Global Leader in Logistics Successfully Transforms Work Management to Optimize Productivity

The core focus of the Supply Chain group at this multinational delivery and logistics giant is to strengthen their highly profitable core. Supporting 155,000 supply chain experts in more than 1,800 global locations, the IT Ops team became concerned with their lack of an Agile approach to project delivery and visibility into the project teams’ day-to-day activities. They needed to implement a solution that would drive large programs forward while simplifying and integrating their project and task management.

With Planview Portfolios already a crucial part of the organization’s framework, they implemented the Planview Work Management for Teams Solution to deliver the additional software needed to plan, manage, and visualize the progress of their collaborative projects. Now, every detail is available in one place, even on the go, and for global teams who often work virtually, this has been the dynamic change they needed for optimum productivity.

Part of the largest multinational package delivery and supply chain management company, the Supply Chain group is the world’s leading contract logistics provider. With a network of approximately 155,000 Supply Chain experts in more than 54 countries, they provide transport and warehouse solutions alongside management services in major vertical markets, including automotive, consumer, retail, energy, life sciences, healthcare, and technology.

As the number one contract logistics provider in the world, the Supply Chain group understands the importance of providing globally standardized, reliable, innovative solutions. This can be challenging for organizations of any size, but with 155,000 Supply Chain experts across 1,868 international locations, the demands and complexities increase exponentially.

The organization has relied on Planview Portfolios to improve their success on everything from warehouse builds to implementing transport management for nearly 20 years. So, when the time came to address critical gaps within their workstreams, they knew exactly who they could trust.

Recognizing a lack of an Agile approach to project delivery and needing an easier way for the over-arching business to track day to day activities, their Global Senior Project & Solution Manager laid out the challenge. “We need a robust solution that helps our global teams carry out their work while at the same time continues to meet the compliance and visibility needs of the wider company.”

To do this, they needed to implement a solution that would drive large programs and projects forward while simplifying and integrating their project and task management processes.

After analyzing various use cases across the business, the IT Ops team at the Supply Chain group concluded that integrating Planview Portfolios with Planview ProjectPlace would provide them with the proper toolset to meet the organization’s governance needs alongside the evolving usability demands of the product delivery teams.

With Planview ProjectPlace implemented as part of their Planview platform, their workstreams now have access to realtime visibility, mobile management, and powerful collaboration tools that weren’t there before. Teams can now instantaneously import/export project plans, visualize every step of their work and projects, and track progress to ensure deadlines are being met or know when things are not happening on time.

The organization’s Supply Chain Operations Maturity team can have up to 40 projects going on at any one time, each with up to seven individual contributors. Before integrating Planview ProjectPlace into their solution stack, these initiatives were being managed and updated via spreadsheet. This meant that “by the end of the week, the truth was out of date,” says their Global Senior Project & Solution Manager. “Project Managers at the top end can now drop projects into ProjectPlace. They can then turn around and use that with the teams at the lower level to actually get the activities done.” He goes on to describe the cloud-based project management application as “really powerful” with a “slick, user-friendly interface.”

Virtual team collaboration via chat was another big hit with the Supply Chain IT Ops team and across the entire business. Now users don’t have to go into different applications to share information or chat with colleagues about a project. This improved business process agility, and enhanced operational efficiency, allowing them to reduce or eliminate the use of several communication and collaboration apps, which helped to simplify their system architecture.

Additionally, with the fully interfaced mobile app, users can access all of these powerful features remotely from anywhere in the world, which is vital to a business with 2.4 million square meters of global warehouse space to cover.

The Supply Chain group has successfully driven digital work transformation across its global organization by leveraging the combination of project portfolio management and work management for teams. Planview Portfolios drives large programs and projects providing global visibility and reporting along with resource and time management, while Planview ProjectPlace allows for seamless collaboration and planning down to the daily activities managed within the workstreams. Everything necessary to complete a project can now be found in one place, and for diverse teams who often work virtually, this has been the dynamic change they needed for optimum productivity. As their Global Senior Project & Solution Manager puts it, “users out there are loving it!”

Given the impressive adoption rates and rapid growth of the ProjectPlace community across almost all departments, the enterprise will continue expanding how teams can utilize Planview. Future implementation will include time tracking, file sharing and document management, and they plan to integrate third party accounting and business analytics software. “It’s a needed solution for operations and commercially agreed at the board level because we’ve already been using the Portfolios solution for so long. It’s a nice progression to give that extra functionality down to the teams,” adds their Global Senior Project & Solution Manager.