Project work independent of location and device with the help of automation
The city of Turku is a city of science, culture, and vibrant and sustainable development. Turku was founded in 1229 and is thus the oldest city in Finland. With a population of 337,000 in the Turku region, Turku is Finland’s sixth largest municipality, which strives to become an international model city for sustainable solutions and a pioneer in smart mobility.
The IT services of the city of Turku serve all the different units of the entire city as well as group companies in various IT matters, producing and developing different IT solutions for their customers and maintaining the performance of existing tools and systems. IT services serve a total of more than 20,000 users with approximately 70 employees.
Smoother project work for today’s needs
In IT services, there is a need to monitor the situation and progress of projects and services in service production, as well as which projects project managers, service managers and experts spend working time on.
Previously, the unit used the Microsoft Project Server tool, but it was considered as too heavy and rigid, and it no longer suited today’s processes and the needs of remote working.
“The work management, through which we project managers, for example, report on the progress of projects, must work at home as well,” explains Esa-Ville Vanhatupa, project manager at the IT services of the city of Turku.
The goal was to find a new tool through which things could be done more easily than before, which would be available regardless of location and device, and where all functions would be centralized within Teams: reporting on the progress of projects and services, easy tracking of worktime, and monitoring the status of work management from reports.
“A competition was organized for the implementation of this solution and Solu Digital Oy was selected as the winner based on their good offer, and that’s why they were selected as our partner. Of course, we have collaborated with Solu before and it has gone really well in the past, so it was easy to start doing this as well,” says Esa-Ville.
“A competition was organized for the implementation of this solution and Solu Digital Oy was selected as the winner based on their good offer, and that’s why they were selected as our partner. Of course, we have collaborated with Solu before and it has gone really well in the past, so it was easy to start doing this as well.”
Esa-Ville Vanhatupa
Project manager
IT services of the city of Turku
All stages of a project on Teams with the help of Solu 365
The solution that meets the needs is completely based on the Microsoft platform, which also works with a browser. The whole solution is based on the Solu 365 tool, which is used to create new projects for the Microsoft Project for the Web tool. After this, for example, the hourly recording items and the workspace of the project itself in Teams, as well as all Microsoft Power BI reports, are created automatically.
“Now everything really works regardless of location and device, which means that doing work has become more flexible in a certain way. Today, automation does many things that we had to do manually in several different places, so in a certain way the time spent on that work has decreased and become easier.”
Esa-Ville Vanhatupa
Project manager
IT services of the city of Turku
Before the Solu 365 tool, recording hours required a lot more effort from many people as project managers had to define hour recording items for each person so that they can record hours. Today, the hour recording items are created automatically for a certain project, and anyone recording their hours can directly do so on the items by themselves.
“When everything works through Teams, at least for me as a project manager, it’s enough that when you open Teams, you can do everything through it, such as report situations and record hourly work and also then see from the reports how things are going.”
Esa-Ville Vanhatupa
Project manager
IT services of the city of Turku
Ease of doing business fosters cooperation
The IT services employees of the city of Turku have been satisfied with the new solution and the benefits brought by its automation. After reducing the number of manual steps and procedures for employees, time is left to take care of the most important things in terms of work.
“The best thing about cooperating with Solu Digital is that it is easy to cooperate with them and everything goes smoothly, quickly and without problems.”
Esa-Ville Vanhatupa
Project manager
IT services of the city of Turku
In particular, one point of contact at Solu Digital for the customer, with whom things have been handled, has pleased Esa-Ville in cooperation.
“If there has been a problem, everything has been taken care of very quickly, so there has been no need to wait for anything. The project schedule was also completely true to what was initially planned, so basically everything has gone at least as expected and maybe even a little better.”
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