From producing loader cranes for heavy shifting to lifesaving appliances in the maritime industry, Palfinger is a global leader in innovative crane and lifting solutions. Moreover, the company is a leading specialist in timber and recycling cranes, truck-mounted forklifts and high-tech railway systems.
A rapidly expanding business, Palfinger is keen to accelerate innovation and improve efficiency by encouraging departments and offices worldwide to collaborate on a wide range of projects. These take on challenges such as developing new products, building factories from scratch and replicating production from one country to another.
Running such a wide range of projects requires workflow software that helps teams collaborate and communicate while also allowing managers to stay updated on their progress.
Nadir Doudou, who heads project management for Palfinger’s global operations department, tested Smartsheet in 2022 and judged that the workflow software would help drive forward the company’s portfolio of project work. “I was pretty amazed,” he says. “From Smartsheet’s spreadsheet-based design, with its simple, intuitive, no-code automation and strong reporting capabilities, I saw that we could build a system that is customised to our needs, without any external support and with very minor effort,” he says.
Projects using Smartsheet at Palfinger have grown from 50 in 2022 to nearly 350 to date, covering a broad range of areas. The company has built a new production plant in Serbia and used Smartsheet to manage the programme. Another was for a project transferring the assembly of products from a location in Europe to another in Latin America.
A strong advantage of Smartsheet is the ease of collaboration it allows, says Doudou. Data can easily be shared between projects and collected from different projects, allowing standardised reporting. This empowers managers across Palfinger to compare the progress of projects and boosts cross-functional working by offering a simple-to-use, standardised system.
Collaboration through the software doesn’t necessarily require a licence, depending on the user’s authorisation in the system, and users can share content even with external stakeholders.
As a web-based application, Smartsheet can be managed from users’ browsers. Palfinger’s project management offices, responsible for project and portfolio management governance, create effective templates within smartsheet that are then utilised by project managers across the company. This is a folder that contains different spreadsheets necessary to plan, manage and execute a project according to defined standards. “This is something that we provide to project managers all over the planet so that they work in the same kind of template with the advantages of automating approval workflows and communications, and allocating resources to project managers all from one single point of truth, from one system,” says Doudou.
Smartsheet offers applications to enhance the system, such as dynamic view which allows users to securely share data. “If I were to consider how much email traffic and how many meetings we have been able to save with this application, it is really significant. This is a feature that creates a lot of buy-in across the company,” he says.
Another feature popular with Palfinger staff is the simple reporting capabilities that Smartsheet offers. “We have some teams across the organisation that are not part of portfolio management or the project management office, but they still want to keep track of all the projects running in their area of responsibility. With Smartsheet, it takes five to 10 minutes to create a very simple dashboard for them to see which projects are running, where they are, what the status is, the spend performance, and how many people are involved in resourcing it,” says Doudou.
He says the software is easy to use. “It’s very intuitive and simple. It’s more drag and drop than about writing code,” he says.
The need for a flexible communication tool has been driven by Palfinger’s switch from a business unit-based structure to a matrix-based organisation. Under the previous structure, each unit operated semi-autonomously and reported vertically in a command-and-control structure.
In the matrix structure, which is commonly used by large global companies, employees report to more than one manager and collaborate on projects across functions, geographies and products. This fosters a multidisciplinary approach with projects that draw staff from different areas. A matrix system requires transparency and seamless communication across the organisation, creating demand for effective communication tools.
For the future, Doudou predicts that Palfinger is likely to increase the number of projects using Smartsheet. “With an increasing number of projects and stronger cross-functional collaboration, more and more project and functional managers will leverage Smartsheet to improve implementation strength and collaboration,” he says.
He believes that workflow tools that are flexible and empower staff will be vital for businesses to thrive in the current era of complexity and ambiguity. “We are in volatile and uncertain times, and more flexibility is required from industries all over the world. Workflow software comes in very handy for us. We can quickly adjust our processes and tools with Smartsheet. We don’t need consultants to advise us on the system,” he says, and adds. “I think Smartsheet will be a good partner for us over the coming years.”
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