Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein

Modern Project Management at IB.SH 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.

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How the Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein Uses Blue Ant to Boost Transparency and Efficiency in Public Sector Projects

In response to a growing number of projects and evolving regulatory requirements, the bank embarked on a project in 2019 to modernize its project management approach by implementing Blue Ant – an integrated, future-ready multi-project management solution.

“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 a strong emphasis on security and compliance. The system needed to meet public procurement regulations while ensuring a secure data structure. Blue Ant impressed stakeholders with its clear authorization framework, 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.

Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein
"It quickly became clear that Blue Ant could meet nearly all of the requirements from our specification sheet. The proposed implementation concept convinced us, and the trial version really impressed us."

Volker Busch

Project Manager

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