Essentra

Deliver a single project management platform to standardise processes and minimise business risk.

Essentra is a complex international business supported by a wide range of projects. Many are small in scale, but some involve multi-million-pound investment, tie up a lot of staff time, and take years to deliver. Convinced that effective project management is critical to its profitability and business success, Essentra set up a Group PMO to transform its project management procedures.

“We need one way of working across the world. That requires a central platform where every project can be logged using standard processes. Standardisation is the only way to get visibility and make sure all projects are aligned to group strategy. We can then see who is working on what project, status and budget, and measure results against objectives.”

Stephen Williamson, Global Project Director, Essentra

The Components, Packaging and Filters divisions are responsible for around 70% of business projects at Essentra, with IT delivering the other 30%. IT had a PMO coordinate its projects on a common platform, but the three divisions used different toolsets across departments and had no standard way to report or share project status and resource demands.

Essentra needed a central project management system to support all three business divisions and the IT department to ensure group-wide consistency. Stephen Williamson embarked on the journey to identify and implement such a solution.

“Some of the platforms we looked at were a bit basic for our more complex projects,” says Stephen Williamson. “Others were good for resourcing and managing ongoing projects – timesheeting, for example – but weren’t so strong on delivery processes.”

Stephen Williamson, Global Project Director, Essentra

Microsoft Project was always a contender, and as the review progressed, Microsoft Project Online looked like the best fit with Essentra’s requirements.

Microsoft introduced Stephen Williamson to CPS, the leading implementation specialist for Microsoft Project Portfolio Management (PPM) technologies in the UK and a Global PPM Microsoft partner of the year.

As Essentra uses Office 365 as a core Platform, Project Online could be easily integrated with other Microsoft services, and finding IT support would not be a problem.

Another factor was that most of Essentra’s sta involved in projects had some familiarity with Microsoft, so learning to use Project Online would be more straightforward.

Essentra appointed CPS to help implement the Microsoft PPM toolset, based on Microsoft Project Online and Microsoft BI, with added functionality from edison365projects. The solution would be delivered in two phases: the three divisions would be first, and the IT department would come on board in phase two.

CPS set up a series of Discovery Workshops to understand Essentra’s business requirements and priorities. They then ran a one-day Change Management assessment of the current systems landscape to understand the impact and the depth of training needed for the new solution.

A prototype solution was provided to familiarise Essentra stakeholders and provide valuable feedback before CPS consultants built the Production solution. User Acceptance Testing ironed out any issues while training material and adoption plans were developed.

The solution was initially launched to a pilot group before being rolled out gradually across the three divisions in 2020. CPS supports the Essentra team during this launch period to ensure user adoption and provide valuable knowledge transfer to the internal team.

Administration courses are being run for PMO leads and training for project managers and project team members through to midyear. Both courses are designed so that Essentra can run them internally.

Stephen Williamson says that even at this early stage, several Essentra projects are using the platform. Reports suggest that sta like using the new standard processes and there have been several improvements in project delivery.

The solution is also creating greater project visibility.

CPS is now supporting Essentra with Phase 2, enabling the IT PMO to leverage the new platform. Stephen Williamson believes that it will be implemented with even better results because of what has been learned from phase 1.