Strengthen the Finance Department’s management of the project portfolio through a unified view of initiatives, resources, and budgets

The Company

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firm firm est is one of Europe’s leading financial services groups. A long-standing player in the banking sector, the Group operates under a diversified and integrated business model that combines retail banking, financial services, investment banking, and solutions tailored to businesses and institutional investors. With a presence in numerous countries, est supports millions of individual, corporate, and institutional clients on a daily basis with a wide range of advisory services and financial solutions.

In an international banking environment that is highly regulated and marked by transformation challenges, the ability to manage project portfolios, ensure data reliability, prioritize initiatives, and track resources is a key driver for business and finance departments.

Between 2019 and 2023, the Finance Department at firm Générale relied on Tabsters to structure the management of its project portfolio, consolidate information, and improve visibility into its initiatives.

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Challenges & Objectives

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Background

firm ’s Finance Department managed a portfolio of projects worth several hundred million euros. Business unit staff, project managers, and IT teams were involved in numerous initiatives, with teams spread across different countries.

In this context, the Transformation Department wanted to implement a solution capable of centralizing all information related to the portfolio, projects, resources, budgets, and activities, in order to gain a reliable and consolidated view.

Another goal was to replace an in-house activity tracking solution—particularly for time tracking—while enhancing the ability to prioritize initiatives based on challenges, schedules, and team availability.

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Key Issues

The main issues centered on:

• the consolidation of all initiatives into a single point;
• ensuring the reliability of the information needed for monitoring, prioritization, and planning;
• monitoring team activities and tracking their hours;
• standardization of workload plans and budgets;
• prioritizing initiatives based on business, financial, and capacity considerations;
• the provision of dashboards tailored to different user profiles;
• Automating reporting to make Tabsters a go-to source for management.

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Objectives

With Tabsters, the Finance Department at firm Générale wanted to have a shared environment for:

• manage its project portfolio in a consolidated manner;
• track the teams' activities and the time they spend on them;
• prioritize initiatives based on value, constraints, and available capacity;
• standardize the workload and budget data;
• simplify interactions by using screens tailored to each user profile;
• Produce management and financial dashboards by persona, department, and site.

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Approach

The approach implemented with Tabsters was structured around three main areas.

1. Structure

Creation of a matrix structure tailored to the challenges of General firm , integrating the Bank’s organization, teams, competencies, service centers, projects, portfolios, and strategic priorities.

2. Standardization

Establishment of a common framework to standardize workload plans, budgets, and management information, in order to facilitate the comparison, consolidation, and monitoring of initiatives.

3. Automation

Automate reporting and centralize data in Tabsters to reduce manual processing, ensure data reliability, and make the solution a trusted source for portfolio management.

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How to Use Tabsters

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Use cases

As part of this collaboration, Tabsters enabled firm Générale to address several key needs:

• Management of the Finance Department's project portfolio;
• Centralization of initiatives on a single platform;
• Tracking team activities and recording team hours;
• Replacement of an in-house activity tracking solution;
• Monitoring workload plans and budgets;
• Prioritizing initiatives based on key issues and team schedules;
• Matrix-based organization of data by organization, project, portfolio, and strategic focus;
• Automated generation of management and financial dashboards.

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User profiles

The solution has been used by more than 150 users, including: PMOs, project managers, business stakeholders, IT teams, executive management and program managers, as well as financial and operational stakeholders involved in monitoring initiatives.

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The benefits

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The deployment of Tabsters within the Finance Department of firm Générale has yielded several major benefits:

• 20% time savings, as reported by the PMO teams;
• 100% of timesheets are completed each month;
• Centralization of project data, resources, budgets, and activities in a single location;
• Improving the reliability of the tracking, prioritization, and planning of initiatives;
• Standardization of workload plans and budgets;
• Simplifying interactions through screens tailored to each persona;
• Provision of management and financial dashboards by persona, department, and site;
• Greater visibility into initiatives, the resources allocated, and the trade-offs that need to be made;
• Automation of reporting and reduction of the time spent on manual consolidation.

By becoming a go-to resource for managing the Finance Department’s project portfolio, Tabsters has enabled teams to better organize information, ensure the reliability of monitoring data, and strengthen their ability to prioritize tasks in a multi-project, multi-team, and international environment.