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30 → 300
Users, from an Engineering pilot to an enterprise-wide solution
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$1B+
Yearly sales, as a Coca-Cola subsidiary
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5 years 5 years
Partnership, now releasing version 2.0 of the internal solution
fairlife is a Chicago-based dairy manufacturing company on a mission to deliver advanced nourishment to its customers, better care for its dairy animals, and advanced environmental sustainability. In 2019, Fleur Mowlam was hired as a Project Management consultant with fairlife, leading to an engagement with pmo365 in 2020.
After five years with pmo365, fairlife has gone from an Engineering pilot rollout to the product being embedded at the core of the company’s manufacturing and capital operations.
About the organisation
fairlife
Founded in 2012, with national distribution launching in 2015, fairlife has boomed since, resulting in its acquisition in 2020 by Coca-Cola. In 2021, the business hit $1B in annual sales. Its portfolio spans ultra-filtered milks, protein shakes, and meal plans, and the business continues its expansion with a brand-new facility in New York and a growing team.
The requirements
Four requirements for a PMO tool
In 2019, fairlife identified a need for more structured project management to oversee its dairy manufacturing operations. The company engaged Fleur to implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 for a greenfield project in Arizona. After this initial rollout, it became clear the business was suffering from a lack of PM skills, knowledge, and processes across the organisation, resulting in a lack of visibility across projects.
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01
Visibility across projects
Differing skills, knowledge and processes across the organisation meant no one had a clear view of the state of projects.
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02
Governance across initiatives
When project management styles and tools differ among teams, there is no overarching governance. All projects, teams, tracking, financial oversight, and compliance objectives needed to sit under one banner, with clear guidelines.
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03
Tools to support product performance
While Dynamics 365 offers project management, there are tools better equipped for project portfolio management from a PMO perspective. fairlife needed a right-fit tool that could grow and scale, with usability at its core.
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04
User buy-in
Without engagement sessions and direct input when building workflows, users can have a poor view of software and seek workarounds. The ability to customise was a high-priority requirement in fairlife’s phase one rollout.
"It’s striking how clear it is to you that you build it with the user, not force it on the user. They need to like it. They need to see the value, specifically focusing on simplicity and reducing admin."
The solution
Introduce, customise, iterate, expand
To bring pmo365 to the business, Fleur highlighted the clear value in its initial product offering. Four factors were the foundations of the first wave of the program: improved centralised project tracking, a single source of truth, advanced reporting capabilities, and a strategic approach to project management.
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01
Introduce pmo365 to Engineering
The first wave brought pmo365 to the engineers who would be its initial users, built on centralised tracking, a single source of truth, advanced reporting, and a strategic approach to project management.
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02
Customise, customise, customise
fairlife heavily customised the system to make sense to engineers, opting for 6 co-managed sprints followed by self-managed sprints to work through the required business processes. Tailoring to those first users secured buy-in and built excitement around the product.
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03
Iterate on the solution
Beyond the first wave, fairlife has iterated continuously, with a full second wave rollout in 2025: more governance protocols, a project and change management culture, and a toolkit and framework for project managers across the organisation. Continuous Improvement teams run 90-day checks on large projects.
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04
Expand to multi-million, multi-year projects
From an initial 30 users, the system now supports 300. Maturation has meant reducing customisation to a more generic build that fits all projects and portfolios: simple for everyone to use, while returning the best value for management.
The benefits
Transparency, accountability, better project management
Transparency across the organisation
pmo365 brings transparency and visibility into projects, resources, timelines, and associated data across the whole organisation, in a structured view. There is no longer a need to request and wait for reports, double-check data, or keep following up with key staff. Knowledge is not lost when someone leaves.
Accountability for projects and people
With better drill-down tracking and reporting, it’s easier to see where there are bottlenecks, where there is capacity to take on more work, or where outside assistance is necessary. Small issues are caught before they become big problems. By using the language of people within the organisation, project management becomes a built-in helper system rather than a new framework to learn.
Better project management
fairlife’s people are now becoming better project managers and suggesting tool improvements to get more out of their processes, reporting, and data collection. Employees mature in their roles and the tool matures with them, supported by Fleur travelling internationally across sites to ensure every team knows how to use it to their advantage.
The future and version 2.0
Now that version 2.0 of the internal solution is ready for release, fairlife is looking to go from strength to strength: capturing large-scale operational efficiencies, prioritising in line with capabilities and business goals, generating real-time detailed reporting, and achieving true accountability across the business.
"What we’re now doing with this new version is there’s infused AI, so there’s a lot of Power BI reports driven by AI, making it super easy for reporting. The AI generator takes the information from last week, and this week’s activities, and checks over the health status to write a summary for you. So we’re taking away some of the hard work from the PMs and really focusing on the things that matter."
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