How Apollo Tyres automated processes and centralized governance to drive internal strategic transformation

Apollo Tyres Ltd. was operating with disconnected tools and processes that resulted in a lack of visibility into strategic initiatives and the individual projects that supported them. Using email and spreadsheets to manage projects resulted in extended project lifecycles and the inability to establish a centralized governance process. The company also lacked an IT PMO solution with reporting capabilities to deliver key insights.

Apollo Tyres embarked on a modernization journey to mature from manual program and project management processes to a centralized platform that automated their workflows and provided visibility and reporting on key strategic initiatives. The industry-leading manufacturer achieved significant process optimization and expanded from an IT PMO to EPMO.

An industry-leading tyre manufacturer founded in 1972, Apollo Tyres has grown into a manufacturing powerhouse with a significant global presence spanning India and Europe. Apollo Tyres' extensive product portfolio includes tyres for passenger vehicles, commercial trucks, two-wheelers and agricultural segments, and the multinational company is supported by over 1400 distributors across 100 countries. With a vision of "driving progress, together," the company has built an established and trusted brand that generates over $3.1 billion in annual revenue.

Apollo Tyres relied on disconnected tools and manual processes to track project status updates and approvals across their global manufacturing business. The IT PMO lacked a robust program and project management solution to support centralized communication and effective project governance, and trying to capture project demand and prioritization was a significant manual uplift.

Tracking project status updates and approvals using email and spreadsheets resulted in extended project lifecycles that were conducted over hundreds of emails. This manual approach slowed critical decision-making for project prioritization and approvals, and prevented the ability to generate top-down reporting and dashboards for executives. Without visibility into which work was supporting which strategic initiatives, executive leaders lacked the insights they needed to drive critical decision-making.

“The key reason to purchase a solution was that there was no driver for our strategic initiatives,” said Prasuna Emani, Divisional Head, Global IT PMO, Apollo Tyres Ltd., . “We didn’t have any formal governance in place, or a way to track projects and measure the success of projects,” Emani said.

When Apollo Tyres embarked on an internal large-scale transformation, they recognized the need for a robust EPMO platform that would automate their workflows and establish a centralized governance structure. A recent audit also triggered the need for the tool to meet stringent data compliance requirements.

During the procurement process, Planview AdaptiveWork proved to be the only PPM tool that met the company’s compliance requirements by providing a role-based access management (RBAM) capability. This feature was required to support inter-departmental collaboration for Apollo 2.0.

Another winning feature for AdaptiveWork was its robust reporting and dashboard capabilities that integrated with Power BI.

"With the AI integrations, the out-of-box-solutions, and the support, Planview AdaptiveWork had a lot of advantages over the other options. Especially the reporting capability and the dashboards. " said Emani.

Implementing AdaptiveWork enabled Apollo Tyres to streamline communication and establish a centralized project governance process. This reduced reliance on extensive email follow-ups for approvals, which was particularly important for a globally distributed team with manufacturing plants across India and Europe.

Apollo Tyres also leveraged AdaptiveWork's workflow automation to reduce manual overhead and increase consistency in project execution. They implemented five predefined gates in AdaptiveWork with role-based tasks and approvals built into the workflow. These robust, streamlined workflows with automated reminders significantly reduced the cycle time of projects and demand lifecycles.

"All the workflows are predefined in the tool. If a workflow was not built in the tool, we would have a minimum of 100 emails back and forth because there are a lot of people involved in the whole process," said Emani.

When Apollo Tyres’ Chief Digital Officer (CDO) Hizmy Hassen committed to running all their reporting directly out of the platform, it signaled to teams that the transformation was non-negotiable. Championing the solution for reporting drove organization-wide adoption and eliminated the need to create PowerPoint or email reports.

"By leveraging Planview's AdaptiveWork capabilities, we can modernize our approach to project management and optimize our processes as an organization," said Hassen.

Emani also credits the success of user adoption to running regular user awareness sessions to address specific issues, and described the University of Planview – a free, self-service learning portal – as an indispensable resource.

The company’s initial rollout of Planview AdaptiveWork started with 75 users in the IT function and then expanded to support Apollo 2.0 with the addition of five portfolios and 150 users across multiple verticals. The platform’s RBAM capability enabled all users to access the platform while enforcing secure and compliant risk management controls. This ensured certain private data was not exposed to users who did not have proper clearance or involvement in those projects.

By leveraging AdaptiveWork's robust capabilities, Apollo Tyres delivered a key business objective: top-down visibility into strategic initiatives. Following the second implementation of AdaptiveWork across five additional business units, the enterprise also started to leverage the platform to capture non-strategic initiatives, primarily the execution of projects.

"We now have 100% of all strategic initiatives in AdaptiveWork. And we also have 50% of non-strategic initiatives in the platform too, because we need visibility on how many non-strategic initiatives there are across the organization." said Emani.

Within just two weeks of the second AdaptiveWork implementation, the company achieved an impressive 100% adoption rate among users. Emani attributes this to strong executive sponsorship and leveraging lessons learned from the first rollout. The University of Planview was also a key accelerator behind the highly successful adoption rate. This robust self-service portal provided users with on-demand e-Learning content, helping them quickly find answers to questions and confidently adopt the new product through hands-on education.

Apollo Tyres' KPI's also reflected the success of the AdaptiveWork implementation, jumping from an initial target of 75% to 95%, exceeding the organization's projected target for governance and project visibility.

Another key result was achieved by integrating AdaptiveWork with the company's Low code – application platform . This seamless connection enabled Apollo Tyres to capture crucial financial metrics required by their finance team. Automating the project Stage-Gate process ensured the consistent tracking and accurate reporting of Stage-Gate 5 financial metrics, including accurate Capex and OpEx financials.

Following the success of the implementation, an immediate goal of the organization is to deepen the system’s integrations, specifically with Power BI and Teams. This would enable the business to meet the critical reporting requirements of Apollo 2.0 and provide ease of access for project managers.

As governance matures, Apollo Tyres is also exploring AdaptiveWork's out-of-the-box resource planning capabilities to further optimize resource capacity. By adding key resource information to projects, such as resource names, the global manufacturer can unlock visibility into resource capacity and allocation across projects, driving further cost efficiencies across the business.

Looking forward, Emani is focused on ensuring the platform supports evolving business needs as it scales across the organization.