With around 50,000 employees, Region Västra Götaland is one of Sweden’s largest employers. This means hundreds of different projects per year. Now the region has chosen CANEA Project as its project tool.
Background and needs
VGR (Västra Götaland Region) works in health, medical care and schools. In spring 2014, it was clear to VGR that a new project support system needed to be in place that autumn, just a few months later, as the old system’s contract was about to expire. VGR IT is Västra Götaland Region’s common IS/IT organisation that is responsible for all operation and support of IT infrastructure, applications and telephony in the region. The organisation had previously held a thorough investigation in project tools, and in May 2014 the decision was taken for VGR to use CANEA Project – a tool that it was felt would suit many different users in such a large organisation.
Implementation and training
It was decided that implementation would start on 1 June 2014 and be completed after the holidays so that project managers could start work directly again in September. In total, they had three months. All operations were well prepared and the project managers were told that all projects in the old system needed to be archived.
“The most important thing for us was that all documents needed to be ‘saved’! We sent out early warnings to the project managers to save and make back-ups. So, in retrospect, we can say that we were really successful and that implementation went exceptionally fast,” says Carina Johansson, Application Specialist at VGR IT.
The three-month schedule was tight, but as the implementation took place in the summer, during the holiday season, there were not that many users on site. Project managers from CANEA, together with supervisors from VGR, work relatively undisturbed on parallel tracks:
- Configuration
- Development
- Export
With the new system, CANEA Project, everyone got a fresh start and could get an overview of processes. That, together with the system being placed in an active organisation, led, in other words, to excellent results almost immediately.
“Thanks to this fresh start, we were able to sit down and everyone got to say what they thought and what they wanted. We set up three different project models and then could sit and configure things the way we wanted. We would never have taken this time otherwise, and that proved useful for us,” explains Carina Johansson.
Implementation went very well and all the projects were in place before the end of August. The schedule of three months had really been maintained.
“Nobody really believed that the implementation would be completed in such a short time,” says Carina Johansson.
When the users returned from their holidays, there was a quick guide for the system on the home page. The project managers were admittedly familiar with project tools, and despite the fact that Canea Project was new, they could adapt to it.
In connection with the start-up after the holidays, four training sessions were held almost immediately, targeted primarily at project managers. Administration training was also held, with representatives from the project offices taking part.
“All the project managers and administrators have been given training. All project managers are now using the system and the project tool has been distributed throughout the organisation,” says Gizella Auer, Coordinating Object Specialist, object journal and document management.
Benefit and use
The requirements for documentation and reporting to project managers in organisations has increased in recent years. This has led to people who previously did not use project tools now showing great interest in this handy tool CANEA Project. Project managers need to be able to report and write directly in a user-friendly system that facilitates and provides support.
“We have already been able to see that the new tool has a good impact. In many projects, it is now possible to enter a status report automatically via CANEA Project. This was previously manual work using Excel lists. We feel that we have had excellent help from CANEA Project,” concludes Carina Johansson.
“In technical terms, the impact has been excellent. Journal and document management gathers improvement and development issues, which are then submitted to IT. So far, no issues has been submitted regarding the project tool from any of the users. We regard that as very positive,” concludes Gizella Auer.
About VGR (Västra Götaland Region)
VGR is responsible for health and medical care and growth and development issues in Västra Götaland – a region with 1.6 million inhabitants and 49 municipalities. With around 50,000 employees, VGR is one of Sweden’s largest employers.
