A large non-profit healthcare payer drives key initiatives by scaling its PMO team.
SITUATION
Our client, a major health insurance payer, had a new PMO director who was struggling with filling roles via a traditional staffing method. Turnover was high and the candidates they were provided were of low quality. They needed these workers in three project areas: an ongoing years-long technology transformation effort, responding to government mandates, and pursuing strategic initiatives. The client selected Apex to revamp its PMO department due to a long working relationship and demonstrated knowledge of a similar project with another healthcare payer.
"With your partnership and leadership, the new service has been extremely valuable. We’ve been able to respond to business in a much quicker timeframe...we are growing, learning, and building an even stronger team." - PMO Director
We deployed a PMO lead to run the program who would embed with the department to understand the business. Their task was to manage our consultants in the client’s book of business, ensuring that we had sufficient project managers available to support upcoming projects and the right skillsets based on ongoing projects. Apex took over the client’s recruiting, hiring, and onboarding processes utilizing a model our PMO solution leader had developed. An Engagement Manager and Engagement Managing Director were also assigned to ensure communication and oversee the project. The PMO Lead integrated within the organization to understand the culture, portfolio of work, and existing processes and then identified growth opportunities for governance & resource management. The PMO Lead’s primary responsibility was to manage the consultants’ performance and job satisfaction to drive retention.
Additionally, they were responsible for portfolio management with the organization’s key Business and IT leaders. Although we started out with a team of 10, in order to accelerate the delivery of additional engagements, we eventually expanded the team to 30 consultants. Apex conducted monthly meetings to report on SLAs for time-to-fill roles, time-to-submit candidates, and retention while implementing a continuous improvement process.
RESULTS
PMaaS enabled our client to scale and manage the Board of Directors’ strategic initiatives, including migration of enrollment and claims platforms, and create their self-managed provider network. Our client grew the PMaaS team by 180% within one year while PM tenure increased by 100%. Our project management team saved the client’s PMO Director on average 38 hours a week which freed her up to focus on larger initiatives. The client now uses our process to hire full-time employees.
