Success Stories

AtTask Provides Buckman Labs with Visibility to Align Corporate Goals with Project Execution

Background

Buckman Labs is a privately held, global, specialty chemical company headquartered in Memphis, TN. Buckman is committed to safeguarding the environment, maintaining safety in the workplace, and promoting sustainable development. The company needed an on-demand project and portfolio management (PPM) solution that would help them align corporate vision with execution enterprise-wide.

“Our primary goal is to determine which projects align with corporate business goals and will deliver the greatest business value—before they even begin,” said Paul McGriff, Manager of Governance and Administration. “In fact, if someone presents a potential project that doesn’t tie into a strategic initiative, we ask, ‘Why are you doing it?’ It’s that important to us.”

The Challenge

Treating every business unit within Buckman’s global organization as a portfolio made it necessary to find a solution that was adaptable to a fully developed, yet atypical, PPM model. Buckman’s general managers assume the responsibility of portfolio managers, with individual program managers responsible for business processes. This organizational structure ensures that any initiative undertaken by a Buckman business unit aligns with business goals and provides the greatest business value.

Buckman wanted to validate the business value of every corporate initiative, with a PPM solution that addressed some specific objectives including:

1. Validating the alignment of every initiative to a strategic business goal, from project consideration phase through execution
2. Providing visibility throughout the organization to every initiative and the business goal associated with it
3. Emphasizing the business objective associated with individual projects at every point of contact within the software solution

The Solution

Buckman selected AtTask’s on-demand SaaS project and portfolio solution to provide them with a suite of portfolio management tools that help them focus on the objectives that make them more effective, innovative, and competitive, with:

Business Case Assessment

AtTask helps mitigate risks and reduce costs by ensuring optimal alignment of current and potential projects with strategic and financial goals

Demand Management

First-pass evaluations of a potential project’s costs, risks, estimated value, and alignment to goals lead to better investment decisions

Portfolio Optimization

Identifying the right mix of projects through comparative, metrics-based ranking that considers the risk tolerance and the importance of return, cost, and alignment to corporate goals helps Buckman’s general managers stay focused on those initiatives that provide the greatest business value

Real-Time Business Intelligence

AtTask allows executives and managers to view actual project status in real-time, providing complete visibility and accountability into every project

Results

Along with the above, AtTask helps Buckman Labs by providing:

Best-Fit Capacity Planning—AtTask helps Buckman optimize resource utilization by scheduling resources based on best-fit capacity planning across prioritized projects

Portfolio Scorecards—Buckman uses AtTask to create a more effective business case for evaluation of potential projects by allowing users to build their own alignment surveys through the use of a customizable scorecard

“The implementation of AtTask within our global IT department has been very successful,” noted McGriff. “The R&D department has also rolled out globally, and we plan to phase in the entire organization by the first of next year.”