Essilor Case Study. Managing a geographical dispersed team using NQI Orchestra

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1 Essilor Case Study Managing a geographical dispersed team using NQI Orchestra Presentation - Essilor Group: Essilor is the world leader for corrective lenses. The success of the group, which is present in more than 100 countries, is the result of a strategy that has been driven by innovation for more than 160 years. From design to manufacture, the group develops a wide range of lenses to correct and protect eyesight. THE GROUP COMBINES THREE KEY SUCCESS FACTORS: THE STRENGTH OF ITS PURPOSE, A CLEAR STRATEGY AND A UNIQUE GROWTH MODEL BASED ON INNOVATION AND PARTNERSHIP. Its mission is to "improve lives by improving sight" of everyone in the world by developing lenses tailored to their needs. The group therefore devotes more than 150 million euros a year on research and innovation to offer increasingly efficient products. The group has about employees and over 6.5 billion in revenues as well as a production capacity of about 500 million lenses per year. The group combines three key success factors: the strength of its purpose, a clear strategy and a unique growth model based on innovation and partnership. To succeed in this mission and ensure the Group's long-term development, Essilor has established a growth strategy based on four main pillars: innovation, conquest of the middle of the range, international growth via acquisitions and stimulation of demand to increase market size. Interview with Vincent Godot, Head of PMO, Essilor More than a year ago in July 2015, Essilor set its eye on NQI Orchestra. So recently we interviewed Vincent Godot, Head of PMO, Essilor to discuss how they leveraged NQI Orchestra to create synergies, synchronize or collaborate with teams based in different locations. Here is a quick recap and some takeaways from the interview. 1

2 1. The challenges of managing geographically dispersed teams Searching for a project management software The mode of operation at Essilor (especially in the R & D sector) is transversal, which includes collaboration with a large number of users and external resources (subcontractors, industrial partners, universities and academic partnerships). This involves sharing of knowledge, information and promoting exchanges with people who are rarely in the same geographical area. These multi-site teams have the same end goal, hence the need for a common platform so that they can collaborate together. This is what prompted Essilor to search for a collaborative project management software in July, Issues related to multi-expertise dispersed geographically Today Essilor is an international group present in three geographic regions (Europe, Asia, North America). The fact that the group is spread over three continents compels them to communicate information quickly directly or indirectly, despite the impediment of different time zones. 2

3 THE FACT THAT THE GROUP IS SPREAD OVER THREE CONTINENTS COMPELS THEM TO COMMUNICATE INFORMATION QUICKLY DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, DESPITE THE IMPEDIMENT OF DIFFERENT TIME ZONES. Also, the Group has many factories dispersed geographically all over the world (over 400 plants). It is therefore essential for the organization to make sure that the factories adopt new modes of operating. For this, the group is trying to integrate these new processes rather early in the projects but also wants to set up a powerful tool which will encourage the exchange of good practices. Finally, project management within Essilor consists of about 1200 project stakeholders (without including all the external stakeholders) with 480 ongoing projects with different levels of complexity, a hundred draft projects and more than 300 associate project managers. They have experts who work on multiple projects in parallel and therefore, there is a need to mobilize and synchronize significant resources. Collaboration issues and the complexity of projects The organization uses internally several collaborative tools such as Google apps to share files. It is therefore imperative for Essilor to acquire a project management software capable of maintaining the same level of collaboration between users that Google apps allows. Furthermore, projects (at the moment around 500) come in different proportions and complexity due to their scope. So the stakes are high for Essilor, specially financially. To meet these challenges, the group started searching for a collaborative project management solution in July, The solution to these challenges: implementing NQI Orchestra Why NQI Orchestra? One of the major goals of the new project management solution was to bring together the R & D, engineering and the quality department and unite them around a single tool. But these services have different levels of exigencies. And from a strategic point of view they wanted to be able to 3

4 manage their project portfolio according to the group's strategic priorities and using the Stage - Gates process (validation process of internal projects). ONE OF THE MAJOR GOALS OF THE NEW PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOLUTION WAS TO BRING TOGETHER THE R & D, ENGINEERING AND THE QUALITY DEPARTMENT AND UNITE THEM AROUND A SINGLE TOOL. The aim was also to expand the resource management functionality to the entire engineering department, and to have a complete 360 view of resource allocations for all projects and associated tasks. And finally, they wanted to structure the projects by roadmap, assign resources at the right time for more effective planning. So NQI Orchestra met all the criteria and requirements. The expectations of Essilor for the NQI Orchestra solution With the Orchestra platform, Essilor wanted to adapt and structure project operations according to their level of maturity and complexity: At the strategic level, they were looking for a tool to conduct go / no-go decisions and arbitrate projects, to make tactical choices, and monitor project ROIs (return on investment). From an operational point of view, they wanted to be able to support, train and provide the right tools for project managers and resource managers, and have real-time activity indicators (alerts) to prevent diversions or digressions. At the portfolio level they wanted to centralize all the requests on a single platform, and process the objectives, issues and deliverables of each project systematically. They also wanted a collaborative tool capable of interfacing with other softwares, to integrate the process already in place internally, and ensure collaboration with geographically dispersed teams. Finally, one of the requirements was to improve the visibility of their activities to more effectively optimize resource management. Their goal was efficiency and simplification to facilitate the adoption of the NQI solution by all users of the group. 4

5 NQI Orchestra responds to the challenges First, NQI Orchestra was chosen by the group because it is fully customizable and it fits their organizational needs. They even changed the visual graphics and renamed it Atlas and made it their own. Secondly when the NQI Orchestra solution was deployed as SaaS at Essilor, there was the constraint of multidisciplinary teams spread over different geographical sites. Since one of the initial requirements was to connect NQI Orchestra to other online tools, NQI Orchestra was integrated with google apps. So today anyone can access NQI Orchestra (Atlas) directly via google apps if he has access to it. NQI ORCHESTRA WAS CHOSEN BY THE GROUP BECAUSE IT IS FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE AND IT FITS THEIR ORGANIZATIONAL NEEDS. Third, with regards to the Document Management System (DMS), on one hand NQI Orchestra had its own document management system in its standard version. On the other hand, Essilor had an internal system of managing and sharing documents using google apps. So NQI Orchestra (Atlas) was successfully integrated with the existing systems so that all the documents are managed directly via NQI Orchestra (Atlas). Finally, for Essilor cooperation is the ability to exchange information with all project stakeholders (internal and external parties), directly and indirectly. So NQI Orchestra allows them to: - Comment and share directly through the platform, - Delegate tasks, group tasks, optimize resource allocation, - Connect portfolios, projects and tasks (milestones, documentation, risk), - Alert over possible abuses and the financial risks (budget forecast / actual budget) - And finally to promote best practices. 3. One year later. What are the different feedback on the NQI Orchestra solution? Having a fully integrated PPM tool enables us to manage our projects at all levels, from simple demand management to a full-fledged dashboard; including planning, resource management, 5

6 comprehensive document management. So it is our ambition to be efficient that made us choose the collaborative solution NQI Orchestra. The feedback is very positive specially with reference to the user interface. After a few months of use the tool brought together all users. They adapted to the tool very quickly and have understood its real added value. HAVING A FULLY INTEGRATED PPM TOOL ENABLES US TO MANAGE OUR PROJECTS AT ALL LEVELS, FROM SIMPLE DEMAND MANAGEMENT TO A FULL- FLEDGED DASHBOARD; INCLUDING PLANNING, RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT. of all the projects in the company. Finally, implementing an efficient tool helps to promote best practices and good methodologies. With NQI Orchestra Essilor was able to share a proper schedule and the right processes with users. This also contributes to the growing maturity And in the future? One of the challenges for Essilor is to continue to promote best practices, cooperation and exchanges between different teams. So ambassadors by geographical area have been nominated to ensure the dissemination of best procedures in order to adapt to changing times. Also one of their future goals is to continue NQI Orchestra s (Atlas) integration with other Google apps and to promote it among other Essilor entities. About NQI: NQI is a French software company, recognized as one of the experts in collaborative project and portfolio management. NQI provides PPM solutions and softwares that fully integrates into the existing infrastructures of organizations and facilitates communication, collaboration and coordination. Our goal: to provide a solution accessible to all and offer a project management tool that covers the entire life cycle of the portfolio, from demand management to their monitoring and implementation. 6