Workfront Implementation Unifies 26 Teams Seamlessly

Challenge

Workplace silos drain productivity and hinder collaboration across teams, yet more than half of organizations continue to operate in isolation. With silos negatively impacting workplace performance and efficiency, it’s crucial that large enterprises operate with seamless collaboration across teams, as well as streamlined, centralized processes that enable real-time visibility and drive strategic alignment. 

When our client, a prominent healthcare insurance company, came to us, they lacked a centralized project management system, with each team relying on its own unique processes, intake forms, and project management tools.

These barriers created inefficiencies that resulted in a lack of strategic planning, duplication of work, and an inability to view timelines across cross-functional teams, ultimately leading to missed deadlines and frustrated teams and leadership.

To overcome these challenges, our client needed a centralized platform to streamline all work, ensuring visibility across functional teams and eliminating silos.

Outcome

Implementing a new project management tool across 26 teams and 200+ users is no easy feat. MERGE embarked on a 16-week Workfront implementation journey, starting with the mobilization of key stakeholders.

This stage focused on setting the stage for a successful implementation by providing a clear overview of MERGE's proven methodology, outlining engagement expectations, and collaborating with the core team to identify high-level pain points and requirements. These insights laid the groundwork for tailored recommendations and ensured that the discovery sessions were structured for maximum impact.

Once the foundation was set and stakeholder alignment was achieved, MERGE conducted immersion sessions with each team to understand the following:

Intake: How is new work requested? 

Workflow: What are the teams’ existing processes for managing work?  

Roles: What roles do team members play?  

Reporting: What KPIs does the organization want to track, and how do these objectives align to work structure? 

Once discovery was complete, MERGE developed and finalized each team’s requirements and began the Workfront Solution Design, which consisted of building the following within Workfront:

• 4 custom forms
• 12 project templates
• 15 persona layout templates
• 2-3 reports per persona, including 25 dashboards

MERGE also assisted with cost and invoice tracking, user setup, system project hierarchy, and integrated Single Sign On (SSO).

Once the solution design was approved, MERGE transitioned into the full configuration of the Workfront environment. During this phase, the team adopted an iterative approach, building the system while incorporating client feedback at every step. Two rounds of reviews allowed for thorough testing, adjustments, and refinements based on client feedback to ensure the final configuration met all needs. This process concluded with final approval, confirming the configuration was optimized and ready for launch.

To ensure individuals on each team understood how this new system worked, MERGE conducted 18 hours of customized, persona-based training, as well as post-deployment support to address client questions as they learned the new tool. 

Results

After 16 weeks of thorough discovery, configuration, testing, and training, MERGE successfully implemented Workfront as the client’s single source of truth for work management.

By performing a comprehensive analysis of client challenges and collecting new requirements, MERGE was able to develop cohesive workflows and intake forms to streamline work and increase cross-team collaboration. 

Additionally, MERGE removed the silos and created transparency across cross-functional teams and leadership, improving efficiency by enabling better resource allocation, reducing duplication of work, and ensuring project timelines were consistently met.

Ultimately, this led to a state of empowerment where teams are now able to work transparently, efficiently, and effectively.