The Challenge
Intek Plastics, a manufacturing company focused on growth through acquisition, needed a more efficient way to manage post-merger integration processes in order to realize value from their investments as quickly as possible. Their previous approach relied heavily on Excel spreadsheets, creating critical challenges that slowed integration progress and delayed ROI:
- Inefficient project management that often resulted in missed steps and delays
- Limited visibility into project status and progress
- Difficulty tracking dependencies and priorities across integration workstreams
- No standardized way to manage cross-functional team collaboration
The Process
Under the leadership of Project Manager Caleb Sandahl, PMP, Intek Plastics evaluated approximately 20 different software solutions, including specialized M&A platforms. While other options focused heavily on pre-merger due diligence, Intek primarily needed post-merger integration management including:
- A better solution for managing complex, cross-functional M&A projects to ensure fast time to value from their investment
- Visibility into resource and capacity levels to avoid bottlenecks causing project delays
- A way to centralize data to provide real-time reporting on project and portfolio status
After evaluating the options, Intek chose Prism for its comprehensive project portfolio management capabilities. Implementation was remarkably swift – within weeks the Prism PPM platform was being used to manage M&A integration tasks including IT integrations.
The Solution
The implementation of Prism PPM has delivered significant improvements in Intek’s M&A integration process:
- Enhanced Visibility and Collaboration
- Provided real-time visibility into project status across all integration workstreams
- Enabled better cross-functional collaboration between approximately 25 team members
- A “living document” environment now exists where updates are immediately visible to all stakeholders
- Improved ability to track dependencies and prioritize tasks across IT, HR, finance, and executive teams
- Standardized Integration Management
- Developed repeatable templates for future M&A integrations
- Established clear workflows that can be customized for different types of acquisitions
- Eliminated the problem of missed steps that was common with spreadsheet-based tracking
Unexpected Benefits
While future M&A activity will be managed in Prism PPM, there’s also growing interest across departments in using the platform for various other project portfolio needs, including manufacturing teams considering replacing legacy systems with Prism PPM for improved efficiency and project governance.
“I’m getting a lot of excitement built up because of Prism PPM, and I’ve got people knocking on my door all the time asking, ‘Hey, can we do this?”
The success of this implementation has positioned Intek Plastics for more efficient future acquisitions with standardized integration processes, better cross-functional collaboration capabilities, and a scalable project management framework.
As Intek continues its growth-by-acquisition strategy, Prism has become a crucial tool for ensuring smooth integrations and maintaining operational efficiency across the expanding organization to ensure they reach and exceed breakeven on their capital investments.
“The overall difference is that we have that visibility to work together as a team. Prism PPM has created more momentum toward getting things done on time and ensuring things don’t get missed.”
Caleb Sandahl
PMP, Project Manager, Intek Plastics