Industry
Financial Services (Credit Union)
Employees
400+ people
Challenges
- Disconnected systems creating significant manual work
- Difficulty strategizing resources across multiple teams
- Inability to view projects holistically, especially the need to view sprints data in a project schedule view
The Cal Coast Story
California Coast Credit Union (Cal Coast) is San Diego's longest-serving financial institution. Founded by teachers in 1929, it proudly supports local educators and the community through its Financial Wellness program, Cal Coast Cares events, and non-profit foundation. Today, Cal Coast manages more than $3.6 billion in assets, serving nearly 200,000 members through 26 branches, shared locations, online and mobile banking, and a nationwide ATM network.
Previous Project Management Software
For reporting and capacity planning, Cal Coast relied on a manual system of spreadsheets (Excel) and Power Bi for capacity planning, and PowerPoint for executive reporting. They used Microsoft Projects, Asana, and Jira for their project management needs. Harvest was used for time tracking.
Project Management Pain Points
- Lack of Integration: The reliance on disconnected systems caused significant manual work and other inevitable inefficiencies, creating challenges in managing large, complex projects effectively.
- Limited Capacity Planning: Cal Coast specifically needed help with top-down capacity planning across complex projects. It took a lot of work to strategically allocate resources across multiple teams which required making updates in Excel, importing to PowerBi. If changes were necessary, these steps were repeated. Tracking actual hours spent were captured in Harvest and then compared in Excel against estimated hours.
- Inefficient Reporting: Consolidating data wasn’t automated. Generating insightful reports from disparate tools was a manual and time-consuming process, which hindered real-time project tracking and decision-making.
How has Project Insight Helped Cal Coast?
- Centralize Project Data: Project Insight offers the ability to integrate and aggregate essential project plans, capacity planning, and task data directly from Jira into a single, unified platform, ensuring seamless project tracking.
- Streamline Workflows: Project Insight automates Cal Coast's processes, reducing the need for manual effort and eliminating the need to switch between systems. This streamlines workflows for managing projects and tasks.
- Robust Top-down Capacity Planning:Project Insight's resource management features provide strategic top-down capacity planning functionality that Cal Coast needs to track time and allocate resources effectively.
Specifically, Project Insight has helped Cal Coast:
- Get capacity planning out of spreadsheets
and into the same tool that manages projects and notifies teams.
- Implement top-down capacity
planning for helpdesk, operations, or admin teams.
- Show the C-Suite “what-if” capacity scenarios for projects and programs, answering questions like
"What will happen to your teams' workload if you take on this project?"
Why is Project Insight a Great Solution for Cal Coast?
- Consolidated Platform: Project Insight has become the central hub for Cal Coast's project management, eliminating the constant juggling of multiple tools, increasing overall efficiency, and offering real-time project planning updates across their entire portfolio.
- Enhanced Capacity Management: Cal Coast benefits from data-driven insights into their resource usage, empowering them to make informed decisions for both task-level work and broader project-level allocation. Project Insight's focus on top-down capacity planning has directly addressed one of its major pain points.
How does Cal Coast’s Project Management Work Now?
- Integration Focus: Cal Coast leverages the JIRA integration, pulling task-related data into Project Insight, while using Project Insight for overall capacity planning and high-level resource management, with a strong emphasis on top-down allocation in managing complex projects.
- Time Savings: The team has seen significant time savings due to Project Insight's automation, more efficient workflows, and real-time project reporting capabilities.
Scalability for Future Growth
Project Insight's flexibility and robust features provide a scalable project management solution that can organically grow with Cal Coast's evolving needs.