Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions quickly turns innovation into commercialization with Smartsheet Modern PPM

Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, part of global Japanese manufacturer Toshiba Tec Corp., supplies technology solutions to some of the world’s largest retailers. The company has installed more than three million point-of-sale and self-checkout systems worldwide, helping grocery chains and other retail stores improve performance, increase operational control, and offer a better customer experience.

The company leverages Smartsheet Modern PPM as its execution environment for end-to-end project and portfolio management (PPM) processes. “Smartsheet Modern PPM helps us manage our process for translating our strategy into specific solutions, ultimately resulting in the commercialization of new products,” says Brian Taylor, director of solution strategy for Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions. “This entire process is cross-functional, involving all the organization’s business units.”

For Taylor and other managers, PPM processes were anything but streamlined prior to the adoption of Smartsheet, because the organization’s numerous product and project teams used a disparate mix of databases, spreadsheets, document repositories, and project management tools. “All our teams managed processes in unique ways and there was really not enough consistency,” says Taylor. “We also struggled with driving leadership visibility around project risks, issues, and actions.” Each business team spent hours every week preparing slides to show project status updates to executives. “Overall, our program execution environment was not ideal because it was not automated and standardized across teams to support roll-up reporting to stakeholders,” Taylor says. “The net result was inconsistency and a lack of visibility into projects. This made it difficult to monitor progress and resolve issues quickly, which sometimes led to issues and delays.”

Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions knew it needed a process that could accelerate time to market for new products. “We needed a better way of taking something new and innovative and turning that from an idea into a marketable product,” says Taylor.

Tracking Project Portfolios and Processes with Smartsheet Modern PPM 

Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions had previous experience working with Smartsheet in other areas of the company, which made it appealing to program managers.

“Smartsheet allows us to build a set of tools around our processes, instead of having to tailor our processes to our available tools,” says Scott Graham, senior program manager, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions.

“The customizable templates from Smartsheet allow us to roll out continuous and incremental process change quickly across projects.”

The company uses Smartsheet Modern PPM to track more than 40 projects across its portfolio and manage the processes for introducing new solutions. Any business unit can initiate a project, kicking off an automated process workflow in Smartsheet.  Each new project triggers the provisioning of a blueprint in Smartsheet Control Center, which tracks the project from beginning to end. As a result, program managers, sales and marketing teams, finance employees, and development leaders can track projects, risks, actions, and issues in a standardized way. Workflow automations also send out reminders about key project milestones and deadlines to stakeholders. 

Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions takes advantage of Smartsheet dashboards to give program managers a detailed, at-a-glance view of how individual projects are progressing. The company also uses portfolio-level dashboards to present project snapshots to portfolio owners and executives across the business. “Our leadership teams can use Smartsheet to get a quick view of all projects in the portfolio, to see the status, the risks or issues, and what needs to be done if a project is overdue or not on track,” says Graham. 

Smartsheet Professional Services Delivers an End-to-End PPM Solution 

When it initially adopted Smartsheet, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions turned to Smartsheet Professional Services for assistance setting up Control Center templates. “We had some initial ideas on how we wanted our environment to work, so we had conversations with the Professional Services team,” Graham says. “One of the things our executives wanted was a lot of complex metrics. There were some techniques that would have never occurred to us, because we’re not experts and those things are second nature to Smartsheet Professional Services. Professional Services guided us step by step through everything, from refining the architecture to building and testing the environment. We ended up with something far greater than I initially expected, and Professional Services made it possible for us to have a more sustainable, manageable, scalable solution.”

Throughout the solution design and deployment, Smartsheet Professional Services provided a dashboard for Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions to quickly view the number of hours used as well as the detailed project schedule for each project phase. “If someone asked me for a status update, I could just pull up the information and share the user story or the architecture diagram,” says Graham. 

Without the assistance of Smartsheet Professional Services, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions would likely not have been able to build its own solution on schedule. “As easy as Smartsheet is, we’re still not experts when it comes to doing the complex things we needed to do,” Graham says. “Who knows what we would have built without the help of Smartsheet Professional Services? It would probably have been unmanageable. Professional Services was invaluable in terms of guiding us on the right path.”

Standardized, Consistent Project Portfolio Management 

Using Smartsheet Modern PPM, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions now has a standardized process toolkit for bringing solutions to market, giving program and product managers clarity and consistency regarding tasks, roles, and responsibilities. Instead of relying on different tools and lacking project visibility, teams can now easily monitor the status of each project in the company’s portfolio.

“With Smartsheet, all our projects have consistent blueprints, dashboards, and methodologies for full program management throughout the process,” Graham says. “Regardless of the business unit, we are all fully aligned on our projects.”

Faster Time to Market for New Products

Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions has capitalized on the automation and consistency in Smartsheet to form smaller, agile project teams that can conceptualize solutions quickly. “Using Smartsheet, we can experiment more and create and fail fast,” says Taylor. “Smartsheet enables the transition from innovation to commercialization by integrating all divisions of the company, from marketing and sales to product development and support. Because we have standardized our processes and aligned our teams on each project, our processes now culminate in a successful move to production, where we can have new solutions commercialized and operational faster than before.”

Focused on Providing More Value to the Company 

Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions has capitalized on the automation and consistency in Smartsheet to form smaller, agile project teams that can conceptualize solutions quickly. “Using Smartsheet, we have gained efficiency in terms of coordinating projects, reporting, and running meetings,” Taylor says. “We’re no longer in an environment where we have to create presentations for different business units every week. We now operate in a real-time manner where people can easily track tasks and change delivery dates on projects, for example, so I don’t have to track people down for status updates.”

The company’s program and product managers have reduced the amount of time previously spent creating status slides and other materials to present during meetings. “We have seen a 25 percent efficiency gain from using Smartsheet for program management,” says Taylor.

“For example, we conducted a survey of program managers, and it revealed they spend more than four hours less each week preparing status reports and meeting minutes. With more time at their disposal, program managers can contribute to the company by focusing on higher-value activities. Time savings also means we have the capacity to take on more projects, which will help us move the company forward by delivering innovative new solutions to our customers.” 

For more information about this story, please see our case study.