Brewer Scottish & Newcastle has reduced the time spent on IT planning by 80 per cent following the introduction of a portfolio management tool.

The CA Clarity software has proved so successful that other business groups want to deploy it for non IT-related tasks.

‘Although the new system is an IT portfolio management tool it can also be a project management tool, so groups across the business have been requesting the same system,’ said Scottish & Newcastle IT programme manager Graham Cairns.

The company, which brews drinks such as Kronenbourg 1664, Foster’s and Newcastle Brown Ale, installed the technology last year to cope with a surge in IT projects that rose from 70 to 130 in just three months, following several acquisitions.

In the past, Scottish & Newcastle’s annual budgeting process involved a manual evaluation of its project portfolio by 11 senior staff members, but the CA system has simplified the process with its reporting and analysis functions.

‘Before we implemented the tool we had 15,000 files that tracked all our project portfolio information,’ said Cairns. ‘We used to have to write things down on sticky pads and discuss project prioritisation in the same room for two weeks, whereas it now takes two days.’

Neil Macehiter, research director at analyst Macehiter Ward-Dutton, says aggregating IT project portfolio information allows prioritisation of software development needs to be understood by the board.

‘Portfolio management tools have reporting capabilities to feed the outbound process of communicating IT to the business as well as the inbound process of making portfolio management decisions,’ he said.