Question on Contract Manager Adminstrator roles

Question

I have a question on IT roles around contract manager. What do people typically see as far as contract manager IT administrator roles ?
We are deploying contract manager to a user base of about 500 users and perhaps 100 concurrent users (eventually). Right now we have a small production deployment for 3-4 construction projects.
We are trying to figure out how to structure the contract manager admin role. One idea we have is to establish a 1st level of support, provisioning users and possibly setting up new projects. I could be involved in a 2nd level of support, dealing with more infrastructure problems, such as defining new security templates, configuring document attachment storage, troubleshooting problems with the server or with letters. We’d structure it this way so that the day-to-day work of dealing with users would fall to the 1st level of support and the more backend problems would fall to me. I have some other projects I’m involved in so the day-to-day dealing with CM users would not be as much of a burden on me.
My boss is concerned about clear cut roles. If his group is responsible for an enterprise system (contract manager) then only members of his team (me) have the power to do things like modify the configuration of CM, start/stop the server, reboot the machine. Other IT team members, not a member of his team (1st level support person) could have admin privileges to deal with user/project provisioning only. 1st level support person wouldn’t have full administrator privileges. Is this technically possible? Does the security model of CM support such a division of labor?
What else have people seen that works as far as roles? Is having just one person take on both user/project provisioning and the rest of the admin tasks doable? If a single person is managing contract manager, is this a part-time load or a full-time load? Recall that I’m slated to be involved in other projects such as UCM in general, I/PM (Oracle Imaging and Process Management), possibly some integration projects too.
Are there any guidelines for best practices around admin roles?
If anyone has any experience/opinions on Primavera P6 roles I’d like to hear about them also.

Answer 1

Yes, the arrangement you describe with you being the 2nd level support (server level functions) and another person being 1st level (user admin, etc) is certainly technically possible. You would have full admin rights to the server on which CM resides, and the 1st level person would only require access to the CM Admin web-based interface through an ID and password. From what you describe, that person would not need physical access to the server at all in order to handle the user account management.
Now, based on the number of users which you descibe, it really sounds like a full time job for at least two people. These numbers will vary based on how much the CM app will be customized and integrated with other systems. Beyond the IT support you describe, there will be a need to have "super-user" level users that can handle the application level requests such as how do I add a new contact, what value do I put in that field, etc.
Although it's becoming more common, 500 users is still a large implementation in the PCM world. I've seen organizations with up to 10 IT type people involved with implementations of that scale, but maybe not all full time.
Rick