Aliancys

AOC Aliancys is a global leader in development and sale of high performance resins for composite applications. The company is literally helping to shape the world by working with customers to make extraordinary products. Aliancys helps customers to make components that are tougher, lighter, stiffer, and more resilient than parts made in steel, wood and concrete. From bridges and high speed trains to infrastructure renovation and wind energy, AOC Aliancys is pushing the limits of resin and composite technology.

Formerly known as DSM Composite Resins, the company was spun off as Aliancys in 2015 under the joint ownership of CVC Capital Partners and DSM. Soon after this change, the organization began to review internal processes and systems to determine where greater efficiencies could be achieved. Since the merge with AOC in 2018, this has even become more important.

One of the areas targeted for improvement was project management (PM). Prior to the spin off, the AOC Aliancys relied on several seperate project management systems and tools to manage a multitude of projects. According to the company’s R&D program manager, Sandra Klein Nagelvoort, “As we were breaking away from the large corporation, we decided to look for a PM tool fine-tuned to our needs.

Klein Nagelvoort and her team discussed their requirements for professional project management in depth with the company’s IT department and concluded together that AdaptiveWork was the best choice to meet future needs.

“We chose AdaptiveWork based on its flexibility, balance of price and performance, and the level of support we could expect from the AdaptiveWork team,” Klein Nagelvoort explains. One of the factors that made AdaptiveWork so different from its competitors is the fact that it could be tailored to our exact needs and environment. That was not something the others could offer.”

Today, AdaptiveWork is used extensively throughout the organization. More than 50 power users across multiple divisions rely on AdaptiveWork for tracking and responding to internal support requests, providing up-to-the-minute status reports and dashboards for executives and other key stakeholders, and it has enabled the project management organization to adopt a more efficient phase-gate approach. AdaptiveWork Custom Objects were created in order to address some unique business needs.

“We have standardized our reports and dashboards so that if a stakeholder requests an update we can report back very quickly,” Klein Nagelvoort notes. “We have become more efficient, which has enabled us to improve performance year over year. AdaptiveWork’s collaboration tools have made communications more transparent and effective.”

Klein Nagelvoort and other project leaders use AdaptiveWork Slide Publisher extensively to create Microsoft Powerpoint presentations using Slide Publisher’s Template Wizard. The wizard enables AOC Aliancys users to insert placeholder tags into any pre-designed Powerpoint presentation and pull current project data directly into slides. Project information such as project name, sponsor, description, project manager and business case info are automatically updated in the slide set. The final presentation is uploaded into AdaptiveWork where it can be viewed by any authorized user or stakeholder.

“I use AdaptiveWork almost every day,” Klein Nagelvoort says. “My goal is to understand the level of acceptance and how it brings benefits to each user. Reporting and Slide Publisher requires minimal effort as long as the data is kept current in the system. We’re saving time on administration and providing much greater transparency.”

She adds, “AdaptiveWork is enabling our project managers and team members to think about projects in a more logical and organized way. The AdaptiveWork support organization has been incredibly helpful, which is something I expected and truly appreciate.”