industry
Government
Key takeaways
- 30+ Divisions
- Streamlined workflow
- Improved prioritisation
In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the efficient management of business cases for new project work intake has become a crucial factor in driving success for organisations. This major Australian government department was struggling with the complexities of manual business case management and called on the expertise of Sensei to assist them with transforming this labour intensive process.
The manual approach to handling business cases often resulted in inefficiencies, miscommunication, and a lack of alignment with strategic direction. For our client, it was evident that there was a lack of traceability, making it extremely difficult to link approved business cases directly back to the associated projects for ongoing reference and review.
The Department, responsible for supporting over 30 divisions across a wide variety of industries, needed a transformative solution to streamline their business case management process to efficiently utilise their time and focus resources on more impactful work.
Situation
The absence of an automation process to create, track and approve business cases led to bottlenecks and inefficiencies in delivering on major projects. The Department lacked a robust traceability system which ultimately hindered a seamless connection between approved business cases and the subsequent delivery of projects. As a result, it frequently experienced human error in creating the correct connections between the two, leading to difficulty in making informed and efficient business decisions, often incurring a financial cost.
When assessing the requirements to improve business case management, the Department also indicated it was looking to improve the overall process for business case prioritisation and selection.
Solution
To address these challenges, Sensei collaborated with the department to extend their existing Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tool, Altus. By augmenting the solution with tailored features, our client was able to automate the creation, management and approval of two distinct types of business cases: Big and Lean. The innovation introduced a dynamic workflow, streamlining the approval process and automating archiving.
The system also enabled better project prioritisation and selection capabilities, paving the way for future integration of AI and automation to further enhance this process.
Outcome
This transformational step has opened the Department up to opportunities for a more holistic approach to business case management. The streamlined workflow has eliminated manual inefficiencies and errors while enhancing traceability and archival practices. Furthermore, the newly acquired ability to prioritise and select projects based on impactful analysis and forecasting has encouraged a more strategic decision-making process at the Department.
User feedback has highlighted the success of the Altus enhancements, allowing the PMO team to spend their time more efficiently on managing and delivering projects within the approved business case frameworks while eliminating the risk of errors resulting in financial losses.
