You can watch the full replay of Elmar Lotz and Marc Neckermann’s full presentation, “IT Resource Portfolio Management at Deloitte – Roadmap to Global Portfolio Management Leadership” below:

Elmar Lotz and Marc Neckermann presented at the Tempus Resource 2020 European Virtual Conference on October 8, 2020

With an annual growth rate of 21%, Deloitte was expanding faster than its IT department could keep up with demands. Elmar Lotz, Deloitte’s ITS Portfolio Manager, describes the pain points of stalled projects and resource bottlenecks in his joint presentation at the Tempus Resource 2020 European Virtual Conference. Together with Marc Neckermann of Valkeen, Lotz gave attendees a look into how Deloitte transformed its PPM processes with the expert guidance of Valkeen and the powerful resource management capabilities of Tempus Resource.

Designing a new process

When Valkeen first began working with Deloitte, their PPM tools were insufficient, and their resource management maturity levels were low. Across the PPM landscape, Neckermann recognizes that most maturity levels are low, due to the lack of powerful tools and the lack of awareness of resource management practices. While organizations focus almost exclusively on business cases and balancing budgets, they tend to neglect resource management, skills tracking, etc. Luckily, Deloitte already had a governance body who knew they needed a better focus on and development of resource management.

Company growth not only doubled Deloitte’s IT project demand, but also increased the levels of project complexity. Their PPM processes back in 2016 weren’t unified, integrated, or universally adopted. Nor was there any feasibility assessment in place. Deloitte was operating without timesheets, skills matrices, or scenario analysis, and essentially relying on an unruly number of Excel spreadsheets. All of this resulted in unplanned costs and distortions across the portfolio.

In order to meet Deloitte’s one-year targets of increasing resource efficiency; enhancing speed and response rate; optimizing processes and project prioritization; and optimizing their tool landscape, Valkeen offered a roadmap for success that focused heavily on stakeholder change management. With detailed interviews and feedback on pain points, Neckermann helped design a tailored, new PPM process for Deloitte.

Implementing resource management

A striking characteristic of the process is two separate planning phases. Instead of a single plan before project approval, Deloitte completes a 1^st Plan, gains approval, and then does a 2^nd Plan. The first planning phase is done using generic resources and simulations. Once a specific scenario is approved, then a detailed plan can be completed with named resources, forecasting, and reporting. Also notable is how streamlined Deloitte’s process is now that all initiators, whether for a project, demand, business as usual, etc., follow one single process. While there are many more process details, which you can find by contacting Marc Neckermann at Valkeen, one final one to mention here is the creation of a project Fast Track to get high-priority, high-impact projects through the pipeline faster.

The benefits for Deloitte are already impressive and will no doubt continue to impact its IT team. So far, they have been able to complete 55% more projects than before. With same-day scenario analysis, they are proactively approaching projects and resolving potential conflicts. In terms of speed, they have saved 70% of project completion time with their fast track priority process. And finally, they have increased the rate of demands in progress vs. in the pipeline from 30% to 50%. Among more qualitative benefits are Deloitte’s IT department being seen as a service partner due to its higher level of PPM maturity and maximum user acceptance in planning and timesheets. They now have cross-division and cross-location resource utilization that gets resources out of their silos.

To learn more about how Resource Portfolio Management can help grow your organizations PPM maturity and optimize resource productivity, contact ProSymmetry, makers of Tempus Resource. And be sure to check out all of our speakers from the Tempus Resource 2020 European Virtual Conference.