Case Study
/ Marketing Agency Improves Efficiency, Communication with New Project Solution
Overview
Country or Region: Germany
Industry: Communications and media—Advertising
Company Profile
Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler (BB&K) is a leading online agency in Germany, specializing in e-branding and e-learning. BB&K has three offices in Germany and a staff of 192 employees.
Business Situation
BB&K sought greater project management efficiencies, better insight into internal processes, and easier information sharing.
Solution
BB&K uses Microsoft Visio 2013 to design business process modeling workflows and publishes them in Microsoft Project Online, storing project data in Microsoft SharePoint Online.
Benefits
· Improved project management efficiency, lower costs
· Easier, more effective communication and collaboration / “We estimate that we’ll be able to decrease project management time by at least 10 percent by using Project Online. This will help us create more competitive bids and win more business.”
Dr. Anders Lehr, Senior Project Manager, Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler
Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler (BB&K) is a branding and training company in Germany that manages hundreds of projects a year. It recently upgraded to Microsoft Project Online and deployed Microsoft SharePoint Online to better share information, model business processes, and access project tools online. BB&K expects to trim project management costs by 10 percent and has gained more flexible infrastructure scalability and improved communications.
Situation
With around 200 employees, Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler (BB&K) is one of Germany’s largest digital-based agencies. The company specializes in customer experience and develops strategies for the most important contact points between customer and company: digital-based interaction and human-based interaction. BB&K supports clients such as Porsche, Sal. Oppenheim, Volkswagen, Hugo Boss, Deutsche Bank, Nintendo, Peek & Cloppenburg, and Fujitsu. BB&K has locations in Ludwigsburg, Munich, and Oberhausen and has belonged to the United Digital Group, the agency group for Cross-Channel Excellence, since 2011.
A staff of 42 BB&K project managers handles more than 500 projects per year. As the agency grew, it added specialized software programs to manage different aspects of its business, including a customer relationship management system, an enterprise resource planning system, accounting programs, and others. Project managers needed to quickly access information from all these programs, so BB&K created a portal that gave employees access to these systems from one website. The portal served the company well, but it was expensive to maintain and extend, and sharing information was still difficult.
In 2007, BB&K deployed Microsoft Project Server 2007 in an effort to retire the homegrown portal and move to a commercial project management application. As sophisticated as the company’s project management capabilities were, BB&K sought even greater efficiency. “We especially wanted better insight into our internal processes,” says Dr. Anders Lehr, Senior Project Manager at Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler. “We had no real transparency into these processes or way to control them. There could be opportunities for improvements that we just couldn’t see.” Also, it was difficult to share information with employees who work from multiple locations and impossible to give employees access to project data from their mobile devices.
In May 2012, BB&K subscribed to Microsoft Office 365 to move its productivity applications into the cloud and gain more flexible access and cost efficiencies. It wanted a project management environment that could also run in the cloud.
Solution
In January 2012, BB&K worked with longtime IT partner SOLVIN to improve its business process modeling. SOLVIN is a member of the Microsoft Partner Network with a Gold competency in Project and Portfolio Management. SOLVIN realized that BB&K could benefit from Microsoft Project Online, a new service delivered through Office 365, which includes enhanced integration with Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lync Server, and Microsoft Visio to offer collaboration and real-time communication capabilities. BB&K also liked the fact that by subscribing to Project Online, it could reduce its server footprint and always have access to the latest version of the software. BB&K subscribed to the beta version of Project Online and also deployed SharePoint Online.
SOLVIN showed BB&K how it could easily design business process modeling workflows in Microsoft Visio 2013 and transfer those workflows into Project Online. “By using these workflow tools, we finally had control over the entire project life cycle from design to management, without the need to invest in a specialized workflow product,” says Peter Müller, Senior Project Manager at Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler.
Dr. Lehr and Müller also appreciated the integration between Project Online and SharePoint Online, which enabled BB&K to migrate many of its project documents to one easily accessible place. BB&K also finds it easy to link SharePoint with many third-party products, such as business intelligence tools.
BB&K project teams plan to soon use Lync Server to quickly communicate using instant messaging and videoconferencing, and are migrating to Lync Online for increased flexibility with Office 365. They can also update projects and check task status from their smartphones and portable computers using Project Online.
Benefits
By adopting Project Online, Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler has been able to enhance project management with business process modeling, which increases overall efficiency and reduces costs. It will also gain more powerful communications capabilities with the addition of SharePoint and Lync.
Improved Project Management Efficiency, Lower Costs
BB&K gains new business process modeling capabilities by upgrading to Project Online, which will help it streamline and improve project management tasks. “Business process modeling with Project Online gives us an advantage in time management because we can run projects faster and more efficiently,” Dr. Lehr says.
By fine-tuning internal processes, the company expects to save money and stay competitive. “We estimate that we’ll be able to decrease project management time by at least 10 percent by using Project Online,” Dr. Lehr says. “This will help us create more competitive bids and win more business.”
BB&K also enjoys simplified IT management with Project Online by reducing server infrastructure, eliminating maintenance and upgrade costs, and significantly improving security, reliability, and scalability with an easily managed subscription.
Easier, More Effective Communication and Collaboration
By linking Project Online, SharePoint, and Visio, BB&K has a great way to bring all project team members and data together—anytime and virtually anywhere. “The combination of Project Online and SharePoint gives us not only a better approach to project management, but better data and knowledge management,” Müller says. “It’s much easier to present project information through SharePoint than through our portal, and with mobile access, employees and customers can access and update project data on the go.”
BB&K project managers will enjoy using Lync to bring project teams together to have quick brainstorming sessions. Everyone can see project calendars and documents and comment on them in real time. “When we’re under time pressure to create and submit bids, it’s much easier to quickly find what we need using Lync and SharePoint than wade through email messages,” says Dr. Lehr.
Project managers can also create much richer status reports for customers using Project Online. “We like customers to be involved in their projects on a daily basis, and we can involve them more easily now, which results in a more customer-focused work,” Dr. Lehr says. “On all counts, we give Project Online a triple-A-plus.”
Microsoft Project 2013
The new Project Server 2013 and Project Online offer flexible solutions for project portfolio management (PPM) and everyday work, delivered either on-premises or as an online service. Enable your workforce to effectively execute with the intended business value to achieve strategic priorities with Project Server 2013. For more flexibility, take your PPM capabilities into the cloud with Project Online subscriptions through Office 365 as an always-up-to-date service with simplified IT management. Project Online and Project Online with Project Pro for Office 365 help your team deliver value from virtually anywhere.
For more information go to:
aka.ms/project/success