Boldyn needed a tool flexible enough to scale while still supporting standardised project management practices across teams. (Image: PPO)
Boldyn Networks, one of the largest and most established neutral host providers in the world, has significantly transformed its project management and financial control capabilities across the UK and Ireland since adopting PPO, Project Portfolio Office’s scalable, cloud-based portfolio and project management solution in 2014. What began as a workflow tool has become a central platform for project management, budgeting, forecasting, resource planning and executive decision-making, supporting Boldyn through periods of rapid growth, acquisition and organisational integration.
Formerly known as BAI Communications, the organisation has expanded through several mergers and acquisitions, including the 2021 acquisition of Vilicom, a supplier of engineering solutions to the communications industry and previous user of PPO, before rebranding under the Boldyn Networks name in 2023, reflective of the business’s ‘bold’ and ‘dynamic’ nature.
Fact sheet
Solution: PPO
Industry: Neutral host provider
Provider: Project Portfolio Office
User: Boldyn Networks
In its earlier years, the organisation operated without a formal project portfolio management (PPM) platform or a structured project management office (PMO). Instead, delivery relied on strong individual contributors who managed projects through experience and intuition. However, as Boldyn took on more complex programmes, the need for consistent, data-driven project management became clear.
Flexibility and scalability key deciding factors
Conor O’Callaghan, country manager: Ireland and head of service delivery at Boldyn, explains that the company needed a tool flexible enough to scale while still supporting standardised project management practices across teams.
“When we compared options, some systems seemed excellent but were extremely rigid – you would end up changing your business to suit the system. We weren’t in a position to do that, nor did we want to. What was required was something purpose-built for project delivery; agile, configurable and suited to a fast-moving business.
“PPO offered the best fit. It allows us to scale up or down easily, with the month-to-month user flexibility being a major advantage, as we weren’t locked into long-term licences with fixed numbers of users. This means that it is possible to control costs while scaling into new regions or new business units. Another key benefit was the large number of available data fields.”
Implementation and integration
The Project Portfolio Office team worked closely with Boldyn during set-up to define the fields, data structures and governance needed to create a consistent foundation for project management across the business.
“They acted as advisors, showing us what PPO could do, listening to our business requirements and helping us structure the right data model,” states O’Callaghan. “They helped identify what should be mandatory for users, what could remain optional and how to standardise information so that we would always have reliable, consistent data.”
Boldyn integrated PPO with Salesforce to automatically create projects when opportunities are closed, streamlining the transition from sales to delivery. A second integration with Exchequer brings live purchase order and financial data into PPO, giving project managers a single, consolidated source of truth for project management, forecasting and cost control.
This unified view has been ‘transformative’, according to O’Callaghan, providing the financial visibility essential to today’s project management and governance.
“Job costing has been one of our biggest changes. Previously everything was done in Excel – budgets, PO tracking, actuals and so on. Finance would provide data and we’d manually compare it to the budget. It was clunky, prone to error and not robust enough to base decisions on.
“PPO provides our project managers with a live, reliable, single-pane-of-glass view of their projects, with budget, committed cost and estimated-to-complete timing. The project management tool can forecast costs and variances, and its flexibility means that we can slice data by customer, region, project manager and product type – whatever we need.
“This visibility allows our project managers to make informed decisions early: if they’re nearing labour budget, need to set up customer conversations or require internal support. Project variations are tracked in PPO, with proper approval workflows.”
Project managers can now also see all customer orders, O’Callaghan continues, including top-up POs on long-running programmes, which gives forward cover visibility. “We can see whether we’re covered for one month, three months or six months, and use that to trigger customer engagement for new orders. This is critical for meeting our quarterly and annual financial targets.
“For month-end, we’ve set up structured ‘instruction to invoice’ processes in PPO. Forecasted milestones are all visible, so finance doesn’t need to chase project managers, they simply run PPO reports. It removes unnecessary meetings and frees people to actually deliver. In fact, we’ve seen a gross margin improvement by several points after the PPO adoption. The uplift has been significant, proving that the structure works.”
Labour allocation is another major advantage, he says. “At leadership level, we need to understand our utilisation. Are teams running hot? Do we have capacity? Do we need to rebalance? Time allocation in PPO gives us that visibility.
“It also shows whether assumptions made at commercial stage match reality. For example, if we priced 10 days but actual engineering effort is much higher, PPO exposes that quickly. This helps us refine future bids and understand true cost.”
O’Callaghan highlights that PPO’s influence extends beyond internal teams. Customer-facing dashboards give clients clearer insight into progress, increasing trust and strengthening relationships; a critical component of good project management.
User adoption and cultural change
PPO has reshaped not only reporting, but day-to-day behaviour which, according to O’Callaghan, is one of the most difficult things to manage. “High adoption rates reflect a cultural shift towards data-led project management, with teams increasingly self-serving information and reducing administrative overheads. This allows project managers to focus more time on delivering projects and less on gathering information.”
Reflecting on Boldyn’s journey, Guy Jelley, CEO of Project Portfolio Office, says: “Boldyn’s partnership with PPO for close to a decade reflects the power of a flexible, structured platform supported by strong executive sponsorship. The organisation’s commitment to standardising delivery practices and tying financial data into one view is what drives real business transformation. PPO’s adaptability and integration capabilities have enabled Boldyn to scale confidently while maintaining control and visibility across a growing global footprint.”
Boldyn continues to build on its project management capabilities with PPO as it prepares to transition its finance systems from Exchequer to Workday. A mirrored sandbox environment enables collaborative development of new templates, structures and reports while protecting production data.
O’Callaghan summarises the partnership: “We’ve had a very positive experience with PPO. The team listens to our requirements but also, at times, challenges our thinking with industry best practice, and collaborates to tailor the platform to our needs. It’s not just a software implementation – it’s helped elevate how we manage projects and deliver value across the business.”
