The Client
Established in 1919, the Bettys and Taylors Group is home to three iconic Yorkshire brands: Bettys, Yorkshire Tea and Taylors of Harrogate. An independent family business, the firm employs more than 1500 staff and has an estimated revenue of £208m.
The Challenge
The Bettys and Taylors Group had a vast portfolio of more than 200 projects, ranging from digital and HR projects, through to Marketing and other areas of the business. Each business unit had a seven-year strategic plan and was running a series of projects to achieve their KPIs for these plans.
To replace multiple unwieldy spreadsheets, Bettys and Taylors needed a single centralised project view to optimise decision making and efficiency. Full project visibility would enable them to see, track and record real-time progress across all of their projects, providing an essential bird’s eye view of the organisation.
The Solution
To improve project portfolio management and the visibility of Bettys and Taylors’ wide range of projects, we implemented Microsoft Project Online. This enables Bettys and Taylors to capture all the data associated with each project, including headlines, activity plans and duration. The tool also allows them to score individual projects in terms of priority and project status.
Project Online provides Bettys and Taylors with an all-important single view across project tracking; making crucial data easily accessible and allowing them to make informed decisions in real-time.
To provide the ability to slice and dice data, and deliver key insights, we implemented Power BI. This is Microsoft’s leading business intelligence platform which seamlessly integrates into Project Online.
Power BI enables you to pull out key information, turn it into easy-to-digest formats and create clear and visually compelling reports. Using the flexibility and customisable features of Power BI we also built Bettys and Taylors a bespoke movement report to compare two date periods. This allows project teams to see how many projects were started, completed or aborted across a specified time period.
The Results
Successful implementation and adoption of the solution have resulted in numerous business benefits for Bettys and Taylors:
- Project Online has delivered the visibility and unified view the organisation needs to see across the whole portfolio.
- Bettys and Taylors now have over 360 projects on the Project Online platform and are able to track all activities across their portfolio.
- Easy-to-use dashboards allow Bettys and Taylors to drill down and identify potential issues like project delivery bottlenecks. The tool also allows them to create bespoke reports and streamline project implementation.
- Power BI helps make sense of large quantities of data and draw meaningful conclusions. This tool provides greater insight and timely information for Bettys and Taylors to make confident, informed business decisions.
