How the European Investment Bank (EIB) improved its portfolio, program and project practices with threon

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the only bank owned by and representing the interests of the European Union Member States. With a high level of responsibility resting on its shoulders, effective IT portfolio management is essential to its activities. After a structural reorganization, EIB’s IT Program Management Office (IT PMO) was transformed into a dedicated unit and decided to establish an “IT Program Management Information System” (PMIS) …

About EIB

Since its establishment in 1958, the EU bank has invested over a trillion euros. While climate action is a part of everything we do, their activities focus on the following priority areas:

climate and environment,
cohesion,
innovation, digital and human capital,
small and medium-sized businesses,
sustainable cities and regions, and
sustainable energy and natural resources.

The EIB works closely with other EU institutions to foster European integration, promote the development of the EU and support EU policies in over 160 countries around the world.

Through EIB Global, set up in 2022 to increase the impact of our development finance, they help address global challenges and create growth and opportunity in all continents.

Challenges

Before the start of the improvement project, EIB’s IT Department was suffering from time-consuming project reporting processes, leading to inefficiency on the part of both project managers and the Program Management Office (PMO). The absence of a central repository of all project-related information and documents further complicated communication, capacity planning, demand management and reporting.

In terms of project management itself, more focus was placed on project controlling (particularly on the financial side) rather than on project and program planning and monitoring. As a result, little preventative quality assurance was carried out, leading to time wasted on investigating cost and time deviations.

EIB approved the start of the implementation of a centralized program and portfolio management system (Microsoft Project Server), which was coordinated by threon. It involved six major objectives:

gain greater visibility into ongoing and future projects;
centralize project data into one database for easier planning and cost consolidation;
facilitate project and program reporting within the organization;
promote paperless approval processes by implementing electronic workflows;
encourage proper project planning from the beginning, to better anticipate project outcomes and potential deviations;
increase collaboration in general.

Results

threon helped EIB accelerate its digitalization process, resulting in a higher service maturity level. A formal demand management workflow was created to centralize all new ideas and automated reporting was introduced for PMO and project managers by means of the threon Best Practice Pack for Reporting (BBP-RP). threon therefore simplified EIB’s program and portfolio management system.

EIB’s PMIS has established itself as the reference system for all IT Projects, and this success has raised interest from other parts of the bank. The next phase included broadening the solution’s scope by adding more features for IT, but also opening it up to a larger user base from other departments, such as Human Resources, Lending Operations, Facilities Management and Procurement.

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What other clients say about us

Threon’s approach consists of looking carefully at the context our organization with the aim of taking it to a higher level. They don’t work with a standard process but tailor the approach to our organization.

Threon was able to think along with us. They helped us with the content and were able to offer strong trainers who can put the training into practice. Our employees are very satisfied with threon’s training courses.

Thanks to threon and their guidance Pharming was able to establish the foundation for a next level Center of Excellence.
Thanks to the focus on doing the project right, we are now able to ensure consistency throughout the project life cycle.

Threon helped us to set-up a structure of process-oriented work, we can now check initiatives against our capacity and our strategy, approved projects can be better supported and there is a clear framework for our staff.

Thanks to threon we now have a much more solid framework to determine which projects should be developed as a priority and we make much more conscious and substantiated choices. At the same time, management is now more and better informed about the impact of choices and the capacity in people and resources required.

Working with threon results in the fact that we now have a complete picture of our portfolio and that the project methodology has been integrated in our corporate culture

Thanks to threon, we have been able to take the right steps on digital level to guarantee the safety of our employees and travelers

We have a close partnership with threon, build on trust and the assurance that threon offers the right people for the job, both in consulting and in delivery

Thanks to the advice from threon we were able to lift our PMO operation at Aertssen to the next level.

Thanks to this agile way of working, we reduce risks, quickly deliver results and improve our transversal team collaboration. This results in faster decision-making and increased internal communication.

Without losing sight of the theory, we were guided through a very practical process, looking for the best solution for Securex.

Stakeholder management is key in an organizational change track. We supported ALD Automotive during this process towards a new Way-Of-Working roll-out within their entire organization.

Simplifying Sanquin’s portfolio organization, resulted in an objective priority setting process and enhanced delivery efficiency.

Implementing program management enables IGEAN to have a continuous overview of available resources and the links between projects.

Our strategy gets executed in a structured way through portfolio management. Resources are allocated to the right projects, in an efficient way via the T-Capacity tool and all noses are in the same direction to successfully reach our strategic goals.

How the European Investment Bank (EIB) improved its portfolio, program and project practices with threon

About EIB

Challenges

Results

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What other clients say about us

Ghent

Brussels

Luxembourg

Den Haag

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