How Tensar International uses Tempo to stay on track

Tensar International’s best-of-class ground stabilization products and design expertise are in demand in many infrastructure sectors, including roadways, airports, rail, utilities, and marine. The multinational firm is often managing many large projects at once, so many that in May 2016 it hired Gina Rosen, PMP, as director of the project management office and – not coincidentally – committed to Tempo for its project management solution.

“I practically made it a condition of employment,” says Rosen, smiling. “I came from another firm where I used Tempo and credit it with getting a very large ERP implementation back on track – I knew it was just what we needed at Tensar.”

As the new “project manager of project managers” at Tensar, Rosen knew she needed insight into the performance of multiple projects involving globally distributed teams and resources, while also implementing large customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects of her own.

She knew from previous experience that several Tempo features made it an excellent fit for her work at Tensar, particularly predictive scheduling, collaborative communication, and powerful visuals, such as dashboards.

Collaborative communication

“I came up on the infrastructure side of things, so my experience is with infrastructure-related projects, which are not as long term,” says Chad Heath, global director of IT. “With that background, I think Tempo's collaboration is one of the best features for our work.”

Tempo improves Tensar’s collaboration with several strategies, including shared project workspaces, a single source for all project information, and the transfer of vital project information out of email and into more accessible formats.

“The central project platform is now Tempo, not email, and that’s great for us,” Heath explains. “Email is the easy way, but it’s lazy, and digging through email threads is tedious. The automation that takes information directly into Tempo has made a big difference for our teams.”

All teams collaborate – that’s the definition of a team. Superior collaboration makes for great teams.

Powerfully visual

“Every month I have to write an update for our steering committee, and it includes a report on resource allocation and usage,” says Rosen. “If I was working with spreadsheets, or something less visual than Tempo, that would be a very hard report to generate. But with Tempo, it’s easy – I take it 100% from the Tempo dashboard, and I’m done.”

Heath agrees that Tempo's strongly visual approach to data analysis is extremely helpful. “I’m very visual,” he says.

“Dashboards are a very powerful way for me to know what’s going on with projects, and the best way I know to create presentations for the executives that I report to. It’s easy to make dashboards with the exact information I need—I can very quickly create them on the fly. There’s really no comparison to Excel or some of the other tools we’ve tried.”

To some extent, good project management has always relied on visual presentations like the Gantt chart. Tempo goes beyond traditional tools by simplifying and streamlining data presentation, making it very easy to create custom presentations that serve a project manager’s exact needs.

For example, a dashboard can be modified with customizable “widgets” (charts, comment fields, images, etc.), custom filters, and secure sharing with particular stakeholders. Visual presentation itself isn’t unique to Tempo; however, the powerful focus on visual learners and the way they work is. Heath’s and Rosen’s immediate use of Tempo's excellent, graphic tools is an example of this.

Rosen styles herself an “organizational alchemist” with a pragmatic and flexible approach to project management. Bringing Tempo to Tensar was a good example of this, as it’s a flexible and effective PM tool that makes her work easier, but Heath says Tempo has also been a good fit for the entire firm.

“We’ve tried a lot of approaches and solutions here, but nothing seemed to stick. Before Gina came on, we were relying basically on Excel,” he says. “Tempo has been different; it’s the first solution that works for top-level managers and has seen substantial buy-in across the board. It’s going to be helping us for a long time.”