Manufacturing
Modernizing a Consumer Products PMO with Microsoft Project Online
Primary Area
Organizational Project Management (OPM)
Service Area
Project Management (Demand, Project Process, Reporting)
Products Used
Project Online, SharePoint, Power BI
Roles Impacted
IT Director, Portfolio Managers, Project Managers, PMO Analysts, Project Accountants
Impact Highlight
75% reduction in time to produce weekly project/portfolio status
Opportunity
A leadership change exposed a patchwork PMO: demand, schedules, budgets, and status locked in scattered Excel files, email, and point tools with no shared definitions. Leaders chose to treat the disruption as a chance to build a scalable, data‑driven model that could support growth and disciplined investment.
Pain Points
Hundreds of uncontrolled Excel trackers driving duplicate data and version conflicts.
No consistent project lifecycle, gating, or budgeting process across business units.
Portfolio views assembled manually; reporting cycles measured in days, not minutes.
Limited resource capacity visibility; over‑allocations discovered late.
Budget actuals reconciled quarterly from finance exports; frequent surprises.
Difficult audit trail and change history; compliance risk.
Solution
We guided cross‑functional workshops to align executive vision with detailed requirements, design a standardized PMO operating model, and ready people for change. We implemented an integrated Microsoft platform—Project Online, SharePoint, Teams, and the Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI)—migrating data from Excel and select legacy schedulers (Project Server 2013, Primavera P6 extracts) into governed, automated workflows.
People | Process | Technology
Stakeholder alignment sessions; defined roles (Project Owner, PMO Analyst, Finance Partner) and RACI.
Standard demand‑to‑delivery lifecycle with stage gates, cost categories, and benefit fields.
Configured Project Online for schedules, resource pools, cost tracking, and portfolio analysis.
SharePoint project workspaces with controlled document templates and metadata sync to Project Online.
Teams channels auto‑provisioned per project; notifications tied to gate approvals and risks.
Power Apps intake form replacing email requests; data written directly to Project Center.
Power Automate flows for approvals, budget change routing, and schedule health alerts.
Power BI portfolio dashboards blending Project Online data with ERP actuals via dataflows.
Migration playbook: bulk import from Excel, mapping legacy fields; schedule conversions from .mpp; validation cycles with Project Managers.
Impact
The unified solution eliminated dozens of spreadsheet variants and gave leaders near real‑time visibility across demand, active projects, resources, and budgets. Status prep time dropped sharply while financial and schedule data quality improved, enabling faster, evidence‑based portfolio decisions.
Results
75% reduction in time to produce weekly project/portfolio status.
Budget tracking accuracy improved.
Consolidated active & pipeline initiatives into a single governed data set.
Automated demand intake cut cycle time by 40%.
Resource over‑allocations flagged automatically; re-balancing completed in weekly reviews vs quarterly escalation meetings.
Audit‑ready history of scope, schedule, and budget changes captured in SharePoint/Project Online.
Improved confidence in capital prioritization.