YIT

YIT is the largest Finnish and significant North European project developer and construction company. YIT creates sustainable and attractive cities and living environments for its customers and society. The company’s 5,000 professionals operate in 10 countries and the company’s revenue was EUR 2.4 billion in 2022.

Before the change, YIT’s different business areas did not have a uniform process for project management, but all units had their own way of operating. The company did not have a proper view of what projects were underway and what stage they were at. The discussion took place through different channels, such as email, so the necessary information was not always conveyed to everyone who needed it. Information could also get lost in the depths of different channels.

The key objective of the systematic process at YIT is to ensure the profitability of investments, increase the predictability of financial performance and identify potential risks and opportunities early enough for decision-making. YIT’s goal was to bring information and processes to one place on a platform where project discoverability would be easier and the process would be as easy to follow as possible. The aim was to improve decision-making so that the focus would be on substance instead of formal management.

GateApp for more efficient decision-making

The project started with a pre-study phase, the aim of which was to gain an understanding of the reporting processes and needs of different business areas. At the same time, solution options and technical requirements for platform selection were mapped. The application entity was built together with YIT and Sulava’s teams from scratch.

YIT’s core project team held several workshops with Sulava’s consultants, where the goals related to the functionality and business operations of the technology were discussed. YIT’s processes and needs were also examined in the workshops.

The technology solution chosen was GateApp, which would enhance decision-making and make it transparent. The chosen platform was Power Platform, which YIT has already used to implement several business applications in an agile manner. YIT GateApp consists of several Power Apps and Power Automate. The solution was able to utilise previously proven practices.

Previously, a gate model had been defined for projects, where the project can be handled at different stages of the project life cycle. The tool was already familiar, as Microsoft’s Power App was previously used to create a monthly reporting application for construction site use with Sulava, and there were good experiences with it. In addition, PowerApp had undeniable maintenance advantages compared to, for example, a fully customized solution.

“The goal was to develop a user interface that was as guiding and intuitive as possible. We wanted the centralised management of YIT’s approval chains and gate documents to be available to all YIT’s organisational units,” says Matti Ahokas, Project Development Manager at YIT’s Investments, Risk Management and Corporate Security unit.

The core team was kept small from the very beginning, so that the discussion with Sulava would be agile and new ideas could be reacted to quickly. If necessary, personnel from YIT’s IT department and business units, among others, have been involved in the project. Sufficient application testing by enough people has been an important part of the project.

“In the specification workshops, the technological needs were not necessarily completely clear in mind, but Sulava’s consultants quickly realized what the user interface should be like,” Ahokas says.

The key functions of GateApp at YIT are:

• Management of decision-making requirements and data
• Steering the decision-making chain
• Project lifecycle and meeting management

The first version is agile to use

The concept was tested quickly when the first version was put to the test in autumn 2022. Project started with a lightweight model where integration could be increased gradually. In the early stages, no data was exported outside of the Gate App. The test version also ensured the technical capability of Power Platform.

“As YIT’s project sizes vary from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of euros, we were initially concerned about the tool’s performance. However, the performance has been good enough and the high volume has not affected the usability of GateApp. Performance has been achieved at critical points whenever needed, and Sulava has developed customized features in the Power platform flexibly,” Ahokas continues.

The first version meeting the minimum requirements was introduced in Finland and Sweden at the turn of 2023. Features and observations were reviewed with users, and corrections and updates were made as necessary. From the very beginning, the focus was on visual appearance and logical usability to make the implementation of the application as easy as possible.

Already in the pre-assessment phase, it was noted that implementing the change in the business areas will take time. Therefore, the solution had to be based on a model where implementation can be done in a business-driven manner, listening to end users and reacting to feedback.

“In a long project, development work has been carried out in constant discussion and taking new needs into account. The needs assessment was kept genuinely open from the beginning of the project,” says Sulava’s consultant Mikko Koskinen.

At the beginning of 2024, the application was rolled out throughout the organization.

About 600 project-responsible employees use the tool in their work. In addition, all unit leaders as well as the division’s and YIT Group’s management actively use the application.

YIT started using GateApp from scratch and all projects in Gate App are new active projects. No data was imported from any of the old systems, but the old data is in reading mode as an archive.

There are currently about 540 ongoing projects and more than a thousand gate treatments in the projects. GateApp manages the entire project decision-making lifecycle from the bidding phase all the way to the warranty period. The application receives about ten new projects per week. The goal is that no one would waste too much time managing projects.

Better visibility into your projects

Feedback and development suggestions are actively collected from end users. The app’s features and automation manageability have been added a lot to the new versions. User satisfaction with GateApp has also been studied with a survey, the first of which was conducted six months after the start of use.

The results of the survey indicate that the application has been very well received: the NPS score was excellent 50. The app’s visual and easy-to-read user interface has received a lot of praise. In addition, visibility into one’s own projects and their follow-up have become significantly easier, according to the survey results.

“Feedback and surveys provide additional ideas for further development and how something could be done better. In weekly meetings, we constantly discuss with a sparring approach and think about development ideas,” Ahokas says.

The implementation and user training were handled with general information and intranet pages were compiled for GateApp. The need for continuous support has been minimized so that the business owners of the application can manage the majority of problem situations independently in a separate administrator application.

Artificial intelligence to identify interesting projects and analyze risks

After the renewal, YIT will consider the role of Gate App in the future, for example when the CRM system is being renewed. Since YIT handles a lot of documents, they have considered how to reduce the number of documents. There would be a desire to transfer more information to systems, in which case it would also exist as data and not just as documents. Microsoft’s Copilot and the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence are also being considered, as in the future, artificial intelligence could analyse risks and identify the most interesting projects.

“I believe that the development of GateApp will certainly continue so that it will play a key role in business management also in the future,” Ahokas says.

Author: Merja Turpeinen.
Published February 2023