For the successful implementation of project portfolio management systems at innogy and Scania, we received Microsoft Awards from Microsoft.
The award also goes to our customers who actively participated in the projects.
The energy group innogy used on premise project management systems on the Microsoft Project Server platform in some of its companies. In the context of cross-country collaboration and the strategic intention to increase the efficiency of project management across the group, it decided to move to Project Online. The expected benefit was also to reduce the overall cost of running the system. Gradually, on premise solutions in each country were migrated to Project Online. In the next phase, opportunities were identified to align the process and consolidate portfolios and these changes were agilely implemented into the Project Online setup. At the same time, the system is being configured to reflect the specific needs and processes in each portfolio. To support financial management, integration with SAP is implemented to ensure that actual costs are loaded into Project Online.
The system supports project status reporting both in a simplified form and through a sophisticated superstructure to manage the Project Status Reporting (PSR) process in an online environment. Project status information is passed via an open data interface (OData) to a unified corporate BI solution used by management for aggregated reporting over the portfolio. At the same time, Project Online’s native reporting tools are used for the work of project and portfolio managers.
Project and project portfolio management in Scania Central Europe using Microsoft Project Online
Scania CER (Central Europe) has been running on-premise Project Server 2013 for more than two years. This project management support within the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary has gradually become an essential part of the daily work on NPD, marketing, finance, IT development or technical support projects. In 2015, PMO Europe (Södertalje, Sweden) started to consider using the system already in place to standardize project and project portfolio management processes and systems across all European business units. There are 15 of these, covering more than 30 countries across Europe. Technologically, it was not possible to use an on-premise solution, especially in view of the high requirements for system flexibility, operational availability and, of course, the speed of deployment of the solution to parts of the Scania Group (Commercial Operations).
On the basis of the business case, it was decided to switch to Project Online and Microsoft Azure (to ensure integrations to local ERP systems and for automated regular collection of project status reports). The solution then uses Office applications on the stations or e.g. Skype for Business Online. The system supports core project management processes such as project planning, status monitoring, resource management, financial management, portfolio management and project documentation sharing. The solution includes several custom solutions to support specific customer requirements such as management reporting or portfolio prioritization.