Case Study: Invatron

About the Customer

Industry: Computer Software

Size: 50-100 employees

Country: Canada

 

Based in Mississauga, Canada, Invatron Systems Corp is a leading technology company providing Fresh Item and Scale Management software solutions for the food retail industry. Invatron’s Periscope and E-Plum solutions are deployed collectively in over 20,000 supermarket stores worldwide, actively supporting the in-store execution of Fresh operations across order replenishment, production planning, scale management, inventory management and compliance regulations.

The company enables its customers to maintain strong leadership in their fresh food offering by providing predictive demand forecasting, data integrity and decision support tools to increase sales, reduce shrink, and improve margins. Invatron’s software solutions empower food retailers to achieve efficient operational practices to keep the “fresh” in fresh throughout the day, all while maximizing financial performance in the highly competitive grocery market.

Initial Project Management Environment

Invatron offers a broad set of solutions for retailers that help grocery retail chains with fresh ordering management, production planning, financial inventory, and more. These are sophisticated products with multiple teams working on them. Invatron also provides unique setup and maintenance services to skyrocket customer success. All that needs to be managed properly, and Invatron team has chosen Planner as a system where they manage most of their work.

Microsoft Planner as a project management tool has its advantages. Invatron team appreciates it as a lightweight, easy-to-use solution, which requires none or minimum adoption period, and at the same time it seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Office 365 ecosystem, including Microsoft Teams, One Drive, and other software.

A Need for Business Intelligence & Visibility

As Invatron’s solutions offering was growing and so was the customer base, the company’s executives and project managers started looking for a project portfolio management solution, that would provide more detailed executive reporting, as well as portfolio visibility and the ‘big picture’ that reflects the actual status of all projects.

Despite Planner’s proven advantages, the following limitations of its functionality became critical for Invatron:

Planner offers quite a modest reporting functionality;

Planner offers quite aait has no budgeting/cost management features; modest reporting functionality;

there is no way to implement project portfolio management processes within this environment.

PPM Express & 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic

At the same time, during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, when all Invatron’s employees were working from home, PPM Express helped the company to adapt to those new circumstances, minimize productivity loss, and maintain transparency across all business units.