Rationalize rituals around a project portfolio

Before/After AirSaaS

The context: key figures, company etc.

CHIESI is an Italian family biopharmaceutical group. With 85 years of existence, it brings together nearly 6,500 employees in the world. CHIESI achieved a turnover of nearly €175 million in 2022. In addition to the “B-Corp” certification, since April 2021, CHIESI France has been the first pharmaceutical laboratory company "with a Mission”.

Its head office is based in Bois-Colombes (92) and the French factory is based in La Chaussée-Saint-Victor near Blois (41). The France subsidiary includes more than 350 employees (230 people in headquarters and on the field/26 people in R&D/103 people at the factory).

The Challenge: rationalize rituals around a project portfolio

To manage the portfolio, projects and initiatives, upon arrival, Clément discovered a smartsheet with projects that were not up to date and on which he did not necessarily have a budget in mind.

He decided to go back to basics with his team. They put all the initiatives on post-its, then in a project schedule. And finally, they added a budget.

To follow projects' lifecycles, a PowerPoint file was updated once a week, and ritualized with the whole team.

One of the team's collective challenges was then to get the tools they needed to avoid long meetings. In fact, the presentation tool encouraged them to go through all the slides during each review.

The solution: Project weather forecasting to see the delta on project lifecycle with AirSaaS

Implemented just three months ago for Clément, this use of AirSaas is already common to the whole team:

”Today the weather is the only indicator that I ask the team to fill in. It's a must-have: it needs to be up to date.”

Clément put a 1/4-hour reminder in their diaries on Monday mornings.

“I told them that we had no right to fail on this subject, and that it had to work.”

They now spend 1 hour a week together on project review. Each person has four minutes with the delta to present only. As soon as it exceeds 3/4 minutes on a subject a separate meeting is set up.

He points out that, in addition to this first simplification, they were also able to delete the monthly project review day who had the same issue. He confides that they took advantage of it to ”put an end to PowerPoints.”

Create communication spaces to destroy silos within the IT department itself

As Clément points out that, even though we're all in the same team, sometimes things can get a bit “siloed”.

“When everyone's head is in the sand, we don't take the time to communicate. AirSaas helps us to align and communicate”.

For them, this review is an effective opportunity to ask “what happened last week/what's going to happen this week?

For our IT department, having a weekly one-hour chat with this tool enables us to better anticipate needs.

In addition to the tech team, today he shares his use of the AirSaas solution with  Chiesi Group's CFO and global CIO. For the time being: “With the other departments, it's only sporadic, it's coming along very slowly”.

The next step will be to pilot with decisions and milestones, and to co-pilot with the business units.

The aim is to involve business units in projects. First of all, show them what's going on, then get them involved in the project.

Bonus section

What's your favorite feature? The Table view

What I really like is the Table view that's just arrived. For me, it sums up the essence of AirSaas.

Introduce AirSaaS to a CIO who doesn't know it

In one sentence, for Clément “it's a tool for project governance without PowerPoint.”  I explain that it's a template kept up to date all the time. There's no “rework” involved.

A feature that would interest you in the future?

“I tackled AirSaas in power BI for my budget management, particularly Capex and residual costs. What I don't have are the customs fields to bridge the gap between SAP tools and the group's budgeting tools.”

Express Bio - Clément Royer

A graduate of ESIEA and former IT Director of the SERB pharmaceutical group, Clément has been CIO - ICT MANAGER of the French subsidiary of the Chiesi group for almost two years. In agreement with his management, he also occasionally works as an independent consultant.

This singularity enables him to open up to new approaches and tools. It was thanks to this that he discovered AirSaas and was able to pass on its benefits to his company.

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