Successful Project Management at Investitionsbank Schlesweig-Holstein (IB.SH) with Blue Ant

How IB.SH Enhances Transparency and Efficiency in Public Sector Project Management with Blue Ant

The Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein (IB.SH) is the central development bank of the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. As a public development institution, IB.SH supports a wide range of funding, development, and digitalisation projects for the state.

With an increasing number of projects and growing regulatory requirements, the bank decided in 2019 to modernise its project management and introduce an integrated, future-ready solution – the multi-project management software Blue Ant.

“Project work is becoming increasingly important for us. We wanted to move away from multiple isolated tools toward a professional, unified solution,” explains Ralf Busch, Project Manager at IB.SH.
“Blue Ant meets all the requirements of modern project management — from portfolio oversight to detailed resource planning.”

After a Europe-wide tender, Blue Ant clearly emerged as the preferred solution.
The decisive factors included its intuitive usability, scalability, and the ability to map all project processes centrally within a single system.

Today, IB.SH employs Blue Ant across several key areas:

• Central project and portfolio management – All projects consolidated on one platform

• Resource management – Precise capacity planning and evaluation

• Workflow management – Standardised processes depending on project type

• Custom project classification – Evaluation and prioritisation using a scoring system

A key success factor for IB.SH was the structured introduction of Blue Ant.
Through clear master data definitions, data migration, and project manager training, the rollout was completed just in time — shortly before the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020.

With this, the bank was able to completely replace its previously decentralised tool environment of Excel, Word, and various templates.

“Blue Ant helped us elevate our project work to a new level,” says Busch. “We now have transparency across all projects, clear responsibilities, and up-to-date data in one place.”

As a public-sector institution, IB.SH placed great emphasis on security and compliance.
The system had to meet public procurement regulations and ensure a secure data structure.

Blue Ant convinced stakeholders with its clear authorisation concept, high adaptability, and proven compliance with all public-sector requirements.

Note: This customer story is based on a presentation by Ralf Busch (Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein) held on November 18, 2021.