Operations Services has a process for administering all orders. This varies by transaction model, but typically involves the SSS forwarding orders to their counterparts in destination countries for processing. The GAM consultant can help validate the process, and further supports order processing by providing a Global Project and Pricing Notification letter.

The PM ensures their team creates a Global Installation Guide. Preliminary material should be provided throughout planning phases, and the final version distributed prior to implementation. The PM ensures each country has complete instructions for installation.

The PM establishes status tracking, and validates local resources are dispatched for the installation according to the project plan, and maintains the consolidated project implementation status.

If appropriate, the PM communicates with Corporate Tax regarding Permanent Establishment risk if goods are being staged in an intermediate country.

The PM ensures the ASM is appropriately transferring Warranty credits as appropriate.

The PM obtains documented customer acceptance from each country.

The PM notifies WFO-Operations Services to prepare invoices in each destination country. The manage special provisions to aggregate and forward the invoices to a named COMPANY contact if central billing is required by the customer.

Invoicing / Customer Satisfaction Phase:

The PM ensures invoices are issued and forwarded to the appropriate parties.