The London Borough of Tower Hamlets (LBTH), a culturally diverse area in East London, serves 320,000 residents and 20,000 businesses. To meet the borough’s evolving needs, LBTH has prioritized digital innovation through its Strategic Plan (2021-2024). A critical aspect of this plan is the IT transformation portfolio, focusing on automation, business intelligence, core systems transformation, and cyber security.

Gareth Bedford, Head of IT Transformation since 2018, sought to improve portfolio governance, visibility, and reporting within LBTH’s IT portfolio. Despite using Microsoft Planner Premium and Power BI, Gareth recognized the need for enhanced automation and reporting capabilities. This led him to partner with Wellingtone, a Microsoft Gold Partner, to leverage their Wellingtone Accelerator+ solution.

Overview

Customer

London Borough of Tower Hamlets

What did we do?

We implemented Microsoft Planner Premium with Wellingtone Accelerator+, enhanced by Power BI for easier decision making.

Key Benefits

• A scalable, customizable solution that transforms Planner Premium into an enterprise-ready solution.
• Deployed securely within the existing Microsoft tenant, with no third-party licences required.
• A consistent PPM approach with multiple live views across portfolio, programme, and project data.
• Uses Wellingtone’s Power BI reporting pack for fully customized, live, automated reports.
• Eliminates silos and promotes a single source of truth within a simple to use, powerful, toolkit.

Gareth wanted to maximize automated visibility and reporting capabilities across LBTH’s IT portfolio. “I needed a dashboard that could generate reports across statuses, risks, issues, and escalations,” he explains. “We were already licensed to use Planner Premium and Power BI as part of the Microsoft 365 suite. So, it made sense to enhance what was available to us, rather than further expanding our product catalogue. We were clear on the insights we needed to generate, but we did not have the in-house expertise to configure the technology at this level. I first engaged with Wellingtone some years ago at a Microsoft event and I felt that their specialities aligned with the skills I was looking for. We were attracted by their technical expertise. Additionally, the support they offered would help us to maintain and maximize the solution they designed for us.”

Customizing the Wellingtone Acccelerator+

Wellingtone tackled the work using their proprietary Accelerator+ Power App. This customizable, scalable solution is deployed securely within the client’s existing Microsoft tenant, enhancing Planner Premium’s ‘off-the-shelf’ capabilities. Users can access a single source of portfolio truth – configured to the organization’s specific portfolio and program management priorities, and available in an intuitive live environment.

Wellingtone also worked with Gareth and his team to customize and automate dashboard reporting using their specially designed Power BI reporting pack. Reports were tailored to generate valuable, real-time insights into change requests, risks and issues, and projects by status. “Wellingtone helped us to embed stage gates into our four-stage delivery life cycle,” Gareth explains. “They configured the system with structured workflows featuring checklists and time stamped approvals, which adds an important accountability trail to our governance procedures.”

Wellingtone helped us to maximize the tools we already had at our disposal to achieve a modern approach to automation, business intelligence and portfolio management. It has been a pleasure working with their Lead PPM Consultant and the whole team, they have all been great.

Gareth Bedford, Head of IT Transformation

Wellingtone also supported Gareth and his team with user training and rollout. Initially, the customised versions of Planner Premium and Power BI have been adopted by users within the IT department. “I was pleased with not only the speed but also the quality of the configuration,” says Gareth. “We are focusing on a manageable approach to onboarding, migrating only live and pending IT projects into the new system. So far, we have only been fully operational under Wellingtone’s support contract for around a month, so we have not yet been able to formally measure benefits. But, from my perspective, you can tell straight away whether something is having a positive impact, and this piece of work undoubtedly is.”

It will be some time before we’re fully migrated, but already we are increasing efficiency, saving time, and generating more portfolio visibility and control.

Gareth Bedford, Head of IT Transformation