Meet Scott Dulman, Senior Director of Product Management for AMS Advantage
 A career IT professional, Scott Dulman came to CGI by way of Oracle and Business Objects. As the Senior Director of Product Management and Product Marketing at Oracle, Scott led applications development from strategy to product launch for their government, education and healthcare solutions. At Business Objects, he led their worldwide public sector solutions team and rolled out their first state and local government specific business intelligence, performance management and budgeting solutions, doubling their public sector business.
In September 2008, Scott joined CGI as Senior Director of Product Management for the AMS Advantage Program. We had an opportunity to sit down and learn more about his role and his plans for AMS Advantage.
Why CGI?
Software and IT innovation is valued and encouraged at CGI. Members have the knowledge to build products for specific industries and the wisdom to develop them in partnership with their clients. The result is a high degree of fit and client satisfaction, a level of confidence with our products now and in the future. As a result, the AMS Advantage solution makes a difference in their states, cities, counties, and schools. CGI and clients continue to invest in the AMS Advantage solution and its people because it is an important part of their future.
What is a Product Manager?
I think that product management is the best job in the IT business because we collaborate with people throughout CGI, and our clients' organizations. My team gathers the inputs that become the innovative solutions implemented at state and local government organizations. And we shepherd new products, modules and enhancements from concept to market.
How does that work day-to-day? It breaks down like this:
- Research. We review client requests, market research, competitive analysis, and technology assessments, to identify what state and local governments need in the future.
- Strategy. We define our strategy with a series of business cases that include the decision to build, buy or partner to deliver new products. The product management team works with the AMS Advantage Software Change Control Board (SCCB) to define the roadmap, communicating this to our clients, CGI executives and the marketplace.
- Planning. The product management team collaborates with Product Engineering as the software is designed, developed and tested to ensure the results match the requirements and that our go-to market plan has accurate and current information for our clients and the marketplace.
- Launch. Working with the marketing and communications team, we educate our members, clients, the market and our sales team with the tools for growing the AMS Advantage community.
Finally, it is about managing a great team of product managers. CGI is fortunate to have a product manager for each product line in the AMS Advantage suite, each with the subject matter expertise, client relationships and passion for continuous improvement. Each product manager has more than ten years experience with state and local government ERP applications as well as a record of achievement and innovation.
Effective communication with product engineering is also critical to the success of AMS Advantage. CGI takes a holistic approach; we may have separate product management and product engineering groups, but they share the same goal, effective solutions for our state, local and education clients. Product managers work with our engineers day-to-day to review and test throughout the development cycle to ensure the final product is delivered on time and exceeds our clients' requirements.
What is the role of client collaboration?
The IT industry has invited client inputs into software development for some time, but CGI takes the process a giant leap forward by engaging clients at each step in the process. Because AMS Advantage is built-for-government, client inputs come exclusively from the public sector; there is no competition with the needs of commercial or healthcare clients. In addition, AMS Advantage focuses on the United States government market and does not compromise with requirements from other sectors (e.g. the private sector).
The Software Change Control Board (SCCB), AMS Advantage's client-elected Steering Committee, is proof of our commitment; more than just an advisory board, they work hand-in-hand with CGI to analyze and define enhancements for each new release. The best part, however, is being able to share the results of this collaboration. A recent example is the new Grant Lifecycle Management module, available in Release 3.8 that was built in collaboration with Los Angeles County, California.
I am also excited about our new AMS infoAdvantage Dashboard solution, also available with Release 3.8. The Dashboard solution delivers the first dynamic and customizable data visualization software built specifically for state and local government. Government professionals at all levels of the organization can create insightful dashboards from the data stored in AMS Advantage. For example:
What is next?
This will be a busy year with the launch of Release 3.8, which includes a combination of client-requested features, software updates, and integration between applications and technology platforms. Two examples of R3.8 technology enhancements are the new Rich Internet Application (RIA) user interface and support for Linux. Both enhancements demonstrate our continued commitment to standards based architecture and technology that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness for our clients.
Our Rapid Advantage Implementation (RAI) solution will also be available in 2009 for fast, low cost packaged AMS Advantage 3 implementations. The RAI vision is to deliver a streamlined best-practice ERP suite for small and mid-sized governments through the use of repeatable tools and processes. The result? Reduced implementation risk, time and costs while positioning clients for business process improvements.
We will continue to add new features, functions and modules to Performance Budgeting (PB) and AMS infoAdvantage. Performance Budgeting is unique as the only built-for-government budgeting solution available. We are planning new PB Dashboard enhancements in Release 3.9 as well as many other innovative features for our budgeting and performance management clients.
In January, the Steering Committee/SCCB met in Fairfax, VA. We reviewed and analyzed a large number of potential enhancements for Release 3.9, including high priority enhancements to Procurement, Vendor Self-Service (VSS), Manager Self-Service (HRM), infoAdvantage and Performance Budgeting.
We look forward to discussing new ideas from our clients that will take AMS Advantage to the next level. Our team is eager to expand product functionality through new strategic modules and technology platform enhancements. I encourage you to send us your ideas!
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