Our client is a global leader in the automotive industry. They are renowned for their innovative vehicle designs, manufacturing expertise, and commitment to scaling sustainable mobility. They have a strong presence across North America. They have a diverse portfolio that includes traditional vehicles, electric vehicles, and smart manufacturing solutions. The client had always focused on investing in upcoming digital technologies and advancements that could eventually enhance their product development. As part of this initiative, the client wanted to enhance existing enterprise-level projects that were strategically managed across their IT, engineering, and business development teams.
Reason for Collaboration
The client had multiple projects ongoing that needed to be managed with an advanced and centralized platform that provided real-time insights. They had selected ServiceNow PPM and its extended ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) suite [formerly IT Business Management (ITBM)] for project management practices. They were looking to collaborate with an experienced partner who has proven expertise in engineering-driven industries. Their search came to an end when they reached out to Cyntexa. Our ability to deliver scalable, phased rollouts has made us a trusted advisor for the client since day one.
Challenges
- Inconsistent Project Lifecycle Management: The first and foremost challenge the client encountered was the inconsistency of planning and execution of projects across the teams. Where some of their projects followed the laid out procedure of PMO processes, others surpassed the steps. This created misappropriation of project resources and timelines. Along with that, a lack of a unified view led the management team to be inefficient in tallying the project health and initiatives that should have been aligned with their priorities.
- Difficulty Forecasting Project Costs and ROI: The client’s finance team had difficulties estimating and tracking project budgets and their subsequent investment returns. Moreover, their existing forecasting tools provided varied information in various departments. They were relying on the information present in the disconnected Excel spreadsheets. This resulted in project overruns being unnoticed until late in the project lifecycle. Eventually, putting the programs under financial risk.
- Fragmented Capacity Planning Across Engineering Units: Their engineering resources were used frequently, even sometimes, and were overly booked and unavailable when they were required the most. Our clients also didn’t have a reliable way to predict their upcoming resource demands as their track team’s availability across various locations globally. This led to missed timelines and growing frustration among project managers.
- Lack of Real-Time Portfolio Visibility: The client’s upper management had no consolidated view of active and upcoming initiatives. Their portfolio reviews were based on outdated PowerPoint slides and manually compiled spreadsheets. These delayed decisions made it difficult to reprioritize projects based on shifting business needs.
Solutions
Our team of experts standardized the project lifecycle in ServiceNow‘s PPM with defined phases and automated approval gates. The implementation also included providing real-time tracking solutions for better project optimization and data-driven insights for the client’s upper management.
- Standardized Project Lifecycle with Governance Gates: We implemented a consistent project lifecycle framework using ServiceNow Project Portfolio Management (PPM). Each project now goes through predefined phases: initiation, planning, execution, and closure, with automated approval gates configured through the PPM workflows. We also used project templates and built-in PMO compliance features to enforce governance across teams.
- Integrated Financial Planning and ROI Tracking: Our team configured ServiceNow Financial Planning within the ITBM suite capabilities to centralize budgeting, actuals, and ROI estimates for all projects. This has now streamlined the financial screening process. Thus, now every project is linked to financial goals and uses real-time tracking for estimated budget with comparison to actuals. Along with that, the integration with their ERP system also ensured automatic syncing of their disconnected financial data.
- Resource Management with Capacity Forecasting: To enable real-time visibility into resource allocations, availability, and capacity conflicts, our experts had deployed the Resource Management module. This assisted in efficient resource planning and led to the assignment workflows being standardized. Eventually, allowing engineering leads to proactively resolve overbooking risks.
- Demand Intake and Prioritization: Using ServiceNow Demand Management, we created a structured intake process where new initiatives are captured and evaluated using scoring models. Along with prioritizing them based on strategic alignment. This allowed their core business units to submit proposals with defined benefits and resource needs.
- Real-Time Portfolio Dashboards for Executives: Our team also leveraged Performance Analytics to build real-time dashboards that could display portfolio health, financial status, and resource utilization. This enabled their leadership to get a clear picture and also helped them filter the information based on their requirements.
Benefits
- A unified view of the project framework boosted information consistency across all business units
- Improved financial accuracy with centralized budget forecasting
- Enhanced the visibility into resource workloads and team availability
- Better alignment of projects with strategic business goals
