Horizon Power Gains a Single Source of Truth, Boosts Efficiency With Planview

With a workforce spread across all four regions of Western Australia, Horizon Power needed to put standardized lifecycles in place across its entire portfolio. Just as the executive team signed off on the project, COVID-19 wreaked havoc on Australia and sent the entire country, including Western Australia, into lockdown. Almost overnight, Horizon Power’s 500+ team moved exclusively to working remotely from home.

By tapping into Planview’s project portfolio management solution, Horizon Power unlocked a single source of truth to consolidate disparate tools, fast-track reporting, and improve visibility of portfolio performance. With real-time data and a single line of sight, teams can spend more time drawing insights, delivering strategic recommendations, and driving project performance at speed.

Horizon Power is a large energy and utility provider, servicing customers across 2.3 million square kilometers of Western Australia. In fact, they’re responsible for delivering energy solutions across the largest geographical catchment of any Australian power provider. Not only does Horizon Power operate across the full energy supply chain – from generation to distribution and retail services – but they’re also committed to putting regional businesses and communities first, working hard to ensure their customers receive safe and reliable power.

In early 2020, Horizon Power had just completed a digital identification process to pinpoint what areas in the business could be digitized. Out of all the projects that were earmarked for transformation, their approach to project portfolio management was named as a top priority.

Just as the executive team signed off on the project, COVID-19 arrived in Australia and sent the entire country, including Western Australia, into lockdown. Almost overnight, Horizon Power’s 500+ team moved exclusively to working remotely from home.

With the wheels already in motion, the executive team wanted to see the newly funded Planview solution for project portfolio management rapidly implemented. In order to extract the most value, a fast-tracked remote implementation was needed to unlock a single source of truth and gain full ownership of their data sets. “Even though we were facing very uncertain times with COVID and were working remotely, we were committed to getting this project off the ground and implemented within 12 weeks,” explains Cate Bertram, Portfolio Governance and Performance Manager for Horizon Power.

To make it happen, Horizon Power wanted to align itself with Planview, a global leader and recognized innovator in portfolio management and work management solutions. To meet these tight turnaround times and accelerate their digital transformation, tapping into a global team of technical solution staff was essential.

With a high level of exposure to the executive team, Horizon Power harnessed Planview’s fast-tracked implementation pathway to simultaneously design, implement, and leverage the new project portfolio management solution.

Despite the challenges of lockdowns and work-from-home mandates, Horizon Power was able to kick off implementation virtually with Planview’s APAC Solutions Architects.

Contracts were signed electronically, video calls were used to map out the transformation strategy, and remote training sessions enabled Horizon Power’s team to get set up efficiently.

Up until this point, the business had been using a patchwork of project management tools and manual processes to manage its portfolio. To make this enterprise-wide transition possible in a remarkable 12-week timeline, Horizon Power developed a pilot group to ‘soft launch’ the solution and onboard team members into the new all-in-one system.

With the support of Planview, Horizon Power was able to tap into the rich functionality of this project portfolio management solution to understand how to best allocate resources and improve team-wide visibility.

With a single source of truth, Horizon Power was able to immediately spot inaccuracies in their old processes and transition to a better way of working that produced higher-quality reports and insights. By November 2020, the bulk of the businesses’s projects had been mitigated into Planview, meeting internal expectations of delivering value fast.

Simplifying, streamlining, and standardizing processes were at the core of Planview’s impact on Horizon Power’s approach to project portfolio management.

In fact, the business was able to decommission three other tools in the process and transition to one solution to standardize the way projects were managed across the entire organization.

As Coetzee explains, “transitioning to Planview’s project portfolio management solution created efficiency of staff only needing to learn and use one solution. It also achieved a single source of truth, as all project data was recorded and reported through BI performance reporting, allowing quicker time to deliver project performance.”

Now, Horizon Power is able to manage 200+ projects across six divisions (Commercial and Business Development, Tech and Digital Transformation, Customer Experience, Finance and Corporate Services) with Planview, with a capital value of AUD $100M. With a single line of sight, Horizon Power is boosting the accuracy of its reporting with access to real-time data that can be communicated with its executive team with confidence, and at speed. “The fact that we can now validate Earned Value (CPI and SPI) is a leap forward in us being able to identify issues in project performance in a timely manner, as opposed to one-dimensional financial performance,” shares Coetzee.

This is especially important in the context of meeting Government reporting obligations, which often come with fast turnaround times. Now, Horizon Power is able to meet these deadlines and offer meaningful commentary on the data they’re presenting.

With clear visibility into how projects are tracking and standardised lifecycles in place, there’s huge scope for Horizon Power to continue realizing value from their partnership with Planview. The business is working to empower its executive team to dive into the system and extract insights in real time through interactive dashboard analytics and data visualizations. Plus, Horizon Power is looking to deepen its strategy capabilities, build organizational maturity and apply an agile approach to all the projects they’re working on.

See what Planview solutions can do for your organization. View demos on demand at Planview.com/demos.