Nutritional Science Leader and Planview Celebrate 10 Years of Evolving Project Portfolio Capabilities

With locations across the globe, this nutritional health organization within a global medical device and healthcare leader has a critical objective of prioritizing projects, balancing resources, and focusing on the right projects at the right time and in the right regions. In 2010, they discovered a need for greater transparency in their global project portfolio to surface real-time, reliable data aligned with their overall strategy.

Several years later, in 2018, an evolving business climate necessitated changing how the organization structured and managed new product development and subsequent requests. This led to the revision of their Project Investment Electronic Request (PIER) process to further help with project planning and prioritization and ensure projects are continuously aligned with their overall strategy.

The nutritional health leader initially implemented the Planview Portfolio Management solution in their Research and Development (R&D) group. The primary implementation included about 500 users in 2010 to manage time, both actual and planned; project expenses for new product development; and resource investment reporting. As R&D adopted the solution, additional functional groups such as the supply chain organization, global engineering, and other business organizations began expressing interest in and using Planview.

As the nutritional health division’s business needs grew, so did Planview’s scope within the organization. 2018 saw proposed changes to the organization’s new product development request module. The following year, the customer selected Planview as the platform to house its revised PIER process. It became the starting point for any new product development project to confirm alignment and resource assessment before its execution.

This organization represents a division of a global healthcare leader in the S&P 500. A leader in nutrition science, research, and development for over 130 years, the organization’s goal is to deliver nutrition products and education that meet the changing needs of people worldwide and help them live a fuller, healthier life. It comprises 100,000 employees in 160 countries and features a portfolio of leading products across medical devices, diagnostics, nutritional, branded, and generic medicines.  

The nutritional science organization comprises various departments spread across the globe, making alignment and transparency across a global project portfolio tantamount to its success. The spreadsheets they had used failed to capture long-term planning needs, including ideation, strategic planning, project execution, and stage-gate management. They also needed help with project planning, prioritization, and resource management in three categories: supply network, commercial expansion, and regulations. However, typical of large organizations, the company’s structure often changed. Changes to the organizational structure for new product development also meant the request process would need to be updated.

They revised and revamped the Project Investment Electronic Request (PIER) process in response to changes in the supply chain organization as well as internal improvements to the stage gate process. Specifically, the PIER process clarified project scope upfront to identify issue-prone projects that needed to be killed earlier in their evolution.

In 2010, the nutritional science organization's R&D arm began using Planview as its enterprise portfolio management solution for long-range planning. Over time, its use within the organization expanded. The design assurance group adopted the solution in 2017, and the global engineering group implemented it the following year.

By 2018, the organization was launching more complex projects and needed a way to measure their complexity through a stage gate process. In 2019, they expanded the Planview platform implementation to support their revised PIER process, which became the starting point for all new product development. This revised request module helped confirm alignment and resources before the project’s execution, providing a line of sight to the complexity of each project at the outset.

Throughout the 13+ year partnership, this nutritional science, research, and development leader has leveraged Planview and expanded its use within the enterprise. They continue to launch new projects, recently having crossed the 1,000 project threshold, and their PIER process has helped reduce cycle time by 40%. Planview provides a clear view and scope of new projects up front to identify product issues sooner rather than later, improving time to kill. Housing the PIER process in Planview has created an integrated system that eliminates unnecessary interfaces. Throughout it all, administrative users have been able to reflect organizational changes easily and quickly as they happen without additional help from Planview or additional funding. And though the organization initially implemented Planview with just 500 users, the user base has expanded to more than 16,000 users.

Though the only department required to use Planview is the R&D group, several additional groups within the nutritional science organization are implementing the solution, including procurement, third-party manufacturing, and margin and profitability groups. Groups currently using Planview plan to expand its application in their work and processes. The R&D group is simplifying schedule management within Planview for product managers, and Planview is top-of-mind with the Business Process Tools & Improvements team. Power BI reporting is a priority, with a dedicated teammate in R&D focused on creating reports to track actuals and future-looking resources.