Suncorp Accelerates Project Delivery and Reduces Costs with CA Project & Portfolio Management

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1 CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY December 2011 Suncorp Accelerates Project Delivery and Reduces Costs with CA Project & Portfolio Management CLIENT PROFILE Industry: Financial services Company: Suncorp Assets: $93 Billion BUSINESS Suncorp Group Limited (Suncorp) provides general and life insurance, as well as banking, services to more than nine million customers in Australia and New Zealand via a number of well-known brands. CHALLENGE When Suncorp implemented Agile project management methodologies, it needed to improve visibility of projects, costs and resources. This meant replacing its disparate management systems and manual processes. SOLUTION CA Project & Portfolio Management provides the Group s PMO with a centralised platform for tracking time, risks, project progress and costs, simplifying reporting, internal charge-back and resource management. BENEFIT Suncorp can identify project issues and resource constraints earlier which reduces risk and accelerates delivery. The PMO has also increased efficiency, removed cost and enhanced decisionmaking, which maximises project investments.

2 2 Customer Success Story: Suncorp December 2011 Business Australia s largest general insurer The Suncorp Group includes a number of general and life insurance, as well as banking, businesses. Headquartered in Queensland, Australia, Suncorp employs around 16,000 people and serves in excess of nine million customers throughout Australia and New Zealand. The Group includes Australia s largest general insurance business, owning household brands such as Vero, AAMI, Apia and Shannons, as well as the country s fifth largest Bank. Suncorp Group is a Top 25 ASX listed business with more than AU$93 billion in assets. Suncorp s business strategy is to take advantage of the benefits of a portfolio of leading brands and the economies of scale that come from a single group. Its vision is to be the most admired financial services company in Australia and New Zealand. Challenge Improving the delivery of support services for greater project successes Suncorp s five operating divisions are supported by a shared services organisation, Suncorp Business Services (SBS). SBS includes 1,400 employees staff with responsibility for applications, infrastructure, procurement, partnering and real estate. There was potential for risks to be identified too late for us to make appropriate decisions. Christian Scheiber Team Leader, Enterprise Services PMO, Suncorp SBS s Enterprise Services Program Management Office (PMO) is responsible for assisting project teams, the chief finance officer (CFO) and line managers across the business with project and portfolio management and reporting. Its ability to communicate effectively and provide consistent and efficient support is vital to this role. With business groups using different project, portfolio and timesheet management systems, the monthly reporting cycle was a challenging task for the PMO and project teams alike. Christian Scheiber, Team Leader, Enterprise Services PMO, comments, Project management is about controlling risk, and in the financial services industry we need to be able to report on risks as they occur. However, incomplete data and manual processes meant our reports could only provide a

3 3 Customer Success Story: Suncorp December 2011 historical snapshot of project progress. As a result, there was potential for risks and issues to be identified too late for us to make appropriate decisions in real time. Managing charge-back to different business groups was also a complex process. The CFO s office received multiple charge-back files from different systems and had to process a large number of journals, which made month-end cumbersome. To compound these issues, many of the existing systems were nearing end of life and required operational support and maintenance above and beyond their business benefit. Supporting agile project management methodologies In 2008, a massive change management programme was initiated at Suncorp involving the adoption of Agile project management methodologies. As Suncorp s maturity in Agile management grew, it recognised that enhanced reporting and financial management were needed to realise the full benefits of its new approach. Scheiber comments, The aim of implementing Agile methodologies was to enable us to deliver projects faster and at lower cost, but for it to work, we needed greater understanding of project costs and resources. With teams spread across different cities, states and even countries, Suncorp needed a single version of the truth when evaluating portfolio health, resource footprint, project status and spend across the group. Solution A consistent enterprise-wide framework for project management To meet these needs, SBS Enterprise Services decided to adopt CA Project & Portfolio Management throughout the organisation from April We were already using the solution on a small scale, but we identified that enterprise-wide adoption would support Agile management and enable our PMO to deliver better and more efficient services to the business, comments Scheiber. To support these improvements, the PMO extended its use of CA Project & Portfolio Management to include: Resource utilisation and forecasting Project and portfolio management Demand and pipeline management. In early 2011, the PMO organised a roadshow to generate more awareness about its skills and services and enable greater engagement with the various business divisions. As part of this initiative, the PMO migrated all project, programme and portfolio data to the solution and configured a range of custom reports, portlets and dashboards that demonstrated how the team and CA Project & Portfolio Management could help each division enhance project delivery.

4 4 Customer Success Story: Suncorp December 2011 As a result, 1,900 Suncorp employees are now regular users of CA Project & Portfolio Management, and this number is rapidly growing, along with the demand for PMO services. A perpetual licence model for the solution ensures that adding new users is cost-effective and not delayed by licensing issues. Consolidated project, resource and charge-back information With all Agile project team members using CA Project & Portfolio Management to track how they spend their time and record project updates in real time, Suncorp is now able to manage and forecast resource requirements more effectively. Many internal business stakeholders are also using the solution, which means project managers can plan their Agile projects iteratively and portfolio managers can improve pipeline management activities through enhanced communication with the business, comments Scheiber. Using a standard tool for time management has also simplified the charge-back process for the CFO s office. The PMO is responsible for ensuring all entries are correct in CA Project & Portfolio Management, which means the finance team no longer has to regularly process journals, thereby eliminating time-consuming administration, adds Scheiber. The PMO has created a timesheet compliance report that enables it to identify and resolve any issues quickly. This and other customised reports are accessed via bespoke CA Project & Portfolio Management dashboards designed for different user groups, for example the executive management team, portfolio managers, project managers and resource managers. Project and portfolio management reports are particularly important to Suncorp s lighthouse meetings, which are designed to identify possible risks. Architects, portfolio advisors, customer development managers and the PMO all attend lighthouse meetings to discuss the portfolio pipeline and projects at every stage of Agile development, explains Scheiber. Using CA Project & Portfolio Management as a single source of data for these meetings means we can head-off potential problems before they arise. Although many benefits have already been achieved through using CA Project & Portfolio Management, Suncorp s enterprise PMO is continually investigating additional functionality that will further streamline business processes. For example, it plans to include capital expenditure reporting and financial planning in CA Project & Portfolio Management s remit in the future. Benefit Delivering projects faster and at a lower cost Suncorp now has a much a greater and granular understanding of its projects and portfolios across multiple business divisions. CA Project & Portfolio Management provides all the information, reports and metrics we need to initiate intelligent and useful conversations that result in reduced risk, comments Scheiber.

5 5 Customer Success Story: Suncorp December 2011 In particular, the project and portfolio management solution has enabled Suncorp to: Forecast resource constraints earlier and enhance prioritisation Improve the accuracy and timeliness of reporting while eliminating 20 hours a month of work in data collation Identify and address project risks sooner, thereby maximising success rates and optimising investments. Projects are completed faster, at lower cost and are better aligned to strategic priorities. Christian Scheiber Team Leader, Enterprise Services PMO, Suncorp Scheiber comments, Streamlined processes, improved communication and better decision-making mean that the PMO is able to deliver more value to the business. Under our guidance, projects are completed faster, at lower cost and are better aligned to strategic priorities. Please note that, in September 2014, the product name in the original customer success story was updated from CA Clarity Project & Portfolio Management (CA Clarity PPM) to CA Project & Portfolio Management Connect with CA Technologies at CA Technologies helps customers succeed in a future where every business from apparel to energy is being rewritten by software. With CA software at the center of their IT strategy, organizations can leverage the technology that changes the way we live from the data center to the mobile device. Our software and solutions help our customers thrive in the new application economy by delivering the means to deploy monitor and secure their applications and infrastructure. To learn more about our customer success programs, visit /customer-success. For more information about CA Technologies go to. CA All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only, and does not form any type of warranty. The Customer success story is based on the actual experiences of the user but product descriptions may not reflect uses in all environments so actual results may vary.