Case Study:
A wildly successful sportswear company, Nike was not without its business challenges. Their efforts to introduce new products were going over budget and failing to make it to market on time. When Advisicon migrated them over to Microsoft Project and trained their teams in the software, Nike’s processes were revolutionized. MS Project lets them stay on track, manage resources, and plan their tasks on a worldwide level.
Business Situation
Nike had to coordinate critical deadlines for not only the creating of new or improved products, but the implementation required a global supply chain and competing initiative demands that were localized to tight timelines or key market launch windows. Nike was experiencing major misses costing millions of dollars in lost revenue, market share, and unhappy customers.
Solution Delivered
Advisicon set up, migrated, and trained the Project Offices in using MS Project (Enterprise) and consolidated key skillsets into a single Global Resource pool—centralizing all project work across North America and Europe. Both Project Offices were given complete visibility to key activities, deadlines, and milestones (as they were being managed). Further, they could address any slippages weekly. MS Project enabled them to leverage critical resources across resource groups, forecast which skillsets would be needed, and assess which materials had to be procured to continue to meet their tight timelines.
Benefits Received
Nike enjoys being able to shift and prioritize project workload, as well as re-assign resources to critical projects. By centralizing to a single pool of skillsets, they avoid downtime and lost productivity. They tackle an increased workload while meeting their existing deliverable deadlines. They’re less vulnerable to market or global changes and can rapidly adapt their geographically diverse supply/manufacturing teams to address skillset shortages, material deficits, customer changes, and personnel issues. Nike tied their ERP systems to Project data for better cost analysis and insight into the budgeted forecast. Executives now make real-time adjustments based on global opportunities for materials & labor, all while holding their teams accountable to the project budget spend.
The Company Today
Nike strives for a global team that’s “empowered, diverse and inclusive.” They consistently aim to make their products more sustainable. They continue to experience growth as a company, full-year reported revenue increasing by 19% to $44.5 billion in their most recent fiscal year (2021).
