Supernova Award Category

The Problem

Project managers at MetLife's application group, along with more than 10 vendor organizations, were using spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and emails to track thousands of requests, but Additionally, MetLife teams with industry-leading vendors for support. Because missioncritical system support can cost millions of dollars per year, they wanted to better understand how their vendors were spending time on specific projects. 

The Solution

MetLife chose to increase adoption of their Enteprise Work Management solution from Workfront.  The goals behind increasing the adoption of Workfront at MetLife were twofold: to be more efficient, especially in product release cycles, and to reduce costs. 

The results

Now project managers from both MetLife and its vendor partners rely on the information available in Workfront to gain real-time visibility into project status. Workfront has given MetLife a common vocabulary to discuss projects and issues across organizations. The Workfront solution is also improving communication and collaboration among MetLife employees and between MetLife and its vendors. In addition to project managers, the company’s developers, testers, and executives working in corporate offices and remotely use the platform extensively to update tasks, assign and reassign projects, and notify others.  Workfront ensures that everyone on the project team is aware of what is expected and what has occurred when it comes to an individual project or task.

Accurate dashboards allow internal project managers to see all projects while vendor project managers can only see request queues for the work assigned to their organizations. These security features help private information remain protected.

Workfront provides a whole new way of slicing and dicing data and managing our day. The information is ‘live’—available in real-time—and rolled up, giving us complete visibility. They can better respond to requests, which ends up saving time.

Metrics

Reduced vendor costs by 50% – Time and cost tracking capabilities in the Workfront platform enabled MetLife to quickly evaluate vendor pricing against value. The resulting data encouraged MetLife to renegotiate with a new vendor and cut the price of at least one contract in half, saving more than $500K.

Improved efficiencies and increased meeting productivity – Because MetLife often has 30 or more participants on a supplier call, using a single solution and communicating in consistent terminology saves time. Constructive meetings also enable individuals to concentrate more on strategic and innovative activities that matter to the business.

Gained greater transparency and accountability without involving IT staff for deployment - Workfront makes it easy for all authorized project team members—internal staff, remote employees, and vendor representatives—to view, update, and interact with real-time project data and reports through a browser. 

The Technology

Workfront Enterprise Work Management

Disruptive Factor

Project Managers are now better informed and can make decisions and prioritize on the spot.  There's greater accountability across teams. We can really concentrate more on strategic and innovative activities that matter to the business.

Shining Moment

N/A