Kent County Council (KCC) has been utilising Verto for over five years within the Transformation Delivery Team, part of the Adult Social Care Directorate. We spoke to PMO Manager Darren Avery and PMO Project Manager Jonathan Carton about how they use Verto for success within their division. 

The Transformation Delivery Team is responsible for driving large-scale change initiatives to improve business processes, culture, technology, and overall performance in Adult Social Care. The PMO oversees and supports the work needed for operational change, restructures and process improvements internally. In addition to supporting the Transformation Delivery Team, they also cover additional teams like Corporate Risk Assurance, Commissioning, and Innovation and Partnerships which has an external focus on spending the Council’s money efficiently and effectively, and building community resilience.

The challenge they faced:

The Transformation Delivery Team for Adult Social Care at Kent County Council needed a tool to improve the visibility of their work for the corporate team and streamline reporting processes.

Previously, reporting relied on a complex system of spreadsheets, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations. A master Excel document was manually updated using inputs from multiple smaller files, making the reporting cycle inefficient and time-consuming.

At the same time, the Transformation Delivery Team – then the Portfolio and Project Management Team – were a relatively new project management function and still being established, staffed by many individuals without formal project management training. This placed the burden of manual reporting on team members who lacked experience in project governance and needed better support to develop their skills.

Research into project success rates highlighted a key challenge: the absence of a centralised system to store and track project data. Without a single source of truth, reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs) was difficult. While some of the more senior roles in the team had access to Microsoft Project, those in supporting roles, who handled much of the day-to-day work, did not – making it an unsustainable long-term solution. 

To ensure the success of the new team, senior leadership recognised the need for a system that would:

• Support and upskill staff through technology-driven project management.
• Reduce the manual effort required for reporting.
• Provide leadership with timely and accurate insights.

Ultimately, the ideal solution needed to consolidate all project data into one central platform, automate reporting, and establish consistent processes—particularly in project planning and risk management.

In summary, the team identified four core objectives for adopting Verto:

• Create a single source of truth by centralising project management information.
• Enhance transparency and accessibility of project data across teams.
• Improve reporting efficiency by reducing manual effort in data compilation.
• Improve the PPM maturity level of the team by providing new tools to support the successful delivery of projects.

The Implementation Journey

Kent County Council adopted a phased approach to rolling out Verto, ensuring a smooth transition for the team. Initially, a small set of tasks were introduced into the platform, allowing users to gradually familiarise themselves with the system before expanding its use to manage more of the portfolio. This measured rollout helped ease the shift to a new way of working.

The strategy proved effective—team members soon began questioning why other aspects of their work weren’t also managed within Verto. This organic adoption encouraged autonomy, as more data was gradually migrated at the team’s request. Most recently, the benefits realisation framework was fully integrated into Verto, demonstrating the platform’s value in centralising key processes.

By taking this gradual approach, the team secured strong buy-in, embedding Verto as the core tool for managing transformation programmes. Its success within Adult Social Care has also led to adoption by the Adult Social Care Commissioning team and the Corporate Risk Assurance team.

Jon is leading conversations to extend its use beyond Adult Social Care, ensuring that teams across the organisation can benefit from a unified approach to project and programme management.

Impact & Transformation

Verto has significantly improved the way Kent County Council’s Adult Social Care team manages projects and reports on progress. Because the team already had established processes, they were able to configure Verto to fit their existing workflows, allowing them to see tangible benefits quickly. The platform’s ease of adoption, combined with growing user autonomy, has driven engagement and efficiency across the directorate.

One of the most transformative changes has been real-time visibility for senior leadership. With Verto’s integration into Power BI dashboards, decision-makers now have instant access to live project data, ensuring they work with accurate, up-to-date insights at all times.

“One of the biggest improvements has been giving senior leadership instant access to live project data through Power BI dashboards integrated with Verto.” – Jon Carton PMO Project Manager

Leaders now have line of sight into upcoming key milestones, enabling proactive discussions. For example, if four projects require action in March, leadership can identify this in February and plan accordingly, rather than reacting at the last-minute as they had in the past. This foresight is helping to facilitate early, strategic conversations, reduce last-minute pressures and ensure smoother project delivery.

Verto has also transformed decision tracking. Previously, each project maintained separate Excel-based decision logs, often stored in different locations. If a decision needed revisiting years later, teams had to track down logs—sometimes unsuccessfully—especially if key staff had left. Now, with Verto’s centralised decision log function, every project decision is stored in one accessible location, ensuring transparency and accountability. Anyone can refer back to past decisions quickly and easily, streamlining governance and reducing the risk of losing critical project history.

The impact on reporting has also been substantial. What once took multiple days of manual effort is now completed in a fraction of the time, freeing up valuable resources to focus on delivering transformation rather than compiling spreadsheets. The ability to generate portfolio-wide reports swiftly has streamlined governance and improved the team’s ability to make data-driven decisions with confidence.

“With Verto, we’ve cut our reporting time from four days to just one. What used to take almost a week is now done in a day—giving us faster, more efficient insights across our entire portfolio.” – Jon Carton PMO Project Manager

One of the most significant improvements since implementing Verto has been the reduction in project time length. Previously, the team ran over 20 projects a year, each averaging around 14 months in duration. With the introduction of Verto, the senior management team now have greater visibility of all Projects in the portfolio and any escalated risks and issues, allowing them to prioritise more effectively, and step in earlier when risks are first flagged – to take action and avoid them becoming issues. As a result, the Portfolio now has 14 projects on average that are better aligned with the organisation’s strategies, and projects are now delivered on average two months faster, reducing staff costs by nearly £9,000 per project on average.

Another area of impact has been time savings in reporting. A recent staff survey found that routine project updates in Verto now take approximately 30 minutes per project – a significant improvement from the previous process, which required cross-referencing multiple documents, populating PowerPoint slides, and obtaining approvals, often stretching to a day or more.

The PMO has also benefited from streamlined reporting processes. What once took four to five days—collating and checking documents before compiling them into a PowerPoint presentation—can now be completed in just one day, thanks to the integration of Power BI and Verto.

Future Plans

After five years of using Verto, the Transformation Delivery Team recognises that there is still room for growth. With plans underway to expand Verto’s usage across more teams within the organisation, they are also identifying opportunities for continuous improvement.

One key area for potential enhancement is approvals. Currently a manual process, there is an opportunity to streamline and automate approvals within Verto, reducing administrative effort and improving efficiency. Resource management is another focus for future development. While their existing spreadsheet-based approach is effective, transitioning this process into Verto would further reduce manual workload and centralise even more critical project data within a single platform.

Additionally, as a large organisation, Kent County Council could benefit from optimising data collection and user experience through Verto’s Workspace licences. This functionality would allow individuals to interact only with their relevant tasks, rather than navigating the entire platform, while still ensuring their input seamlessly feeds into wider project and programme management. By reducing reliance on emails and disparate data formats, this approach could improve collaboration, accessibility, and overall project visibility.