agility made possible™

Sicredi reduces project management costs with CA Clarity PPM On Demand

COMPANYSicredi is one of the largest cooperative credit systems in Brazil, with operations across 10 states, at 1,140 offices and has over 1.9 million members.

CHALLENGESicredi’s Strategic Planning department needed to improve the visibility of its resource allocation, project progress and budgets in order to support the achievement of the strategic goals of the organization.

SOLUTIONThe Strategic Planning department adopted CA Clarity PPM™ On Demand, a centralized platform for resource, demand, financial and timesheet management.

BENEFITSicredi has reduced its project management operational costs by 20 percent. It has also improved project management in the Strategic Planning department to make better use of its resources and make more informed business decisions.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

CUSTOMER PROFILEIndustry: Financial ServicesCompany: SicrediEmployees: 12,000-plus

02

Sicredi

CompanyPromoting economic and social development in BrazilSicredi is a fi nancial institution operating as a credit union – an economic organisational model, which Sicredi has established across Brazil. It is one of the largest cooperative systems in Brazil and Latin America, giving people and businesses access to fi nancial products and services while also promoting the economic and social development of their regions.

The profi ts of the credit union are passed on to its members – the owners of the business – in proportion to the volume of their operations and are reinvested in the place where they live, thereby strengthening the region’s economy.

Sicredi, which is present in 10 states and 881 municipalities in Brazil, is made up of 119 credit unions, which are integrated horizontally and vertically. The horizontal integration corresponds to the network of offi ces spread across the 10 states. For the vertical integration, the cooperatives are organized into four Central Cooperatives, a Confederation, a Foundation and a Cooperative Bank, which controls the specifi c companies operating in the fi elds of insurance distribution, card management and management of self-fi nanced purchasing plans.

Sicredi’s portfolio consists of more than 100 products and services, including: current account, direct debit, loans, savings, credit and debit cards, investments, insurance, self-fi nanced purchasing plans, currency exchange, credit collection, provident funds, and facilities, such as ATMs and online services.

ChallengeA global, integrated vision for strategic planningSicredi has a centralized structure called the Strategic Planning Department, the main purpose of which is to coordinate and run, as the name suggests, the fi ve-year strategic plan (2011-2015) for the entire organization – from diagnosis to communication, through preparation, monitoring and control.

All multidisciplinary strategic initiatives – involving marketing, human resources, the commercial department, product portfolio, IT, social and environmental responsibility, operating effi ciency, liquidity, capital and cost management, among others – are designed with the support of this area and are structured as a program composed of projects.

The Strategic Planning team operates as an internal consultancy, introducing best practices regarding projects and change management.

With a portfolio of over 200 projects, Sicredi had the challenge of dealing with the complexity in the management of these projects. The Strategic Planning Department needed to integrate and ensure all departments with various types of knowledge were engaged at the right times throughout the projects.

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Sicredi

Some of the main challenges of Sicredi and its Strategic Planning Department were:

The need to adapt processes and tools already used by the departments to eliminate the paradigm • of bureaucratic project management that can cause delays

The need to deliver results in line with the sponsors’ expectations•

The resistance of professionals impacted by the change•

To manage the different profi les of professionals involved in corporate projects•

To reduce costs with project management•

To ensure excellence and greater speed in the delivery of projects and results. •

As Fernando Castro, Corporate PMO Manager for Sicredi comments, “a more effective control was needed, as well as more accurate data on the allocation of the company’s resources. The organization also needed greater visibility of the progress of projects in terms of scope, time and costs.”

Sicredi needed a new tool in order to enter into a new level of strategic and project management. “The processes and tools being used were not suffi cient to support the level of strategic management in place. Sicredi needed a robust tool that was capable of promoting an integrated vision, automated controls and an easier way of sharing information to support the decision-making process”, adds Castro.

SolutionCentralized management of a portfolio composed by more than 200 projects After assessing the project management solutions available, Sicredi selected CA Clarity™ PPM (Project & Portfolio Management) in December 2009. “Among the tools evaluated, CA Clarity PPM best matched our requirements”, said Virginia Cunha, PMO Specialist.

“We needed better visibility of projects as they progressed in terms of scope, time and cost.” Fernando CastroPMO Manager, Sicredi

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Sicredi

Sicredi is using the solution on a ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) basis. This approach enabled faster installation and lower IT costs, as it didn’t require implementing any infrastructure to run the solution.

The fi rst phase of the implementation, which included scheduling, fi nance and resource management, was concluded in 2010. Although CA Clarity PPM On Demand is available ‘off the shelf’, Sicredi wanted to customize some processes to match its specifi c business requirements. The CA Services team was essential in helping with the customization and implementation.

With the support of CA Education, Sicredi trained four key resources on the solution, who were then responsible for coaching 200 other professionals at the organization.

Today, all areas involved in project execution use CA Clarity: there are 512 active users of the solution. In 2011, around 220 IT and business projects are managed by the solution.

CA Clarity PPM is used for resource, demand, fi nancial and timesheet management. All allocated resources are associated with a cost matrix and other expenses, such as training, consultancy, travel, purchase of hardware and software, are linked to each project.

“By the end of the project planning phase, CA Clarity PPM On Demand generates a fi nancial plan that considers all the payment fl ow, no matter who the owner of the project is. We use ‘added value indicators’ to measure fi nancial performance, for example, a project’s original budget compared with actual costs”, explains Cunha.

As well as simplifying the management of existing projects, CA Clarity PPM On Demand also supports the take-on process for new activities.

Sicredi has an annual process for planning future projects in its portfolio. Each demand is categorized into one of the four following areas:

Strategic project•

Regulatory compliance •

Multi-departmental•

Information Technology.•

A budget is then assigned considering all the project demands, such as IT, opex and business. The project is then submitted for a feasibility analysis. Once approved, the project becomes part of the portfolio and listed according to its priority. CA Clarity PPM supports the approval process by applying approval competencies, observing the rules of referral in accordance with the level of investment involved. CA Clarity PPM On Demand is at the center of this whole process and simplifi es the stages of the cycle of annual planning development.

For 2012, Sicredi plans to integrate CA Clarity PPM On Demand with its SAP-based enterprise resource planning system.

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Sicredi

Benefi tPMO’s operational costs reduced by 20 percent With CA Clarity PPM On Demand, Sicredi now has visibility of resource allocation as well as the planned and realized status of each project.

Faster and smarter decision-making is another benefi t of deploying CA Clarity PPM On Demand. “By analyzing the capacity of teams assigned to different projects, we have been able to identify bottlenecks and establish priorities. With this, we can keep the focus on the most important projects to the organization, and ensure strategic initiatives are completed on time. By using information extracted by the solution, we are able to make better decisions. This information, combined with the governance model established through the whole organization, helps us eliminate risks, and approach project management with a more mature attitude,” comments Tiago Nicolaidis, PMO Specialist.

By deploying CA Clarity PPM, Sicredi has been able to:

Achieve more predictable project costs •

Accelerate project delivery and results •

Reduce time-to-market for new customer offerings •

Reduce PMO operational costs by 20 percent. •

These benefi ts have helped Sicredi achieve a return on investment (ROI) on CA Clarity PPM On Demand in just 12 months. “The solution gives us competitive advantage as we have been able to increase our planning capabilities and multiple project management”, concludes Castro.

20% reduction in the PMO’s operational costs

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