Unlocking strategic alignment and execution excellence

In the fast-paced realm of investments, rapidity and insightfulness are key to success. This statement is especially true for FactSet, a prominent provider of financial data analytics. To sustain its growth and maintain superior client services, the company recognized the necessity to enhance its customer-centric approach and accelerate software development. Its evolution toward an agile methodology, though beneficial, revealed the need for a more robust and comprehensive toolset to facilitate a large-scale transformation.

Sanjeev Acharya, head of project and portfolio management technology at FactSet, articulates this challenge: “We lacked a cohesive view and clarity across all ongoing activities,” he states. “Each team was utilizing their individual spreadsheets, resulting in a disconnect about who was handling what.”

Acharya further elaborates on the lack of visibility: “Priorities were often misaligned, projects deviated from strategic objectives and the organization struggled to optimally allocate its human resources.”

In essence, the challenge for FactSet was not merely about adopting a more customer-oriented mindset. It was also about implementing the right tools and processes to ensure alignment, transparency and efficient resource allocation across projects and teams. This realization marked a pivotal turning point in FactSet’s journey toward becoming a more agile and customer-focused enterprise.

FactSet tackled its challenges by evaluating various project and portfolio management tools, eventually choosing IBM® Targetprocess. The solution’s strength in connecting teams, products and portfolios to broader business objectives, while facilitating agile scalability, was a key factor in its selection. After the implementation, FactSet’s leadership defined strategic projects on Targetprocess, offering teams a clear perspective on workload and alignment with business objectives.

Previously relying on Jira for team-level task management, FactSet found the integration capabilities of Targetprocess with Jira to be crucial. Acharya states: “We have real-time integration with Jira, and we’re passing a lot of information back and forth.”

Targetprocess also simplified program and project management reporting, replacing spreadsheets and other disparate sources, and became the centralized source for information and reporting data. “Our aim is to establish Targetprocess as the definitive source for our information and reporting requirements,” Acharya notes.

Moreover, Targetprocess mitigated work redundancy by enhancing visibility into team activities. Acharya explains: “Improved visibility has significantly reduced unintentional work duplication, boosting both collaboration and productivity.”

The solution has also empowered FactSet to foster strategic alignment, streamline reporting and prevent redundant efforts, ultimately driving enhanced efficiency and customer-centric results.

FactSet has achieved significant improvements in strategic alignment and project execution excellence through its partnership with IBM.

By implementing Targetprocess, FactSet has gained real-time visibility into ongoing projects, enabling teams to stay informed, focused and connected with the company’s customer-oriented outcomes. The company also simplified reporting by eliminating the need for spreadsheets and other sources of information. As a result, FactSet has reduced duplication of work, increased collaboration and productivity, and improved execution excellence.

Acharya states: “Having all of that information in there, enabling everybody to stay on the same page, making it transparent, making it visible, and then also tying it to our strategic themes and our corporate strategy has given people a sense of how their work is contributing to the success of the company.”

Looking ahead, FactSet plans to continue to use Targetprocess to make strategic decisions, including where to invest funds and which projects to prioritize. “Eventually, Targetprocess should allow us to make better decisions about which projects we fund and which ones we do not. And that is going to help us across all our strategic areas,” notes Acharya.

FactSet  is a financial data and software company headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut. Founded in 1978, the company specializes in solutions for investment professionals, providing them with access to financial data and analytics that help them make business-critical decisions. With 37 locations in 20 countries, FactSet employs over 12,000 people and serves 8,200 client institutions and more than 218,000 investment professionals.