Critical issues and Challenges
Milan-based Design Group Italia (DGI) also has offices in New York, Silicon Valley and Reykjavik. It was founded in 1968, and today has a team of about 80 designers with different specializations: product, strategy, branding, digital, UX, service, interiors, food, lighting, engineering and CMF. It works in a wide variety of businesses, from FMCG to machine tools, from health to tourism, from consumer electronics to medical products. Its client portfolio includes large Italian companies, startups, SMEs, non-profits and global corporates. The study is led by Edoardo Angelini, Peter Newbould and Sigurdur Thorsteinsson. Since July 2019, DGI has been part of the Alkemy Group.
As in most project-led organizations, DGI uses fragmented, non-integrated information systems, which have caused a number of issues for corporate management, such as:
- Lack of consolidated and updated oversight of the project portfolio with consequent limitation in terms of prioritization.
- Difficulty in obtaining up-to-date and consistent information on the project portfolio.
- General uncertainty about the criteria underlying decision-making processes.
What DGI required was a more defined and efficient structuring of flows: a modern software solution that would allow centralized and complete management of all projects, with real-time visibility and control of each process.
Solution
Akeron Project Business Automation implementation has enabled Design Group Italia to fully manage the life cycle of business projects (from planning and budget management, to monitoring and accounting management), allowing interception and management of critical issues relating to the execution schedule. In concrete terms, the platform has made it possible to cover diverse needs, such as:
- Planning and allocation of resources to projects, by role and by person, on time allocated, by real-time analysis of workloads.
- Consolidated view of all managed projects and their progress.
- Preliminary analysis of costs, due to the Akeron system’s ability to learn and historicize data from previous projects.
- Real-time analysis of the project balance sheet thanks to a system that allows highlighting of estimated, final and variance time.
- Consolidated management of financial performance and project margin.
- Ability to question financial status at any time, and consult the company balance sheet, thanks to supported data processing provided by Business Intelligence Automation.
Akeron Project Business Automation is extremely flexible and able to adapt to specific business needs. This is why DGI was able to implement it relatively quickly and, thanks to a synergic collaboration, it has been possible to create the following ad hoc features:
- The development of a “Final Mission” functionality that makes it possible to assign all relevant expenses and work time to a specific “mission” (a project or series of projects that requires resources while a project manager is traveling for example) and analyze costs.
- Digital archive of incurred expenses: a single instrument to support the assignment of costs and revenues. Previously, receipts were collected in physical folders, but thanks to Akeron Project Business Automation they can be loaded to the system, in which all transactions are downloadable in detail.
- Project Management Control, with preventive and final analysis, detailed resource costs, including Direct Costs, Full Costs and applying two margin
Results and benefits
Digitizing Project Management at a global level.
“Analysis of faster profitability, time and cost monitoring and flexibility: Akeron Project Business Automation enables us to manage projects quickly and intuitively, optimizing the budget, by allocating resources optimally and allowing us to reduce billing and control time by 40%”
Marcello Mastrapasqua – IT Manager Design Italia.
Akeron Project Business Automation has allowed the digitalization and structuring of project management at a global level, facilitating the management of all resources distributed across departments. This solution has brought a number of tangible benefits, including:
- Full visibility and traceability of real-time data and end-to-end project management.
- Timely and Fast reporting.
- 100% Control of departmental budget expenditure.
- Optimized time management and billing
- Effective project performance
- 360° customer view and real-time insight dashboard on any device.
- Confidence in strategic decisions, thanks to timely planning, which allows the development of scenario forecasting capability.
- Reduction of project risk
- Elimination of bureaucratic
- Corporate culture change in terms of individual resource responsibility.
- Concurrent management of a large number of complex projects (300+).
