Solenis is a leading specialty chemical provider with a global footprint that spans 120 countries across five continents. Founded more than 100 years ago, the company has grown into a powerhouse of innovation in process and water solutions and currently employs more than 5,200 employees. The core elements of the organization — people, experience and technology — fuel its mission to “solve problems with the right people, the right experience and the right technology.”

The Challenge

With such an expansive global presence, Solenis relies heavily on a talented group of project and portfolio management professionals to handle an extensive list of projects. And while the PMO started as an IT function, over time the group became primarily focused on managing business-level projects in support of many different departments around the company. These business initiatives included managing all mergers and acquisitions, managing an entire website redesign, incorporating corporate responsibility into the Solenis brand, building an enterprise data warehouse to consolidate corporate reporting and business intelligence, and many others.

With these evolving responsibilities, the project management team rallied to make the case for establishing an enterprise project management office (ePMO), with a formal charter to support the company’s executive team as a true business partner in realizing key strategic initiatives and transformation efforts.

On their quest to evangelize project and portfolio management and grow into the new ePMO role within the organization, the team realized they needed to reevaluate the systems that supported their processes. This effort was especially important because their ePMO was growing into a strategic role that required more data and analysis. Despite these goals, the existing PPM tools at Solenis not only prevented the team from showcasing their strategic value in a way that would foster buy-in, those tools often made their work more challenging than it needed to be. This unfortunate reality is why the ePMO leaders decided to pursue a solution that went beyond project delivery, enabling them to highlight the group’s strategic value in defining, prioritizing, resourcing and tracking the organizational outcomes of the company’s most valuable projects.

The Journey

The ePMO team at Solenis had a very specific set of requirements to support their growing processes and goals. As the team took on more responsibility within the organization and became a trusted partner for business leaders and C-level executives, they needed a way to communicate and collaborate on projects across a diverse portfolio, while allowing individual teams to deliver those projects in whatever tools suited their needs. The key areas they identified for a solution to support were:

  • Remove the need for vendor-led customization or configuration
  • Reduce reliance on PowerPoint for providing breadth and depth to critical data
  • Consolidation of systems for better information sharing
  • Better collaboration among team members on key project issues
  • Integration with key Solenis software and functions
  • Improved reporting functionality

With these requirements in mind, Solenis sought a vendor who would listen to their needs, communicate clearly and collaborate effectively. They also needed a solution that would integrate seamlessly with their existing software applications, enhance their core functions and align with the team’s proven processes. Most important, they needed to be able to configure their PPM solution in a way that best supported their operations without having to rely on support from the vendor for every single change.

Solenis reached out to KeyedIn at a high-profile conference where KeyedIn executives presented innovative solutions in project and portfolio management. After meeting with KeyedIn’s PPM experts, Solenis selected the company as its new PPM vendor and both teams hit the ground running. The onboarding process with KeyedIn included:

  • Meetings with implementation consultants to understand and support key business processes
  • Requirement and configuration workshops to prepare for implementation
  • Configuration
  • User testing
  • Continuous support
  • Training
  • Detailed manuals and materials

The Results

After partnering with KeyedIn, the Solenis team was able to see immediate results in their effectiveness and in their ability to translate that effectiveness into meaningful buy-in from executives and other teams within the company. KeyedIn functions were utilized to implement a project prioritization process that focused on critical, high-priority projects that aligned with the company’s fiscal goals.

There was a tremendous boost in the overall effectiveness of project performance year over year (FY2019 vs FY2020). Despite a huge increase in the number of requested projects, the Solenis ePMO team almost doubled its output of completed projects.

The Solenis ePMO team also established regular meetings with C-level executives and other stakeholders where they utilized KeyedIn’s robust reporting tools to present concise, intelligent data that supports informed decision-making and fosters executive buy-in. They also began the process of eliminating outdated, unnecessary systems that interfered with the PMO’s ability to do their job with maximum efficiency. Other benefits include:

  • Increased business requests to the PMO
  • Increased PMO outreach across the organization
  • Streamlined project request process
  • Improved analytics
  • Robust reporting tools
  • Data governance
  • Increased engagement with C-level executives and other key decision-makers
  • Enhanced project prioritization process aligned with business goals
  • Removal of internal politics from project selection
  • Increased productivity and efficiency
  • Retirement of obsolete PPM systems and processes
  • Advanced forecasting
  • Better budgeting
  • Improved planning against resource constraints
  • Control over backend functions
  • Customizable configuration
  • Increased access to information across teams
  • Enhanced communication across teams worldwide
  • Advanced tracking at a global level
  • Improved resource management
  • Scenario planning

While the list of enhanced abilities and benefits is long, perhaps the most valuable aspects of Solenis’ partnership with KeyedIn is the role the solution has played in helping to formally establish the enterprise project management office. Curtis L. Jenkins, VP of the Project Management Office at Solenis, said, “I am so pleased with the journey I have had with KeyedIn. I have the simplicity I need to evangelize project management and grow into the enterprise project management space with ease.”

As the team continues their journey of ePMO success, they cite the visibility KeyedIn provides as a key differentiator to their team and the entire organization. Jacqueline Jeffrey, Portfolio and Governance Manager for Solenis, sums up their success as “having a tool that has increased the visibility of all the projects, the benefits of the investment and alignment with goals across the organization. Feedback has been positive, and the visualization within the tool has helped with business decisions.”

“The visibility and respect our PMO has been given is the biggest benefit we have seen for our organization,” Jenkins added.