SSAB is a global steel company with more than 15 000 employees in over 50 countries and a leading market position as a supplier of high-strength steels and related services. The main production sites are located in Finland, Sweden and the USA. SSAB aims to be the first steel company in the world to introduce fossil-free steel to the market as early as in 2026.

Thinking Portfolio’s management solution brought clarity to multinational collaboration

With the merger of SSAB and Rautaruukki in 2014, finding a common way to manage planning, execution and reporting was a priority for investments. In this situation, a common Group process model for investment and project management was developed. The model was designed to be practical and to simplify processes. As a result of the merger, there were, among other things, several different financial management software and many Excel spreadsheets with numerous links. Through trial and error, we learned that using Excel to manage investments was no longer useful, and we had to move from the Excel jungle to a database-driven system,” says Arto Kangas, explaining the background to the investment portfolio acquisition.

After looking at several different project portfolio solutions, SSAB decided on Thinking Portfolio’s cloud service solution. Before the final decision was taken, the suitability of the solution was tested as a management help tool for SSAB’s investment portfolio. The testing confirmed that the easy-to-use Thinking Portfolio project management solution, parameterized for just the right purpose, was the perfect solution for SSAB’s global project activities. The convenience of the Thinking Portfolio cloud service is further enhanced by the single sign-on feature, where users do not need to log in to the portfolio when they are online with SSAB.

Thinking Portfolio looks to the future

All planned and ongoing projects are fed into the portfolio, streamlining the management of the situation, such as prioritising investments and development projects. Projects are handled in the portfolio in accordance with SSAB’s project management process, from the early concept phase through to final evaluation and closure. This means, for example, project status reporting and reporting as you move from one phase to the next. There is no need to report on the status of projects or the overall situation of the portfolio separately, but everything, such as management reports and project documents, is automatically generated based on the project data. Arto Kangas says that standardising reporting was surprisingly difficult in the past due to, among other things, different reporting periods and the fact that the importance of reporting was perceived differently in different countries and units. Thinking Portfolio has made a significant improvement in this, not least because it saves project managers time.

-The portfolio currently has several thousand active projects and even more in the idea stage. Compiling key figures for prioritisation and mapping the overall situation would be a big job without the Thinking Portfolio, now the information is available at the click of a button and partly even without it. For management, comparing different projects is straightforward when data is presented in the same way for all projects.

-In order to prioritise investments, the portfolio provides views from many different perspectives and at different organisational levels, and different filtering is certainly one of the most used features of the portfolio. Based on the cost schedules, we see projections at a precise level for 1-2 years ahead, and at a rough level even further ahead, up to 10 years.

Thinking Portfolio development is smooth and can also be done by the users.

The delivery of development work commissioned from Thinking Portfolio has been perceived as flexible and fast. This is an important feature of supplier cooperation, as development work is needed from time to time as operations change. Portfolio users and lead users can also do some minor development work on the portfolio themselves, especially in terms of reporting.

 

Arto Kangas
Director, Capex Management
& Engineering Services
SSAB Europe