Success Stories

AtTask Provides Associated Foods With a ‘Birds-eye View’ of Every IT Initiative

Background

Associated Foods, an independent wholesale grocery distributor, employs more than 1,400 people and ships more than 750 truckloads of groceries to independently-owned supermarkets within an eight-state region each week. They needed a project management solution that would allow them to manage resources efficiently, supporting their ultimate goal of keeping more than 450 supermarket’s shelves fully stocked.

“Our IT department needed a solution that would give us visibility into the projects we were working on to ensure we were spending our resources where they would provide the greatest business value to our organization,” said Wade Judd, Executive Director of IT for Associated Foods.

The Challenge

Associated Foods needed a project management solution that would:

1. Facilitate a project management process to allow Associated Foods project managers to efficiently allocate resources and focus project teams on those initiatives that provide the greatest business value
2. Provide a completely transparent project management solution that would give them a greater level of top-down accountability among project teams and provide a metric for accurately evaluating team performance
3. 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

The Solution

AtTask provides a comprehensive project management solution that enables Associated Foods to:

Efficiently Allocate Resources and Plan Projects to Succeed

AtTask allows managers to see where project teams are under or over-utilized so they can optimize their resources. “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 AtTask.” (Larry Newton, IT supervisor, Associated Foods)

Increase Visibility and Accountability

AtTask provides complete project transparency, giving Associated Foods increased visibility and accountability on every project. Status reports and dashboards are updated instantaneously, holding team members accountable to milestones and project deadlines. “AtTask 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 – AtTask 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. AtTask enables the project managers to see into every project, making it possible to adjust focus as priorities change within the organization.

Results

Associated Foods tracks all development and implementation projects using AtTask. Each of their Development Managers creates projects within AtTask. Once the projects are created, the tasks are assigned out to the individual developers or other project team members. The developers then track individual progress and hours on assigned tasks within AtTask. Projects are tracked through to completion inside AtTask.

“AtTask gives us visibility into every project,” stated Wade 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.”