Company | Associated Foods
Background
Associated Foods, the only independent wholesale grocery distributor headquartered in the Intermountain West, employs over 1,400 people and ships over 750 truckloads of groceries each week to independently-owned supermarkets within an eight-state region. The IT department was looking for a project management solution that would allow them to efficiently manage resources to support Associated’s ultimate goal of keeping groceries on the shelves of almost 450 supermarkets.
“Our IT department needed a solution that would give us visibility into the projects we were working on to ensure that we were spending our resources where they would provide the greatest business value to our organization,” says Wade Judd, Executive Director of IT for Associated Foods.
Business Challenge
Associated Foods needed a project management solution that would meet the following objectives:
- Facilitate a formalized project management process to allow Associated Foods project managers to efficiently allocate resources and focus project teams on those initiatives that will provide the greatest business value.
- Provide a completely transparent project management solution that would provide a greater level of top-to-bottom accountability among project teams and provide a metric for accurately evaluating team performance.
- Provide access to up-to-date information on current projects, allowing managers to make informed decisions about project priority to maintain alignment with organizational goals.
@task Provides a “Birds-Eye View” of Every IT Initiative
Efficiently Allocate Resources and Plan Projects to Succeed—@task allows managers to see where project teams are under- or over-utilized so they can optimize their resources to support the initiatives that provide the greatest business value. “There’s no reason for anyone on our project teams to ask, ‘What should I be doing now?’ Everything they need to know is in @task,” says Larry Newton, IT supervisor at Associated Foods.
Increase Visibility and Accountability—@task provides complete project transparency, giving Associated Foods increased visibility and accountability on every project. Status reports and dashboards are updated instantaneously (every time a project team member completes a task), enabling managers to hold team members accountable to milestones and project deadlines. “@task allows us to keep project team members accountable for their contribution to any given project,” says Newton. “If something is late, everyone in the project can see what’s going on. Manager memory is only about 10 days, @task enables me to review team performance over the last quarter or six months, allowing for more accurate performance reviews.”
Make Intelligent Project Priority Decisions—Visibility into projects allows managers to make good decisions about project teams and individual projects. @task enables Associated’s project managers to see into every project, making it possible to adjust focus as priorities change within the organization.
Results
@task provides a formalized project management process that allows Associated Foods to efficiently allocate resources and focus project teams on the initiatives that provide the greatest business value. @task’s completely transparent project management solution, which automatically updates status with real-time reporting, allows managers to keep project teams productive and provides a metric for evaluating team performance. @task enables Associated’s IT department to make informed project priority decisions and adjust focus as priorities change within the organization.
“@task gives us increased visibility into every project,” says Judd. “We can see where we’re spending our time, what we’re working on, and make adjustments to keep our people working on the projects that provide the greatest business value.”
