Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership

LLEP aims to, ‘create a vibrant, attractive and distinctive place with highly skilled people, making Leicester and Leicestershire the destination of choice for successful businesses.’ To achieve this aim, LLEP funds a number of projects and programmes through their own grant schemes.

What LLEP wanted to achieve 

LLEP manages a number of different funding streams, grants, and projects. Prior to using Verto, all their project management data was recorded in Excel and Word documents.

This system could be challenging at times as it meant the PMO had no clear oversight across their projects. This made it time-consuming for them to show the totality of the LEP’s outputs and outcomes.

Their system also made teamwork and collaboration harder to achieve as the programme managers for each funding stream could not easily share their data.

The LEP wanted a system that would provide a more robust way to manage public funds and give them easy access to quality management information.

How we’re helping LLEP achieve their goals 

LLEP did extensive research into various project management tools before they invited organisations to tender to be their supplier. As Verto most closely met the requirements LLEP had set out, TMI won the tender.

We started out with a project inception meeting in May 2017 to discuss in more detail what the LEP wanted from Verto and to plan the timescales for installing the software and training their staff to configure the system. Verto went live in October 2017.

The team at TMI are incredibly amenable. We’ve had, and continue to have, great support from them. Before we went live, if we had any queries or were stuck configuring a particular aspect of the system, we could always call our key account manager.  And Verto is brilliant. It has so much functionality we’re not even using yet.

Michelle Hodgson, Local Growth Fund Programme Manager, LLEP 

The benefits LLEP is seeing

The biggest benefit LLEP report is having all their programme data in one place. Verto’s dashboard means the PMO team can easily see the status of all their programmes and projects. This is helping them prioritize their efforts and manage risk.

Verto is also saving the PMO team a lot of time as they no longer need to input as much data or print as many documents. Rather than scrolling through spreadsheets and word documents to find the data they need, they can now see it all on one screen. And as their data is centralised and standardised, they can also run reports at the touch of a button.

The team are finding it much easier to track and monitor the projects they oversee as Verto gives them a clear view of each project’s whole cycle, from its inception to its conclusion. At any time, the team can easily see if a project is meeting its expected targets in terms of outputs, outcomes and spend.

This quality management information is allowing the LLEP to more easily manage its budgets. Grant recipients can claim via Verto and the team can authorise claims quickly, which benefits both them and the organisations they fund.

We continue to support and work with LLEP. They frequently review how they’re using Verto, through their cycle of continuous improvement. This is highlighting areas where we can develop the software and tailor it more to suit the specific ways LEPs work.