Working smarter through better PPM capabilities and timesheeting
Nordea
Power PPM
Time for teams
Overview
Nordea Bank Abp (Nordea), is a European financial services group operating in northern Europe. The bank is the result of the successive mergers and acquisitions of the Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian banks. Nordea is listed on Nasdaq Nordic exchanges in Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Stockholm and Nordea ADR is listed in the US. Nordea serves 9.3 million private and 530,000 active corporate customers, including 2,650 large corporates and institutions. There are four Business Areas (BAs) at Nordea, Personal Banking, Business Banking, Large Corporates & Institutions, and Asset & Wealth Management. Assets under Management (AUM) were €411 billion in December 2021.
Challenge
When Projectum first met Nordea, the challenge presented was that the customer was running a PPM solution for Time reporting and PPM matters, which was costly in software licenses, lacking user friendliness and integration capabilities. Nordea was also experiencing a high degree of continuous development, as opposed to configuration capabilities, and was lacking out-of-the-box functionality with an easy path to Jira integration. They were also looking for increased user-friendliness and the ability to remove some of the “red tape” prohibiting a true anchoring of Project Portfolio Management in the organization.
It was soon clear that Nordea was looking for a partnership in implementing a modern PPM Solution. The outcome was a close relationship between Nordea and Projectum entered centered around Projectum’s products Power PPM and Time for Teams, with the following goals in mind:
- Reduce time spent on monthly PPM processes
- Increase user-friendliness
- Be able to have better integrations to other tools (with a modern cloud solution based on Microsoft 365
- Remove “red tape” for the users
- Have the possibility to enhance data quality for Management decision making
- Reduce software license costs
“Now, we can work smarter and reduce time on the manual processes – with a certain automation level – because of the ease of filling in data in Power PPM and Time for Teams.”
Camilla Brahe Stenbæk,
Head of Technology Transformation at Nordea CIO Office
Solution
After a fast-paced period of pre-analysis and scoping of the solution, Projectum suggested the user-friendly and yet advanced Power PPM product (built on the Microsoft Power Platform) to manage and visualize Nordea’s portfolios and initiatives, as well as Time For Teams (built on the Microsoft Azure and Teams platforms) for time reporting purposes and capturing of actuals.
It was decided that the cornerstone should be a modern solution for work management based on the Power Platform with easiness of configuration. The first wave covers 6700 time registration users and 1500 Nordea professionals using the core Power PPM product.
Benefits
With the first wave concluded, the combined solution helps Execution Leaders in governing and follow-up on initiatives, performing management reporting, capturing actuals, and helping mitigate risks in business deliverables. The newly found data can easily be displayed in Microsoft Power BI, providing clear data transparency and Management reporting – as well as making everyday life easier with a user-friendly input system.
In the words of Camilla Brahe Stenbæk, Head of Technology Transformation at the Nordea CIO Office, the main benefits are: “[…] annual cost savings – that is the number one. Then it is increased automation of processes, increased data quality, and reduced time spent on our processes.”
“Now, we can work smarter and reduce time on the manual processes – with a certain automation level – because of the ease of filling in data in the Power PPM and Time for Teams products. At the same time, we can be compliant with governance rules and banking regulations, because of the build-in workflows. We have a lot of governance procedures to follow, especially around IT development. And lastly, we have experienced a better decision foundation, which is linked to the data quality” states Camilla Brahe Stenbæk.
“Now, we can work smarter and reduce time on the manual processes – with a certain automation level – because of the ease of filling in data in Power PPM and Time for Teams.”
Camilla Brahe Stenbæk,
Head of Technology Transformation at Nordea CIO Office
Working together
A key factor to the successful partnership between Projectum and Nordea has been the collaboration, which also played an important role in the initial decision phase for Nordea. “We wanted a partner, not just a supplier/customer relationship – we wanted a true partnership, in allowing us to go the extra mile together.” Most of the collaboration has been virtual, and ambitious timelines were set for the implementation phase, but even with the physical distances, both parties managed to build a strong partnership where Projectum consultants have dedicated their time to support Nordea, whenever help has been needed.
“I think we can say that it has been a pleasure working with Projectum. The Projectum PPM Consultants and other professionals have been very accommodating and are very skilled. It has been a good dialogue and very positive and accommodating – and we have the sense that we’re in it together. That has been really appreciated”.
Future
In a near future, Nordea has already stated that the next phase will be to extend capabilities within portfolio management and portfolio planning. Nordea have ambitions of looking into a set of areas e.g. OKR’s, ideation, resource forecasting, scenario planning. All areas of which Projectum offers tools within. Particularly within the area of strategy planning and execution, where Power PPM includes a feature for OKR’s and roadmaps, which would allow Nordea to harvest the strategic benefits and accomplish overall strategic objectives by getting the strategic direction from a portfolio perspective.
“We are looking forward to getting an even better data quality surrounding our initiatives, as well as benefit-tracking, and then use it to aggregate it to portfolio level – and then it is all about the portfolio level and reports that goes to the management. This will give us an even better foundation for decision making.”
Camilla Brahe Stenbæk, Nordea
Working smarter through better PPM capabilities and timesheeting
Nordea
Power PPM
Time for Teams
Overview
Nordea Bank Abp (Nordea), is a European financial services group operating in northern Europe. The bank is the result of the successive mergers and acquisitions of the Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian banks. Nordea is listed on Nasdaq Nordic exchanges in Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Stockholm and Nordea ADR is listed in the US. Nordea serves 9.3 million private and 530,000 active corporate customers, including 2,650 large corporates and institutions. There are four Business Areas (BAs) at Nordea, Personal Banking, Business Banking, Large Corporates & Institutions, and Asset & Wealth Management. Assets under Management (AUM) were €411 billion in December 2021.
Challenge
When Projectum first met Nordea, the challenge presented was that the customer was running a PPM solution for Time reporting and PPM matters, which was costly in software licenses, lacking user friendliness and integration capabilities. Nordea was also experiencing a high degree of continuous development, as opposed to configuration capabilities, and was lacking out-of-the-box functionality with an easy path to Jira integration. They were also looking for increased user-friendliness and the ability to remove some of the “red tape” prohibiting a true anchoring of Project Portfolio Management in the organization.
It was soon clear that Nordea was looking for a partnership in implementing a modern PPM Solution. The outcome was a close relationship between Nordea and Projectum entered centered around Projectum’s products Power PPM and Time for Teams, with the following goals in mind:
- Reduce time spent on monthly PPM processes
- Increase user-friendliness
- Be able to have better integrations to other tools (with a modern cloud solution based on Microsoft 365
- Remove “red tape” for the users
- Have the possibility to enhance data quality for Management decision making
- Reduce software license costs
“Now, we can work smarter and reduce time on the manual processes – with a certain automation level – because of the ease of filling in data in Power PPM and Time for Teams.”
Camilla Brahe Stenbæk,
Head of Technology Transformation at Nordea CIO Office
Solution
After a fast-paced period of pre-analysis and scoping of the solution, Projectum suggested the user-friendly and yet advanced Power PPM product (built on the Microsoft Power Platform) to manage and visualize Nordea’s portfolios and initiatives, as well as Time For Teams (built on the Microsoft Azure and Teams platforms) for time reporting purposes and capturing of actuals.
It was decided that the cornerstone should be a modern solution for work management based on the Power Platform with easiness of configuration. The first wave covers 6700 time registration users and 1500 Nordea professionals using the core Power PPM product.
Benefits
With the first wave concluded, the combined solution helps Execution Leaders in governing and follow-up on initiatives, performing management reporting, capturing actuals, and helping mitigate risks in business deliverables. The newly found data can easily be displayed in Microsoft Power BI, providing clear data transparency and Management reporting – as well as making everyday life easier with a user-friendly input system.
In the words of Camilla Brahe Stenbæk, Head of Technology Transformation at the Nordea CIO Office, the main benefits are: “[…] annual cost savings – that is the number one. Then it is increased automation of processes, increased data quality, and reduced time spent on our processes.”
“Now, we can work smarter and reduce time on the manual processes – with a certain automation level – because of the ease of filling in data in the Power PPM and Time for Teams products. At the same time, we can be compliant with governance rules and banking regulations, because of the build-in workflows. We have a lot of governance procedures to follow, especially around IT development. And lastly, we have experienced a better decision foundation, which is linked to the data quality” states Camilla Brahe Stenbæk.
“Now, we can work smarter and reduce time on the manual processes – with a certain automation level – because of the ease of filling in data in Power PPM and Time for Teams.”
Camilla Brahe Stenbæk,
Head of Technology Transformation at Nordea CIO Office
Working together
A key factor to the successful partnership between Projectum and Nordea has been the collaboration, which also played an important role in the initial decision phase for Nordea. “We wanted a partner, not just a supplier/customer relationship – we wanted a true partnership, in allowing us to go the extra mile together.” Most of the collaboration has been virtual, and ambitious timelines were set for the implementation phase, but even with the physical distances, both parties managed to build a strong partnership where Projectum consultants have dedicated their time to support Nordea, whenever help has been needed.
“I think we can say that it has been a pleasure working with Projectum. The Projectum PPM Consultants and other professionals have been very accommodating and are very skilled. It has been a good dialogue and very positive and accommodating – and we have the sense that we’re in it together. That has been really appreciated”.
Future
In a near future, Nordea has already stated that the next phase will be to extend capabilities within portfolio management and portfolio planning. Nordea has ambitions of looking into a set of areas e.g. OKR’s, ideation, resource forecasting, and scenario planning. All areas in which Projectum offers tools within. Particularly within the area of strategy planning and execution, where Power PPM includes a feature for OKR’s and roadmaps, which would allow Nordea to harvest the strategic benefits and accomplish overall strategic objectives by getting the strategic direction from a portfolio perspective.
“We are looking forward to getting an even better data quality surrounding our initiatives, as well as benefit-tracking, and then use it to aggregate it to portfolio level – and then it is all about the portfolio level and reports that goes to the management. This will give us an even better foundation for decision making.”
Camilla Brahe Stenbæk, Nordea
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