Communication Team

Project management as a service for corporate clients

Successfully completing change projects

The management consultancy Communication Team oversees, leads, and implements (IT) large-scale projects for medium-sized companies as well as industrial enterprises, using InLoox to make project management and communication more effective and transparent.

For 30 years, Communication Team has supported clients in various industries and international projects. The company specializes in transformation and change initiatives and offers not only consulting services but also hands-on implementation, measuring its success against project outcomes. Founder and CEO Florian M. Muth has developed a unique approach that combines management, organizational, and IT consulting with project management expertise and technical know-how to ensure large-scale projects are completed effectively and efficiently.

“Our clients turn to us for transformation and change projects because they lack sufficient internal resources and experience to plan and execute strategically important large-scale initiatives”, says Florian M. Muth. Such internal projects usually become necessary in times of change. For example, after growth spurts, the introduction of mission-critical applications, acquisitions, integrations, or divestments.

Why even large companies are often not set up to handle internal organizational projects on their own – for example, to introduce systems such as ERP solutions, innovations, new processes, or products? In addition to non-standardized processes and a lack of know-how and experience, there are several other reasons according to Muth: companies often lack internal resources because day-to-day business takes priority, and they also lack an integrated tool environment. Moreover, the time frame of one to four years for large projects is frequently underestimated and cannot realistically be managed by internal staff without additional support.

Platform for project management

Communication Team offers its clients tailored solutions that include project management as a managed service with methods and toolsets, as well as starter kits for implementation. For the components of the solution that cover project planning and control, resource management, and project communication, the company relies on the InLoox project platform. InLoox is also connected to other tools, enabling the integrated management of budget, risk, and test management, as well as dashboards, analytics, and reports.

Communication Team chose InLoox because it enables the company to manage many projects simultaneously, some of which involve up to one hundred project members. Another reason was that clients use very different IT infrastructures. As a web-based solution, InLoox is immediately operational and independent of a company’s specific infrastructure, with no need for complex or approval-intensive IT integration. This was decisive for Communication Team to adopt the SaaS solution right from its launch in 2011. “With InLoox, projects could already be planned and managed intuitively and easily back then – and even more so today – while at the same time benefiting from a continuously growing range of features,” says Muth.

Central hub for planning

“InLoox is our tool for steering projects and for keeping an overview at all times,” says Muth. “We can plan activities in InLoox and also highlight changes that have emerged in more detailed levels from other tools.” An example of this is managing tasks that are broken down into smaller units and handled in subordinate tools, such as business process initiatives. In addition, InLoox enables very detailed release planning of sub-tasks or even scheduling down to the hourly level.

Monitoring task management tools in business process initiatives

Typically, large-scale or organizational development projects involve introducing or restructuring one or more IT systems. Many specialized tool providers are usually involved in these implementations. According to Muth, hundreds if not thousands of activities and tasks arise over the course of months or years in each large project, all of which need to be organized somehow. These tasks are managed using task management tools such as Jira or Azure DevOps, which define what work needs to be done, when, and by whom.

Bidirectional integration, structured workflows, documenting changes

“InLoox helps us tremendously to monitor and structure the many tools,” says Muth. “Thanks to the bidirectional integration with other systems, for example in task management with Jira or Azure DevOps, InLoox allows us to organize individual tasks into a coherent structure. If tasks have changed, users can trace this back in InLoox. Task management is mirrored in InLoox, and the reverse is also possible: if a new plan is created in InLoox, it is written back into the task management system. In addition, other tools can be used to generate reports and perform analyses.”

“With our solution, we can make decisions together with our clients in large projects based on actual, real-time data regarding planning and the future,” says Muth. Thanks to the Gantt chart, the project overview is visually engaging, easy to interpret, and highly transparent.

Overview of task tracking

Project managers benefit in their daily work because InLoox provides them with a clear overview for tracking tasks. The status can be highlighted through color coding, showing in detail what is happening in the task management system. In a way, this visualization functions as a dashboard for project managers who do not want to dive into every single task. They can quickly gain a daily or even hourly overview to decide where to follow up, where problems may arise, or where intervention might be needed.

Communication Team uses InLoox in combination with its powerful API. The API not only provides access to all InLoox functions but also enables integration and interaction with other tools offered by the company. This makes it possible to generate reports and run analyses across different systems. For example, project results can be viewed from a different perspective than the time-based view in InLoox: such as degree of completion, test coverage, or test results. Integration with risk management is also highly important, as it helps identify and eliminate potential issues that could affect large-scale projects.

^{Image: InLoox enables the planning of processes, displaying changes that have arisen in other tools at further levels of detail. ©InLoox, Inc.}

Spillover effects of the new project culture

One of the key aspects of successful change projects, according to Muth, is the project culture that evolves over time and continues to develop. Project members not only adopt new ways of working and rules during the project itself, but also continue to apply them in their regular day-to-day responsibilities. The practical experience they build in projects therefore have a positive impact on their departments and contribute to long-term change management within the company.