Success Stories

WESCU Relies on AtTask for Project Portfolio Transparency, Accuracy, and Accountability

Background

Established in 1957 by 40 founding Washington State employees committed to the simple concept of people helping people, the Washington State Employees Credit Union (WSECU) is a nonprofit financial cooperative that offers financial products and services to members. One of WSECU’s primary goals is providing greater access to traditional financial services for more people; to that end they have linked with the shared branching network to give members account access at 2,500+ branches in 45 states, Puerto Rico, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Guam, and Italy.

The Challenge

WSECU had been using Microsoft® Excel® to manage projects, but was not able to manage resources or their project portfolio efficiently. They needed a tool that would provide them with a centralized location for managing tasks and issues associated with their growing portfolio of IT projects. Specific requirements included:

1. Real-time visibility into the status of individual projects in the WSECU portfolio
2. The means to maximize IT resources, including an easy-to-use interface that could be used in departments other than IT
3. The ability to score and manage projects against performance metrics, a difficult and time-consuming process using existing tools

The Solution

The AtTask solution provided WSECU with the tools they needed to succeed. AtTask notifications and status indicators provide an easy way to view project status at a glance, as well as:

Manage the Project Portfolio

AtTask provides a centralized location and added transparency for managing the credit union’s project portfolio. “Everyone else [other PPM solutions reviewed in WSECU’s selection process] needed six weeks to configure the reports we wanted,” said Keenan Wagner, Director of IT for WSECU. “Right out of the box, AtTask provided reporting that allowed us to get to market six weeks sooner than the other solutions we considered.”

Easy to Use

AtTask offered WSECU the most intuitive user interface, leading to the level of easy-to-use they were searching for and insuring the solution would be (and is) “…very well accepted by all the members of our team.” (Keenan Wagner)

Status Updates

AtTask’s notification and status indicators provided the WSECU team members with an easy way to view project status at a glance. Other solutions required manual updates to indicate status – AtTask automatically updates status indicators every time a project team member updates task status.

Results

Project managers, developers, and analysts at WSECU are currently using AtTask, with plans to roll the solution out to other departments over time. Senior management reports, which previously required a day and a half to prepare, can now be accessed immediately from a dashboard, reviewed in minutes, and prepared for general presentation in less than an hour.

WSECU relies on AtTask for complete project portfolio transparency, accountability at every level of the project, and real-time access to accurate and up-to-date project information.