Finnair is an airline network specialised in flying between Europe and Asia along the shorter northern route. Finnair uses Thinking Portfolio’s Project Portfolio, which currently manages its IT projects. There are plans for Thinking Portfolio to become the go-to project management application for all types of projects including procurement, commercial investigation and projects to open new flight routes. The intention of the ongoing Roadshow is to communicate information about the potential of the application for future users and various management teams.
Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Finnair, Kari Saarikoski, explains that prior to commissioning Thinking Portfolio, information about the organisation’s different projects was compiled using Sharepoint and Excel. There were no coherent models for reporting or presenting this information and the need for a project portfolio management tool was identified quite some time ago. Over the years, a number of alternatives to the application have been surveyed and even researched.
One of the expectations for the future project portfolio involved getting all the projects neatly compiled in a single tool, thereby enabling a clear view of the various stages of the projects and the resource status as a whole. Improvements made to reporting tools would also ensure a systematic process with time savings regarding project management.
Implementation of Thinking Portfolio was swift with a rapid roll-out
Commencement of the procurement project finally became topical last year. Using the procurement process, the implementation schedule was initiated in September – October, and the application was quickly up and running before the end of the year. Saarikoski was delighted with the fluid implementation of the application and the smooth cooperation with the supplier.
The implementation and commissioning project was carried out swiftly without excessive bureaucracy. Altogether, we took part in three workshops and from the second workshop we were given parameterised alternatives for the Thinking Portfolio functionality. Following the third workshop, the application had already been trialled and we were able to finalise the final version.
In our search for a suitable tool for managing our project portfolio, we examined a number of different applications. The majority of these alternatives turned out to be too cumbersome for our requirements. We found Thinking Portfolio to be sufficiently slimline and data appeared to be easy to maintain.
Data maintenance is always challenging and the portfolio is only as good as the data it holds. With Thinking Portfolio, there is a correct amount of data to be maintained. I firmly believe its slimline interface will keep usage rates high.
Decisions are clearly visible in Thinking Portfolio
Saarikoski recognises the benefits of Thinking Portfolio as being a tool that is equally useful for management as for all other departments requiring information about projects. All decisions are clearly shown in a single portfolio and despite information quality varying, it is already possible to view delays and project bottlenecks.
-Missing information is also a good indication of the challenges within a project.
-As more data is fed in, we also expect to receive a sufficiently comprehensive overview of the overall situation with resources, i.e. we can see where there is an overload and which resources are lacking.
Kari Saarikoski
Chief Information Officer
Finnair
kari.saarikoski@finnair.com
