Boldyn expands project software to lift margin control

Boldyn Networks has expanded its use of project management software from Project Portfolio Office across its UK and Ireland operations. The system now sits at the centre of project delivery and financial control in the region.

The telecoms infrastructure company has replaced a patchwork of manual processes with a single view of project, budget and resource data. As a result, project managers track costs, forecast work and report to finance teams in a different way.

Boldyn adopted the software in 2014, when it was still operating under the BAI Communications name. Since then, the business has gone through mergers, acquisitions and a rebrand, while continuing to use the same system as its base for project management, budgeting, forecasting and resource planning.

One of the most significant changes came after the company linked the platform to Salesforce and Exchequer. Closed sales opportunities now flow automatically into project creation, while live purchase order and financial information feeds into the system for project managers to review alongside delivery data.

The integration has reduced reliance on spreadsheets for job costing and month-end reporting. Project managers can now monitor budgets, committed costs and estimated completion timings in one place, while finance teams run reports directly instead of collecting updates manually.

Cost Control

Conor O'Callaghan, Country Manager: Ireland and Head of Service Delivery at Boldyn, said the company wanted a system that could support standard processes without forcing the business to reshape itself around rigid software.

"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 month-to-month user flexibility a major advantage, as we weren't locked into long-term licences with fixed numbers of users. That makes it possible to control costs while scaling into new regions or business units. Another key benefit was the large number of available data fields," O'Callaghan said.

He added that the implementation focused on data governance, with mandatory and optional fields defined at the start to keep project information consistent across teams. That structure has become more important as Boldyn has taken on larger and more complex programmes.

"They acted as advisors, showing us what PPO could do, listening to our business requirements, and helping us structure the right data model," he said. "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."

Margin Gains

Improved visibility over labour, purchase orders and project variations has helped managers identify issues earlier and respond before they affect performance. O'Callaghan said moving away from Excel-based budget tracking has given the business more dependable information for commercial and delivery decisions.

"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, including budget, committed cost and estimated-to-complete timing. The tool can forecast costs and variances, and its flexibility means 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 start customer conversations or require internal support. Project variations are tracked in PPO, with proper approval workflows," he said.

He added that the system also gives teams a clearer view of customer orders, including top-up purchase orders on longer-running programmes, helping the business judge how much forward revenue cover is in place.

"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 deliver. In fact, we've seen a gross margin improvement of several points since adopting PPO. The uplift has been significant, proving that the structure works," he said.

Boldyn also uses the platform to review staff utilisation and compare the labour assumptions made at the bidding stage with actual engineering effort once delivery starts. That gives management a way to test pricing assumptions and refine future bids.

"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 said.

The wider effect has been a change in day-to-day working practices, with project teams relying more on shared data and less on manual administration. Customer-facing dashboards have also improved visibility for clients during delivery.

"High adoption rates reflect a cultural shift toward 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," O'Callaghan said.