Case Study: Smiths Group Migrates from Planview to Clarity for Portfolio Governance

Industry: Advanced engineering and industrial technology
Company Size: 16,000+ employees in 50 countries
Primary Clarity Use: Replaced Planview with Clarity to enable scalable portfolio management, IT prioritization, reporting, benefits tracking, and governance
Engagement Scope: Planview replacement strategy, Clarity PPM implementation support, IT portfolio governance, SAP financial reporting integration, lifecycle workflow design, and reporting enablement

Key Results

  • ✓
    Replaced Planview and established Clarity, a scalable project and portfolio management platform, for Smiths Group’s IT team, Business Information Systems (BIS).
  • ✓Centralized project information helped BIS prioritize IT work by ROI, investment-to-spend, scope alignment, and scalable delivery needs.
  • ✓
    Project management, reporting, financial visibility, documentation, and tollgate governance centralized in a standard operating model.
  • ✓Foundation established for multi-business-unit adoption and global rollout over time.

The Client: A Global Engineering Business

Smiths Group plc is a global engineering business headquartered in London with a rich history spanning over 160 years. With operations in 50 countries and 3,000 engineers across its global business, it specializes in the development and application of advanced engineering technologies that serve a wide range of industries, including healthcare, energy, security, and aerospace. Smiths operates through three businesses: John Crane, Flex-Tek, and Smiths Detection.

  • This case study focuses on Smiths Group’s Business Information Systems (BIS) organization, its global IT technology group.

The Challenge: Replacing a Limited PPM System with a Scalable Clarity Foundation

BIS needed a more scalable way to manage project and portfolio work, prioritize IT initiatives, strengthen project documentation, and support decision-making across a complex global enterprise.

  • Planview limited BIS visibility. Planview adoption remained low, and the environment did not provide the scalable portfolio management foundation Smiths needed.

  • Project insight gathering in Planview was too manual. BIS needed a central location for project information, so leaders could evaluate work by ROI, business value, investment-to-spend, scope, resources, budget, workload, timeframe, and scalable delivery quality.

  • Administrative effort slowed portfolio management. BIS was burdened by excessive administration and management, making it harder to maintain clear reporting, financial visibility, and project oversight.

  • IT prioritization was difficult to connect to project value. Without clear portfolio data, BIS had a hard time determining whether the right IT work was being prioritized against ROI, business case alignment, investment spend, and quality at scale.

  • Project management, communication, and documentation needed more structure. BIS needed to formalize core project management practices and capture project communication and documentation. This was essential within their regimented security and engineering environment.

The Solution: Centralizing Portfolio Management, Reporting, and Governance in Clarity

In partnership with Rego Consulting, Smiths Group implemented Clarity PPM as a scalable strategic portfolio management (SPM) foundation for BIS. Rego helped Smiths replace Planview’s limited environment and establish a central operating model designed to support IT prioritization, governance, reporting, and portfolio visibility.

Rego supported the implementation with deep Clarity expertise, structured change management, and a process-driven approach tailored to Smiths’ portfolio, project, and resource management needs.

Phase 1 – Crawl: Establish the Foundation

Rego helped BIS lay the foundation for core project, portfolio, and strategic planning practices by aligning Clarity with the client’s three foundational priorities:

  • 1. Clarify project value.
    Rego helped BIS establish one central location for project information, giving leaders a clearer way to evaluate work against ROI, business case alignment, investment-to-spend, scope, resources, and scalable delivery quality.
  • 2. Formalize project management.
    Rego helped structure the core day-to-day practices BIS needed to manage demand, projects, programs, resources, capacity, time reporting, financials, gate reviews, benefits tracking, and reporting.

  • 3. Strengthen communication and documentation. Clarity gave BIS a central and standardized platform to capture project communication and documentation, supporting the needs of a regimented security and engineering environment.

Rego also supported the move from legacy systems into Clarity with a focus on data integrity, structure, and usability, giving BIS a stronger foundation for reliable reporting and adoption from the start.

Phase 2 – Walk: Support Governance, Financial Visibility, and Reporting

Rego configured Clarity to bring project data, lifecycle governance, and reporting into a more structured operating model.
Key solution elements included:

Key solution elements included:

  • SAP financial data reporting.
  • Integration guidance for SAP and other enterprise systems.
  • Support for Waterfall, Agile, and Lean Six Sigma project delivery.
  • Automated lifecycle workflows.
  • Tollgate approvals.
  • Demand management.
  • Project controls.
  • Resource management.

Rego helped design governance frameworks within Clarity to support better visibility, prioritization, and control of strategic initiatives. Rego also guided integration with SAP and other enterprise systems, so financials, resource data, and project tracking could remain connected and consistent.

This approach helped BIS move toward a fully integrated “one central location” for portfolio information. Rego enabled progress reporting that could be gathered and presented automatically, with multiple views of the same data for different reporting audiences. The solution also supported stronger reporting accuracy, proactive risk management, compliance, and data integrity.

Phase 3 – Run: Prepare for Scale Across Smiths

BIS now has a centralized platform for project information, reporting, governance, financial visibility, and documentation. This gives the team more capacity to focus on the IT initiatives that drive business value.

To support adoption, Rego worked closely with business and IT stakeholders, providing training, best practices, and guidance to help ensure the solution met user needs across functions. Rego brought proven methodologies and templates that reduced implementation risk and accelerated time to value.

Smiths Group also gained a scalable foundation to extend consistent Clarity portfolio practices across additional areas of the business.

“Thanks so much to all the [Rego] team for the help and support, and for sticking with us throughout. It’s been an enjoyable implementation, even if stressful on occasion. Now it’s down to the team to make it their own.”

– Principal Business Analyst:
Operational Transformation, Smiths Group

The Results: Improved Governance, Visibility, and Decision-Making

Together, Rego and Clarity helped Smiths create a more standardized, transparent, and data-driven approach to portfolio management, improving decision-making and business alignment.

“Thank you for your support (even at 11 p.m.!) It’s been great working with the Rego team, and you matched us in your commitment to get this project over the line. The new era starts as we continue to learn the tool and grow with it.”

– Transformation Programme Manager, Smith’s Group

Business Outcomes

By replacing Planview with Clarity, Smiths Group gave BIS a scalable enterprise portfolio management foundation for IT prioritization, governance, reporting, and project visibility.

✓Improved Project Efficiency: Clarity helped BIS move beyond limited adoption, excessive administration, and manual project insight gathering. Now, 100 users across project management, PMO/governance, finance, and resource management have a more structured way to manage project and portfolio work.

✓Stronger IT Prioritization: BIS gained a centralized approach for evaluating project information across business value, ROI, investment-to-spend, scope-to-business case or charter, resource-to-plan, scalable delivery quality, budgets, tasks, workload, and timeframe. This gave project managers a stronger basis to prioritize, organize, and optimize IT projects for maximum ROI.

✓Financial Transparency: SAP-aligned financial reporting and investment-to-spend visibility gave BIS a clearer way to connect project work with financial data, project costs, forecasts, and resource needs.

✓Enhanced Decision-Making: Centralized portfolio data, benefits tracking, and automated progress reporting helped BIS better understand project benefits and provide multiple views of the same data for different reporting audiences.

✓Stronger Governance and Documentation: Lifecycle workflows, tollgate reviews, project controls, and documentation support gave BIS a clearer path to consistent governance, stronger communication, and better visibility into project decisions.

✓Future-Proofed Operations: Clarity gave Smiths a scalable foundation designed to support multiple business units today and broader global rollout over time.

Strategic Impact: Rego and Clarity established a scalable portfolio management foundation that supports governance, project visibility, benefits tracking, and future portfolio maturity across Smiths Group.

The Road Ahead: Extending the BIS Foundation Across Smiths Businesses

The groundwork established through Clarity implementation for BIS gives Smiths a strong path to standardize project governance, improve portfolio reporting, and build a more connected approach to technology investment decisions across the enterprise.

As Smiths continues evaluating future adoption across its businesses, Rego is positioned to support the next stage of Clarity expansion.

“Our implementation would not have been where it needed to be without your support. We look forward to getting to grips with more of the functionality and expanding it across the rest of the divisions.”

– Business Solutions and Change Lead, Smith’s Group

Rego Consulting Capabilities Demonstrated

This engagement highlights how Rego helped Smiths Group strengthen BIS portfolio management, replace a legacy PPM environment with Clarity, and prepare for broader adoption across the business.

  • Enterprise portfolio management
  • Planview replacement with Clarity
  • Portfolio visibility and reporting
  • Governance and decision-making
  • Financial and resource planning
  • Benefits tracking and project documentation

About Rego Consulting

Rego Consulting stands out for our real-world experience and proven, practitioner-led approach to project portfolio management (PPM), cloud migration, and IT financial management consulting. With over 200 expert guides and best practices honed since 2007, we don’t just deliver implementations—we drive business value.

We’re the global leader in Clarity and Rally Software Sales and Services, proudly holding all three of Broadcom’s top partner designations: Clarity Technology Partner, Global System Integrator Partner, and Global Expert Services Partner.