Uniting the brightest minds in the fight against cancer
Miltenyi Biotec is home to some of the world's brightest minds and most creative thinkers. Founded in Germany in 1989, the organisation develops cell and gene therapies and undertakes biomedical research and innovative technologies.
Miltenyi Biotec is driving the revolution that is reinventing medicine and advancing it to a level that will change the way cancer and other serious illnesses are treated. Its researchers and scientists work across more than 60 disciplines and are making significant contributions in the field of biomedical science.
As a rapidly growing organisation, Miltenyi Biotec has an increasing portfolio of both R&D ("dev") and internal improvement ("org") projects. The company kicked off a strategy to better align project stakeholders and once the new processes had bedded in, it decided to look for a digital solution to support the process end to end and unlock greater transparency.
"Previously, we had two different systems supporting org and dev projects. They were heavily customised to make them fit for purpose and we still had some manual steps such as physical signatures," recalls Nils Pokorny, Group Leader, Enterprise Service Management at Miltenyi Biotec. "As a result, we lacked oversight of project progress, spend, and resources."
Supporting every step of project management
Miltenyi Biotec has a suite of ServiceNow solutions and Strategic Portfolio Management has the right features to harmonise project management while integrating easily with the Employee Center portal. The IT team worked with partner, PlanHorizon, to implement the solution and connect Microsoft Teams—which provides project channels to support collaboration—and the ERP solution. What was unique, is that Miltenyi Biotec chose to implement SPM not only in their IT department, for example, for Demand Management, but also simultaneously in their Research & Development department, for example, for new product development.
Today, staff can kick off a new project request from a tab on their employee portal. This takes them to a page where they select whether it's a dev project such as working on a new T-cell treatment, or an org project, such as suggesting a process improvement.
This triggers a guided workflow for each type of project. An integration with the organisation's Configuration Management Database (CMDB) allows users to select information from a pre-defined drop-down list, for example, which existing technology solutions may be impacted by the project so the product owners can be notified.
Proposals are categorised and routed to the appropriate teams for approval, while the ERP system checks costs against the budget. From a financial control perspective, this means that a Purchase Order (PO) is only allowed to be raised if there are sufficient funds and a valid project in the system.
Once the project kicks off, stakeholders have a central place to track hours worked using Time Sheet Management, contact colleagues also working on the project and make sure the project stays on budget.
"ServiceNow gives us greater transparency and control over projects. We didn't have a digital way to cost plan before, but now we can make sure we don't overspend—the finance team loves it!" says Nils.
Freeing experts to focus on what they do best
By translating project management processes into ServiceNow workflows, monitoring the portfolio is easier than ever. Everyone involved is kept informed without having to use email, which means they can contribute at the right time. This helps them to better manage their time and prioritise which projects to focus on.
"What we've achieved with ServiceNow has had a huge impact," confirms Nils. "Our organisation is full of people with great ideas. Now we can make sure we get the right experts working on the right topics."
Today, there are more than 1,000 active projects being managed by ServiceNow—two-thirds are dev projects and the remaining 300 relate to optimising internal processes.
"ServiceNow enables our large research team to progress R&D projects faster and more efficiently," says Nils. "Dev projects help us deliver on our mission and org projects allow us to do that more efficiently. Being able to manage all of them from one place is a real benefit."
The company will continue to innovate on both its employee portal and project management platform. The team is currently exploring ServiceNow's Portfolio Management Capabilities such as Scenario Planning or Goals and Roadmaps in the Strategic Planner Workspace.