Microsoft Project helps Danish skylight manufacturer unify data systems and remote employees while improving processes

For more than 80 years, the VELUX group has been manufacturing roof windows and skylights with an eye toward innovation and sustainable solutions to create better indoor environments. Headquartered in Denmark, the company derives its name from the word ventilation for VE, and LUX, the Latin word for light. Company founder Villum Kann Rasmussen is credited as the inventor of the modern residential roof skylight.

With a presence in more than 40 countries and a workforce of more than 12,000, the company sought a more cohesive project portfolio management (PPM) solution that would optimize usability and allow for greater scalability. VELUX evaluated several choices and ultimately selected Microsoft Project. “Microsoft met all of our usability and scalability requirements really well,” says Martin Sørensen, Senior Solution Architect in Product Development at VELUX.

Development began in August 2021, and the solution was ready for training to kick off in October of that year. By December 2021, the firm had trained more than 200 employees and migrated about 1,000 projects. Projects are now operating more cohesively, time to market has improved, and the company’s user satisfaction score has more than doubled.

Seeking a ‘single source of truth’

VELUX knew what it wanted. In its prior state, the company was functionally divided and polarized in its working ways among business functions and locations. Data in one part of its legacy system didn’t always match that in others. “As we revisited our operating model, we quickly realized that we needed a single source of truth. A solution that could unify our projects and not only give us project management efficiency, but portfolio management capabilities as well,” says Anders Fogh, Head of Process and Operations, Product Development at VELUX.

To match the requirements of the new operating model, the solution had to be easy to use, efficient, and fast. It was critical to have a solution VELUX could easily add to and build upon, especially as the company scales. “The way we managed projects was no longer working. We needed a change,“ says Fogh.

Connecting teams while creating efficiencies

The company was already using Microsoft 365, so Project aligned to its IT strategy. Project provides an intuitive user interface for project managers, regardless of experience. A senior project manager (PM) could use it for a multifaceted project, while a less experienced PM could jump in without a huge learning curve to use it to tackle minor updates to a component, for example.

The integration with Microsoft Teams is a key feature that allows project teams to work connectedly in real time, despite not sitting in the same room. “It's not just a project manager who can update the project core data; it’s all project participants, who can now actually work in that hybrid environment together as a team,” says Fogh.

Because so many team members are familiar with Microsoft products, the migration to Project has been simple and intuitive. Sørensen adds, “Furthermore, the system is highly responsive. Because it’s web-based, it has made for a seamless transition as we work in an increasingly hybrid environment.”

Providing a portfolio overview companywide

Currently, Project is being used by 2,000 VELUX employees. It was a clear objective for the new operating model to enable an engaged cross-functional workforce. Therefore, Project has been rolled out internally across all product development teams, including project managers, developers, technical project managers, product managers, supply project managers, and portfolio managers.

This rollout enables a higher degree of cross-functional collaboration within and among product development projects at VELUX. “Our user satisfaction score on the systems supporting our portfolio and project planning continues to significantly increase since moving to the new setup with the PPM platform,” says Fogh.

Project has made working across the organization easier, supports the different ways employees work, and shares the learnings of employees who have found easier ways to complete tasks. “The change management part of gaining more efficiency into the organization has improved,” says Fogh. Along with the VELUX leadership team, Fogh is also happy to see that the improvement of teams working better together, and having a system that supports that process, is also reflecting in a generally lower time to market.

Built on Microsoft Power Platform, Project for the web links the project plan to the portfolio as well as the project to the collaboration method with Teams and the project to reporting (via interactive dashboards). This brings all the solutions under one umbrella. “With Project and features from Power Platform, like seamless Microsoft Power BI integrations, we finally have our entire portfolio on a single system. This was possible because Project has the flexibility to handle a lot of different types of projects and methodologies,” says Sørensen.

VELUX took advantage of Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Automate to build an enterprise application. The ability to customize using model-driven apps and canvas apps is increasingly important at VELUX because many of its team members in the field and at its production sites might not have access to laptops.

To help build the enterprise application, VELUX leaned on Fellowmind, a Microsoft Partner Network Member. "It has been a privilege to help VELUX support their sustainability strategy and develop a PPM tool across the entire organization—growing from legacy solutions and methods to modern and efficient ways of working by focusing on clear goals and performing decisive prioritizations,” says Peter Kjær, Senior PPM Consultant at Fellowmind.

“We get tips like, ‘Move the placement of a pre-drilled hole to make installs easier.’ It’s amazing that we can now capture all of this feedback in Project. Leadership can review and prioritize the feedback, and we can quickly turn them into actionable insights. Great ideas can come from anywhere and make our products better. This app has democratized feedback by allowing us to truly listen to our entire team; it wouldn’t have been possible without our PPM solution based on Microsoft Project,” says Fogh. “This is supported by the feedback we get from our colleagues, saying that we are at the forefront of user-friendly technology,” says Sørensen.

Planning what’s next

By unifying the company’s operations, Project is not only a project management tool; it’s also a portfolio management tool. Now leadership has an overview into what is happening across different projects, product groups, and locations, and can make strategic decisions about what to prioritize and where to invest. “Having this portfolio-level view of operations has helped make us even more strategic,” says Sørensen.

VELUX has wrapped up a month-long migration to move all remaining Project Online instances to Project for the web. Meanwhile, it will continue onboarding employees through 2023 and beyond.

“Having a standardized way of working with a cloud solution like the Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) platform we built with Project for the web speaks to the new ways of working,” says Fogh.

The company will be expanding its PPM solution and Microsoft Project into other parts of the business. Fogh says its teams across the supply and commercial areas are “knocking down our doors to be part of the success and get access, so we’re working toward making that happen.”

“With the success we’ve had [with Project] in Product Development, IT has decided it wants this solution as the standard enterprise solution for PPM, so we will definitely be expanding. This means that anywhere where we are working with projects, utilizing the PPM platform that we've built will be the preferred option going forward,” says Fogh.

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