Rhodia Collaboration Solution
Implementation of a project software upgrade to increase agility and productivity in the management and delivery of chemical products.
The Client
Rhodia is one of the world's leading manufacturers of specialty chemicals with more than 27,000 employees worldwide and net sales of 7.2B EUR. Through its specialized manufacturing and product diversity, Rhodia delivers a wide range of innovative and tailor-made products and services for the home, personal care, automotive, healthcare, apparel and environmental markets.
The Challenge
Because customers around the world have varying needs for Rhodia's thousands of products, it is a complicated and timeconsuming process to make sure that Rhodia's products meet those different needs and are delivered to customers on time. From inception to execution, each phase of the chemical creation process must be meticulously monitored and documented to ensure that the end product will meet the needs of Rhodia customers in different parts of the world.
With its global presence of offices, laboratories and manufacturing sites around the world, Rhodia was faced with the enormous challenge of transferring technical knowledge from one division or country to another. They needed a tool that enabled them to ensure that everyone has access to real-time project information and the ability to update project timelines to reflect any changes in tasks and deadlines. Specifically:
- Help its global team of approximately 5,000 chemical innovators manage the process of cross-fertilizing technology
- Allow the transfer of chemical formulations, best practices and processes across time zones, languages and cultures
- Accelerate the time it takes to bring new products to market
- Enable Rhodia to better identify the appropriate resources available for projects in its network
Other key challenges included:
- Effective project management at lower cost
- Project tracking and portfolio analysis
- Improved efficiency yields and a higher return on investments
- Resource availability and allocation
- Resource optimization yields more effective project results
The Pcubed Solution
To ensure a rapid and successful deployment of the project's vision and goals, Rhodia partnered with Pcubed, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and an international leader in program and project management. With Pcubed's implementation of Microsoft Office Project Server, Rhodia was able to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their innovation process and helped accelerate the time it takes to bring new products to market.
Before using Microsoft Office Project Server, project scheduling took as long as two to three weeks and required multiple iterations with team members that were prone to costly errors. Rhodia was spending too many hours and resources to keep projects on track, and as a result was not optimizing its project portfolio.
Microsoft Office Project Server allowed Rhodia to maximize the use of their resources and reduce its time to market with new products, delivering improved credibility with customers, additional contracts and new revenue. The solution also enabled them to better identify the appropriate resources available for projects throughout their network. Pcubed's project management best practices allowed Rhodia:
- To avoid the cumbersome task of manually populating its resource pool by automatically importing information about each resource into a central repository
- To enable project managers to access Rhodia's employee network in various locations across North America and Europe to find the right individuals for each project
- To have a competitive edge in being able to get up and running with Microsoft Office Project Server quickly and efficiently
Key elements of the solution included:
- Reduced cost of project management - as a result of using Microsoft Office Project Server, the company believes that its project managers have greater control in managing all aspects of their projects worldwide
- Better management and optimization of Rhodia's project portfolio - Microsoft Office Project Server helped Rhodia's
business leaders gain visibility and insight into the product development process
- Reduced time to market - reduced intercontinental technology transfer project time from 9 to 12 months, to 10 weeks
- Improved credibility with customers has led to additional contracts and new revenue