Successful Project Management at Forschung Burgenland with Blue Ant

How Forschung Burgenland Enhances Transparency, Resource Planning, and Collaboration with Blue Ant

As Head of the Department of Information Technology, Christian Büll oversees seven study programmes focused on digital media, cloud computing, and business process engineering.
He also leads the university’s Digitalisation Office, where the implementation of the multi-project management software Blue Ant took place.

Before adopting Blue Ant, Forschung Burgenland faced the challenge of maintaining an overview of numerous simultaneous projects.

“We had budget frameworks and resource plans, but they were only snapshots,” explains Büll. “What we lacked was a real-time view — which projects were critical, where we had bottlenecks, and where we could reallocate resources.”

Today, Forschung Burgenland uses Blue Ant for:

• Project and resource planning – precise coordination of staff and budgets across all project phases

• Transparent status reporting – up-to-date information for management and project teams at any time

• Research project controlling – detailed mapping of funded projects with cost structures and hourly rates

• Communication and collaboration – integration of all departments and transparent information flows

• Portfolio management – future strategic evaluation and prioritisation of projects

With around 140 to 150 projects running simultaneously each year — from short-term initiatives to multi-year research projects — Blue Ant ensures structure, traceability, and a complete overview.
Particularly in the area of funded research, where budgets and timelines are strictly monitored, the software provides a solid basis for planning and controlling.

The introduction of Blue Ant was carried out entirely online during the pandemic — a first for the university.

“We conducted the entire implementation digitally,” says Büll.
“Thanks to the professional support from the Proventis consultant and clearly structured online workshops, it worked perfectly.”

A key factor for success was the interdisciplinary project team, involving all departments, alongside transparent internal communication.

“We provided regular updates to keep the entire organisation informed — even those not directly involved in the project,” adds Büll.

After just four to five weeks, the project team was fully operational.
Through key-user training, the knowledge was effectively transferred and anchored within the organisation.

The next step for Forschung Burgenland is to expand Blue Ant usage towards a comprehensive portfolio management approach — to evaluate and prioritise research and digitalisation projects strategically.

“We want to ensure that our projects not only run efficiently on an operational level but also align perfectly with our long-term goals,” says Büll.

“We saw that Blue Ant covered all our requirements out of the box,” concludes Büll.
“The key success factor was our flexibility — we didn’t let rigid processes guide us but adapted to the system. That’s how we were able to unlock the full potential of Blue Ant.”

Note: This customer story is based on an interview with Christian Büll (University of Applied Sciences Burgenland) conducted on September 15th, 2022. “