Driving data quality and accelerating R&D projects with a modern PPM solution

Retooling the ‘old toolboxes’

R&D is the heart of GN’s business. It’s where the product development lifecycle begins. Whether it’s the introduction of a new Bluetooth headset or an improvement to an existing device, all products go through R&D before they can be produced and sold. “R&D is driving development, revenue, and growth,” says GN Audio Improvement Project Manager Carl Meusinger. “That’s the way it should be, and we want to enable the organization to deliver at its best.” 

Enabling R&D to deliver at its best starts with putting the right digital tools at people’s fingertips. For the R&D Portfolio Management Office (PMO), which oversees a growing R&D project portfolio of increasing scale and complexity, it meant adopting a new solution to replace a disjointed project portfolio management (PPM) system. Key to effective PPM at GN is immediate access to high-quality data—ensuring the R&D management team, PMO, project managers, and line managers have the right information and insights at their disposal to make timely, strategic decisions to keep projects on track and in line with business goals.  

GN determined that the old system, which wasn't designed for PPM and was largely reliant on manual processes, multiple data sources, and enterprise software (SAP), was becoming insufficient for future ambitions. For a company that needs to be on top of every detail of every project, the system made it difficult to gain full visibility of project data, create reports, act on insights, and ultimately move projects swiftly through the R&D process. 

“At the pace we are working and with the number of people that we have grown to, it was no longer sustainable to work in these old toolboxes,” says Claus Holm, Senior Director of GN Audio’s R&D Management Office. “We began to see indications that working in these systems was impacting our efficiency.” 

GN needed a PPM system every bit as advanced and useful as the cutting-edge products it develops and manufactures. The company sought an agile, automated, and secure cloud solution that could modernize PPM—a tool to enable the R&D organization to proactively manage the portfolio from an app that functions as a central data hub. In this way, it would support higher-quality data, improved data entry, and rich planning capabilities to help bring projects to fruition in a future-proof manner. 

Modernizing PPM at GN

In 2020, GN launched an initiative to bring a modern, enterprise-level PPM solution to R&D. Led by a project team comprising Holm, Meusinger, and others, GN invited a host of vendors to demonstrate their solutions. Dynamics 365 Project Operations soon emerged as the obvious choice. 

The team selected Dynamics 365 Project Operations for its ability to meet GN’s requirements. These included the ability to serve as a single hub to unify projects, processes, information, and people—driving better data, collaboration, and decision-making. In addition, the tool offered powerful project management features and capabilities along with native integration with Microsoft tools the company uses daily, making it an easy fit with GN’s workflows and processes. And it gave PMO the ability to manage user roles, customize workflows by project, and integrate third-party solutions.  

“One of the things that led us to selecting Dynamics 365 Project Operations is that we are a Microsoft house,” says Meusinger. “We already have capabilities in-house that are geared toward Microsoft. Dynamics 365 Project Operations fits the way we think and the way our business operates. It speaks the same language as our everyday product development.”

Plus, says Meusinger, “A lot of the stuff we needed is available out of the box with Dynamics 365 Project Operations.”

Teaming up in 2021 with implementation partner Fellowmind, a Europe-based Microsoft partner and in Microsoft Business Applications 2021–2022 Inner Circle member, GN got to work on deploying the solution. Using a scaled agile framework process, GN and Fellowmind took a phased approach to implementing the app in the R&D department. They completed a minimum viable product (MVP) in just three months, launching in October 2021 to a small, 10-person group around GN’s R&D PMO.  

True transformation and transparency

Even with this initial, limited deployment, PMO users benefitted right away. As a centralized hub that consolidates R&D’s project portfolio in a single application, Dynamics 365 Project Operations simplifies their work and enables them to be more efficient and effective, giving them greater control of their project portfolio. Here are some of the benefits for the PMO. 

. With Dynamics 365 Project Operations, all R&D’s PPM data—everything related to its projects, such as project plans, costs, and soon resource allocations—is connected and centralized in the cloud instead of scattered across multiple sources and systems. Now, with Project Operations, the Dataverse cloud data engine that powers it, and automation via Microsoft Power Automate, any info PMO officials enter in the tool or from a connected service is available immediately—to everyone with access. 

Greater transparency of portfolio. Project Operations provides the PMO with a comprehensive view of the entire R&D project portfolio. From the navigation in the UI, users can click to see all projects at a glance and drill down into specific details of each project—the program and product division it belongs to, its status, the gates it needs to pass, its costs, and more. No longer must users scrutinize various worksheets, decks, repositories, and data sources for similar information. In addition, Project Operations has robust security controls, which GN can customize to its specific requirements and ensure a strong layer of protection to company data. 

Easy task completion. Automation and features align with R&D’s business processes simplify task completion. For example, to advance a project from one phase to the next, the user can click into the active gate in the process sequence (in GN’s case, a customized list based on project type) from the project page. This opens a pop-up containing a list of criteria or tasks. Once the information is entered into the app and all required criteria are met, the project automatically moves to the next phase. Data is synced to Dataverse, and if a stakeholder needs to be notified, a Power Automate flow will trigger a notification—either as a Microsoft Teams message or as an email. 

“It’s a much more efficient way to work,” says Holm. “When you enter something (in Dynamics 365 Project Operations), it enables an umbrella of other activities—and you will only need to enter it once.” 

Designed and customized for how GN works. Dynamics 365 Project Operations matches the company’s product development model. As such, R&D can customize the tool to support multiple project types within its portfolios—New Product Development (NPD), which are large projects, and Integrated Portfolio Planning (IPP), representing smaller ones. This is important because an IPP project, such as introducing a new feature or color variant to an existing product, doesn’t follow the same R&D process or require the capital investment and resources as developing a brand-new device.  

With Dynamics 365 Project Operations, all of R&D’s PPM data—including project plans, costs, and soon, resource allocations—is connected and centralized in the cloud instead of scattered across multiple sources and systems.

Customizable dashboard, reporting, and infographics. GN’s users can easily put the data to work for them. Dashboards and reports, leveraging built-in analytics and Microsoft Power BI integration, are just a click away, giving users interactive and visual reporting and insights in real time to facilitate better decision-making. Gone are the days of pulling data from multiple disconnected sources and creating reports from scratch. “This is a huge game-changer because we can provide quick access to reports that are needed on a daily basis,” says Holm. 

As powerful and capable as it is in helping PMO accomplish its goals, Dynamics 365 Project Operations brings much-needed agility to the group. “We chose this tool because it can help us consolidate the information we need in order to make decisions,” says Rikke Maria Grønborg Czuba, Head of R&D PMO at GN Audio. “And this tool is so flexible. We can facilitate different processes in the tool, making sure that we have a process for the bigger programs as well as the smaller programs. And that people can engage in the tool and provide data in the tool. Everything is in the tool, and we don’t have to figure out where to find the data.” 

Immediate business impact

With deployment still underway, the tool is already generating business value and accelerating projects. According to Holm, PMO users are achieving gains in efficiency, productivity, and time savings. And they’re realizing GN’s goal of increasing the quality of their data. “Just over the last three quarters of a year, we have significantly raised the quality of our data by approximately 50 percent,” says Holm, attributing the improvement to Project Operations and the integration of Power BI. 

For GN Audio Project Analyst Ridhin Sharma, centralized, transparent data saves time, increases efficiency, and reduces risk—including project delays. “In the past, there were some delays because of transparency—information was lying in different places and in different forms,” says Sharma, part of the select group to begin using the tool late last year. Sharma estimates that Dynamics 365 Project Operations could save him as much as 8–10 hours each week. 

The consolidation of information in a single app has not only made Sharma’s job easier but also enabled him to manage more projects without increasing his workload. “Dynamics 365 Project Operations saves me a lot of time,” he says. “All the information is stored in one system—I can see resources and finances at the same time. Rather than being able to take care of five to six projects in a whole week, I can take care of 10–15 projects. And we can kick off more projects as compared to previously.” 

As the company extends the solution to more users, it expects to see greater gains in terms of resource optimization, efficiency, productivity, and project capacity. 

A look ahead

The roll-out of Dynamics 365 Project Operations to GN Audio’s R&D organization continues and is expected to be completed later this year. GN recently introduced the tool to a larger user set besides the PMO—the project managers. Line managers will be the next to get their hands on it. 

In the meantime, GN has integrated a complementary, third-party project portfolio app from OnePlan, a Microsoft Gold Partner. This tool enables R&D users to perform specific business tasks, such as conducting simulations and what-if scenario planning, right from the Dynamics 365 Project Operations experience. The expanded capabilities allow R&D to optimize forecasting and tighten project execution.  

Looking ahead, Dynamics 365 Project Operations will figure prominently in the wider company’s migration to an upgraded ERP solution. That transition is expected to be completed sometime next year. 

Besides fulfilling immediate needs, Dynamics 365 Project Operations is also designed for the future—an evergreen solution that will enable GN to adapt and scale as requirements and opportunities necessitate. It’s a product GN can count on for many years to come. “When you look at the roadmap for Microsoft and how they think of Dynamics 365 Project Operations, it’s very much what we see as the future as well. That for us, of course, is also a good thing,” says Meusinger. “We’re building a solution here that will be here for 5, 10 years—you want a partner that you trust will be there as well and be there with you.” 

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