How will the MBPO and Analytics teams within JOANN, a leading fabric and craft specialty retailer that sells merchandise used in sewing, crafting, and decorating, decide which project management software best fits their needs to help drive bottom line improvements and efficiencies across the business?
Rachael Patino, Manager, Merchandise Business Process Optimization, was talking to two other managers on the analytics team when she expressed her frustrations with how much extra work her team was putting in to manage projects and tasks they had on their plate. The other managers, (Sabina Skolnik, Manager Data Engineering and Erica Mangino Giuliani, Manager Data Science), agreed with her that their teams were also spending a lot of extra time managing projects, instead of more efficiently spending time. Both Sabina and Erica expressed how they had previously worked for companies that had project management software that would do the things they were spending most of their time on automatically.
Rachael was weary of just adding another software. The teams used Trello and it did not work the way they wanted it to. Before Rachael’s current role, she worked in IT under the Project Management Office (PMO) as a Business Analyst (BA), where she was responsible for disseminating the project information in and out of the IT department. They had multiple tools that were confusing to people outside of IT and did not have enough licenses to keep the business informed. She spent most of her days copying things from one platform to another, creating slide decks and summary emails that had the same information to send to business leaders weekly. On top of that, she had weekly meetings with business leaders to give status updates. She didn’t want this for her team. Her other managers agreed with her concerns. If they were going to get the support from their leadership and the buy in from their teams to switch platforms, they knew they would have to come up with a plan to evaluate, acquire, and roll-out the software while keeping a better project management process in mind.
As Rachael reflected on her decision, she knew it would ultimately come down to the platform’s price, ease of use, views, automation, communication, and integrations. After exhaustive research, along with her co-managers, she narrowed down the choices to three options: use the products the company already has in other parts of the business (Jira, ServiceNow), enhance the products the team currently used for other things (Trello, SharePoint, Planner), or buy a new product that does everything they are looking for (Asana, Monday.com).
How will Rachael make the best choice for her team? Will she be able to scale the solution farther than she could another one? How does she make sure that the product allows for easy adoption at all user levels. She has a hard decision to make and wants to make the best one for her team, the analytics team, and the entire company.
1 Copyright © 2023, Erica Mangino Giuliani. This case was prepared for the purpose of class discussion, and not to illustrate the effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Names and some information have been disguised. This case is published under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this case for non-commercial purposes, in both printed and electronic formats.
JOANN and the U.S. Craft Supplies Industry
“For almost 80 years, JOANN has inspired creativity in the hearts, hands, and minds of its customers. From a single storefront in Cleveland, Ohio, the nation’s category leader in sewing and fabrics and one of the fastest growing competitors in the arts and crafts industry has grown to include 833 store locations across 49 states and robust e-commerce business. With the goal of helping every customer find their creative Happy Place, JOANN serves as a convenient single source for all of the supplies, guidance and inspiration needed to achieve any project or passion.” (Hayes, 2023)
The U.S. Craft & Sewing Supplies Industry
The U.S. craft and sewing supplies industry is broken down into 3 products and services with a broad range of activities within each bucket (Thomas, 2021). These segments are broken out to fabric, sewing and craft supplies, and patterns/other. Fabric makes up 60% of the industry, sewing and craft supplies make up 37.4% and patterns and others represent 2.6% of the sales (Thomas, 2021). Many projects can be accomplished from the supplies sold within this industry, including painting, drawing, sculpting, crochet, knitting, needle point, photography, pottery, jewelry making, woodworking, quilting, clothes making, DIY décor, and many more.
IBIS World estimates that the US market for Fabric, Craft, and Sewing Supply Stores as $3.2 billion in 2021. According to a survey, 62% of all households within the US have engaged in at least one crafting activity (Danziger, 2018). In 2021, the top 3 retailers for the industry accounted for 87.6% of the market, Michaels Stores Inc. (Michaels) with 35.3% market share, JOANN Stores LLC (JOANN) with 28.0% market share, and Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. (Hobby Lobby) with 24.3% market share 1 . While comparing market share, only the revenue and sales associated to the industry were taken into account, IBIS notes that each company sells other products and services but were not considered when comparing market share.
The increase in the market within the last 10 years has come from outside the traditonal craft retailers. Online vendors like Amazon and Etsy, and other large box retialers like Target and Walmart started to gain market share within the space. They sell cheaper crafting goods that casual crafters deem good enough according to research done by GlobalData (Howland, 2019). For seasonal home décor (a section of JOANN’s goods) JOANN also competes with places like Home Goods, and TJ Maxx.
Michaels, based in Irving, TX, is the leading crafts retailer in the US with 1287 stores across the US and Canada. In 2014 they went public, generating $445.7 million that year. 2 Since 2016 the store has operated 3 chains: Michaels, Aaron Brothers, and Pat Catan’s. Since 2021 the company has been taken private after surpassing the sales expectations. Their product line focuses on the arts and craft supplies while having a major area in custom framing (Thomas, 2021).
Hobby Lobby was established in 1972 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It operates more than 900 stores in 47 states. Like JOANN, the product line includes supplies for arts and crafts as well as décor and sewing. The company’s industry specific revenue is estimated to be $778.4 million. 3
About JOANN
JOANN started as a single storefront named the Cleveland Fabric Shop. After further expansion to the neighboring state in 1963, the name was changed to Jo-Ann Fabrics, where they got their name by combining two of the founders’ granddaughters’ names Joan and Jackie Ann (McGregor, 2003). Six years after they expanded, they became a publicly traded company (McGregor, 2003). Joann Fabrics continued to expand throughout the 80’s when it opened more than 500 stores across the country (McGregor, 2003).
In the early 2000s Joann Fabric’s had over 900 stores and employed over 20,000 people. In 2010 the company reported earnings of $93 million and sales of $2 billion (McGregor, 2003). The company was purchased for $1.6 billion by the private equity firm Leonard Green and Partners LP in 2011 and took the company private (AP, 2010).
While the company was the leader in the sewing industry, in 2018 the company rebranded to be just “JOANN” in effort to go beyond just the fabric customer and encompass all of crafts (Jo-Ann rebrands as it integrates new tech features, 2017). A year after the rebranding, the company reported net sales that totaled $2.4 billion.
In 2021 JOANN went public on the Nasdaq market under the ticker symbol “JOAN”. In that year, the company reported net sales of $2.7 billion. 4
In the years following the pandemic, with increased interest in do-it-yourself projects, JOANN saw an increase in customers and sales. They created an e-commerce distribution site to better serve the increasing online sales, as well as their buy online pick up in store sales. Their most recent earnings call, the company reported $2.2 billion in sales. 4
At the start of 2023 JOANN operated 830 stores in 49 states and an e-commerce site, where it specializes in merchandise that can be used in sewing, craft, and décor projects. (Hayes, 2023) This includes fabric, notions, frames, paper crafting supplies, artificial floral, finished seasonal and home décor items, and much more.
Their mission is to “Inspire the creative spirit in each of us – our customers and ourselves.” And their vision is “Be the inspirational leader that helps everyone find their Happy Place through superior assortments, presentation, and service.” (JOANN, n.d.)
A majority of JOANN’s customers say they make their creations to give or donate. (Danziger, 2018) While another portion make items from the goods purchased to be sold on E-bay and Etsy. (Danziger, 2018)
JOANN’s store support center is the corporate headquarters for JOANN, located in Hudson, Ohio. They currently have around 800 employees working at the headquarters.
Project Management and JOANN
Project Management
The Association for Project Management defines project management as “the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge, and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters. It has final deliverables that are constrained to a finite timescale and budget.” (Naybour, 2014)
Project management processes and phases
The process of project management involves monitoring, controlling, and communicating throughout the phases of the project (Naybour, 2014). Planning of the project begins at the early stages of the project. Monitoring helps keep the project on track and estimates when the project will be finished. Control happens when risks pop up. Communication happens throughout the project, everyone involved in the project should be informed, formally or informally.
About the Project Management Strategies at JOANN
The project management team in JOANN sits under the IT umbrella. They focus on overseeing the product and project management of IT programs and projects, inclusive of both waterfall and agile methodologies. They bridge the gap between technical and non-technical teams throughout the company. Business Analysts in the PMO department are highly leveraged in the project management process in the following ways:
Business case completion and impact analysis presentation to development team(s).
Use case and business requirements gathering.
UAT tasks requiring business collaboration.
Communication of project delivery updates to business stakeholders; communicate project timeline concerns as applicable.
When Rachael first started in IT, she identified the lack of tools and processes needed to complete the core tasks of her role. Training was minimal, and Rachael was directed to take on her first task of prioritizing the request backlog and gathering requirements for tickets lacking detail. Rachael’s initial concern in this space was the lack of communication between the application development teams who complete the technical work, and business analysts who support the requests; minimal communication avenues often stalled collaboration with essential teams and soon became Rachael’s largest frustration. In addition, while JIRA was used to house business requests, the department had no formal or automated way to provide reporting or status updates to business stakeholders.
Outside of the IT team, project managers do not exist. The teams are meant to keep track of the workload and projects using tools provided to them by IT, whether those tools are software, or just excel. Unfortunately, there is currently no unified strategy across teams on the business side of the SSC.
For the last year, the Analytics Team has been using Trello. This tool is under the same company as JIRA, the tool IT uses day to day. It provides more of a board-like experience for task management. At first the Analytics team loved the tool. It started to provide visibility to daily tasks and help managers prioritize the workload. However, the team started to realize that they had to do a lot of repetitive work, and what they were promised with automation, did not work without more paid add-ons to the tool. Some members stopped using it all together. While the managers spent even more time trying to summarize it for their stakeholders.
JOANN Analytics & MBPO Teams
The Analytics team within JOANN serves the business by providing descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analysis and solutions to stakeholders. It is comprised of 5 teams, Consumer Research, Customer Analytics, Data Engineering, Data Science, and Merchandise Business Process Optimization.
The MBPO team uses data and analytics to drive bottom line improvements and efficiencies within the focus areas of demand planning and product. They collaborate with multiple different business teams and cross functional leaders, while primarily serving the inventory management organization. The MBPO team focuses has three measures of success that help divide the types of projects and tasks they do.
Saving Time, Doing More & Doing Better
To help the business save time, the MBPO team implements new processes on current replenishment tasks. They create tools and reports that get the replenishment team the information they need at a quicker rate than they previously had access to. They create automation and centralization to help reduce the effort needed to manage the article forecasts and allocations.
To help make better informed decisions, the MBPO team evaluates current processes, in addition to creating new ones. By doing so, they increase the volume of the information available, as well as increase the accuracy of the information delivered to enable the business. The team optimizes and automates current processes to provide teams with greater control over the movement of their goods. They create tools to address article exception reporting, purchase order tracking, vendor compliance root cause analysis, and more.
Stakeholders for their projects
Stakeholders are a person or group of people who have impact on a project, whether that impact with investment, advice, sponsorship, or just to keep up to speed (Hoory & Bottorff, 2022) To understand the stakeholders of the MBPO projects, Rachael conducted a stakeholder analysis.5 This helped her team and her better understand the needs of each stakeholder. She also conducted an analysis of her previous stakeholders while she was a BA on the PMO team to see how much overlap there was to help inform her choice in solutions.
Software as a Service
Project management solutions have a good mix of the right software and the process the team follows for how they will use the software. The following section will outline the software available and the pros and cons of each when integrating it into the process for the MBPO and Analytics team.
To evaluate the software, Rachael and her co-managers were given a list based on which software other teams in the company already subscribed to and only put a new software in the running if they personally had used it in a previous company. This narrowed down the list to Jira, Confluence, Trello, ServiceNow, Asana, Planner, Teams, and SharePoint. The analytics team then gathered data from each of the providers’ websites and trials to learn the basic offerings of each software. Ultimately the decision came down to the following things: Ease of use, Integrations, Features.
Criteria
Ease of Use
Templates – To make keeping track of projects easy as possible, are there a list of templates within the software that allows for the ease of creation when creating a new project or task
Learning Materials – Are there guides on how to use the software, and how easy are the guides to use?
Automations – Can the basic, repetitive, and mundane tasks be automated? Does automation cost extra? Is automation native to the platform and how much can you automate?
Integrations
Extra Cost – Integrations must be free to use. Any additional cost integrations will not be considered as a part of the platform and will need to be evaluated as a software agreement by the JOANN procurement team.
Microsoft apps – The JOANN MBPO team and Analytics team use the 365 Microsoft suite and need the project management software to integrate with these apps, Outlook and Teams are examples of integrations required.
Tableau – JOANN currently uses Tableau Cloud to publish and share dashboards for reporting throughout the company. Using Tableau for reporting will ease the usage of the published reports.
SharePoint – The team currently uses SharePoint for file management and information distribution as a intranet.
Features
Resource Management – The team will need to evaluate how the software uses resource management. This will include how many takes are on one person, how many projects one person owns and how much is due at once.
Task Management Features - To get the most out of the day-to-day task management, the ability to mirror tasks, assign tasks and subtasks to people, and have a wholistic view of all work that a person has on their plate.
Reporting - The team will need to report on project progress, status updates, overall team workloads and portfolio statuses. Dashboards can be built inside the platform or outside within Tableau.
Collaboration - The platform will need to allow for multiple people working on different parts of projects and tasks. The ability to comment and share by email and MS Teams will be necessary.
Portfolio Management – The ability to see the portfolio of projects for a team shown in multiple views, including a Gantt chart, a table/spreadsheet, and dashboard.
API – The data within the software should be able to be accessed through an API for easy extraction.
Discussing the options
In early 2023, Rachael and her co-managers set out to gather feedback from their team about the evaluation of each software. To evaluate the options, they prepared test scenarios that would cover the needs they had. Each team taking part would first create their main project and the tasks associated with them. They would assign themselves to the tasks, assign the due-dates, and create subtasks on the tasks for other people on the team. The managers would then create an overall view of the entire team, and each person would try and create automation to help with the mundane and repetitive tasks in project management. The team will use the platform for the length of the software’s trial period. A comparison of all the features was then compiled into a table.6
Software used by IT
Since Rachael previously worked in IT as a BA, the analytics team did not test these tools. Instead, Rachael’s feedback of how they were used was compiled.
Jira:
Jira7 is a project management tool designed for software development by Atlassian. The IT currently uses it, and has expanded its use to outside groups within JOANN like HR.
Rachael’s key observations of the platform:
Jira’s main strength is how it serves as the repository for housing business requests requiring IT’s involvement. JOANN used JIRA for both “support-and-grow” projects (i.e. development teams get to it when they can, lacking any formality and accountability to timelines), and agile methodology projects (i.e. OMS and POS development teams operate in a 2-week sprint agile fashion). The platform had easy ability to export projects and their details, however, JOANN would benefit more on Jira feeding other enterprise systems automatically. It also had the ability to see all changes/edits to projects in a project’s history, but not in an ideal format.
JOANN does not own the premium version of Jira, which would limit us from optimizing additional system integrations across the business. JOANN IT does not invest their time/training in using Jira’s other functionalities (i.e. burn down charts, etc). When other teams are given access to have their own board for task management, they find it hard to use and understand the software development language. Collaborator licenses are given to business users required to communicate via Jira, but not all business areas have been integrated or understand their intent, resulting in hesitancy to use its functionality.
Confluence:
Confluence8 is Atlassian’s version of wiki pages. It was designed to keep knowledge and collaboration of projects organized and easily accessible.
Rachael’s key observations of the platform:
The landing page for communication-sharing and updates for multiple business teams was easy to understand and would be accessible to non-technical users. The ability to create/assign tasks for other users in the same Confluence page was helpful, but notifications on assigned/generated tasks are not shared with applicable users outside of Confluence, making this yet another group/page for users to monitor for updates. JOANN does not own the premium version of Confluence, limiting us from optimizing additional system integrations across the business.
ServiceNow:
ServiceNow9 is an IT service, business, and operations management system. It helps take and manage service desk tickets for task management.
Rachael’s key observations of the platform:
It is a solid project management platform, inclusive of executive summaries, project financials (budget, expenses, etc), teams timekeeping, etc. Primarily, JOANN uses ServiceNow for IT to manage their incident ticket process and utilizes its task assignment capability.
Unfortunately access for users is inconsistent in ServiceNow at JOANNs. Most Business Analysts do not have the ability to create their own projects, and instead support by providing executive summaries, project updates, and logging their time. Additionally, Service Now is not integrated in any other areas of the company, making it difficult to identify centralization needs to drive the business.
Software used by Analytics
Trello
Trello10 is Atlassian’s kaban board tool in their project management software suite. It relies heavily on this view unless you subscribe to additional power-ups. The power-ups range from free integrations to other paid services to help make Trello everything you need it to be.
Observations from an MBPO analyst:
The board-based project management was very flexible to create and assign tasks, collaborate across projects, automate rules, and assign priorities. With automation you could have the ability to view holistic workloads by user/teams and identify team’s bandwidth. However not all of the details from the automation can be copied to the wholistic view. If a team had a project that was outside of the normal team board, a task mirroring power-up would be needed or a person would have to keep track of their project in two places.
For larger projects, there was no ability to enter projects timelines and apply briefs/project summaries in a formal way. It also lacks the ability to provide executive project summaries to leadership in an automated way.
Microsoft Planner, Teams, & SharePoint
Microsoft 365 has a combined platform solution to compete with other project management tools. It is included in a Microsoft 365 license. Teams across JOANN use MS Teams to communicate, MS Planner for task management, and SharePoint11 as a repository for files and as information hubs to share information on web pages.
Rachael’s Feedback:
SharePoint has solid communication platforms for teams’ sites/subsites, as well as news bulletins and project timelines. There is ability to link easily to resources with cloud capabilities and file sharing. Each team within Teams, gets a SharePoint site automatically, and Subsites and Channels can be created under teams. Page creation can easily get messy, with multiple content capabilities that can quickly increase confusion/frustration for users, and thwart business process standardization.
There is no standardization per business area at JOANN for use of SharePoint/Teams differently; while this flexibility is warranted in some scenarios, an effort to enhance user education and optimizing functionality is needed. In addition, we currently have no IT support teams that have expertise in these Microsoft products and have had to engage Microsoft in the past when technical questions arise. And as for Planner, the primary frustration lies in the fact that to create a planner board, you also create a new team, which in turn creates a new SharePoint site, instead of adding a project to a team that’s already created.
Software used in previously by Analytics Managers
Asana
Asana12 is a web and mobile project and task management platform designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work.
Feedback from team members and Racheal:
Excellent project management and communication platform with the ability to create/assign tasks and subtasks, detail project briefs/statuses, reflect multi-level project timelines/milestones, obtain and document required approvals from stakeholders, and ability to automate rules and communication to users across the business. There are multiple connections and APIs make it possible to extract/feed project data to and from this application. It can also house resources meaningful to teams/business areas, and projects.
Rachael’s con: The 25 analytics team members and their SVP would be the only team on this platform, and managers will still need to send out updates, even with the automation.
One data scientist on the team regarded that while they had Trello for the full previous year, they had stopped using it after the first month. Now they use Asana every day and hope that this is the product the team chooses.
The Decision
Rachael and her co-managers deliberated the options. The feedback from the team and the use case trial periods helped them get a better understanding of each of the options they were faced with. Whether it was going with software that the IT team used, staying with Trello, adding on power-ups, or switching to a new platform all together that better handled their needs. They knew that the platform they chose would have to work for them for several years, and they did not want to add any extra work to their teams’ plates.
Their director and SVP supported whatever decision that they would make. Knowing this, Rachael set off to write an email to the procurement team with her decision. Once she was finished, she thought to herself, “How can we do a better job of instilling the processes and practices of project management and get the most out of the software we chose?”
References
AP. (2010, December 23). Jo-Ann Stores to Go Private in Deal Worth $1.6 Billion. Retrieved from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/id/40793382
Chola, A. (2021, November 19). Asana vs Jira. Retrieved from HevoData: https://hevodata.com/learn/asana-vs-jira/#Intro2
Danziger, P. M. (2018, July 8). Millennials Are Ready For Crafting, But Is The $36B Crafting Industry Ready For Them? Retrieved April 02, 2023, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/07/08/millennials-are-ready-for-crafting-but-is-the-36b-crafting-industry-ready-for-them/?sh=f5f9aa23a2cb
Hayes, A. (2023, March 23). JOANN Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2023 Results . Retrieved from JOANN: https://investors.joann.com/news-releases/news-release-details/joann-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-fiscal-2023-results
Hoory, L., & Bottorff, C. (2022, August 7). What is a Stakeholder Analysis? Everything you need to know. Retrieved from Forbes Advisor: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/what-is-stakeholder-analysis/
Howland, D. (2019, March 19). Michaels losing market share in crafts. Retrieved from Retail Dive: https://www.retaildive.com/news/michaels-losing-market-share-in-crafts/550804/
JOANN. (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved from JOANN: https://www.joann.com/about-us/
Jo-Ann rebrands as it integrates new tech features. (2017, August 16). Retrieved from RetailDive: https://www.retaildive.com/news/jo-ann-rebrands-as-it-integrates-new-tech-features/449382/
McGregor, M. (2003). Sixty Years of Creativity. Retrieved from Media Corporate IR Net: http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/nys/jas/inforequest/JAS_Mag_60th%20Anniv_0703.pdf
Naybour, P. (2014, June 18). Project management processes and phases. Retrieved from APM: https://www.apm.org.uk/blog/project-management-processes-and-phases/
Thomas, B. (2021). Fabric,Craft&SewingSuppliesStoresin theUS. IBISWorld. Retrieved from https://craftindustryalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/IBIS-FabricCraftSewingSuppliesStoresintheUS.pdf
Acknowledgements
Racheal Patino (protagonist) Manger of Business Process Optimization, Kyle Molloy Director of Analytics, Sabina Skolnik Manager of Data Engineering, the MBPO and Data Science Team Members, Lisa Whittman-Smith Senior Vice President, Inventory Management & Business Insights
Exhibit 1: 2021 Market Share of Fabric Craft & Sewing Supplies Stores
Source: IBISWorld
Exhibit 2: Michaels Financial Performance
Source: IBISWorld
Note: *Estimates
Exhibit 3: Hobby Lobby Financial Performance
Source: IBISWorld
Note: *Estimates
Exhibit 4: JOANN Financial Performance
Source: JOANN Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2023 Results Press Release
Source: IBISWorld
Note: *Estimates
Exhibit 5: Stakeholder Analysis
Source: Developed by case writer
Exhibit 6: Breakdown of features faceoff
Feature | ServiceNow | Jira | MS Teams | SharePoint | Trello | Asana |
Project Planning |
| x |
| x | x | x |
Task Management | x |
| x |
| x | x |
Task Collaboration |
|
| x | x | x | x |
Integrations | x | x | x | x | x | x |
Calendar |
|
|
| x | additional paid power up | x |
Dependencies |
|
|
|
| x | x |
Repeating Tasks | x |
|
|
| additional paid power up | x |
Reporting | x | x | x |
| additional paid power up | x |
Time Tracking | x | x |
|
| additional paid power up | x |
Task Mirroring |
|
|
|
| additional paid power up | x |
My Task View | x |
| x |
|
| x |
Automation | x | x |
|
| x | x |
Workflow Flexibility |
| x |
|
|
| x |
Templates |
| x |
|
| x | x |
Subtasks |
|
|
|
| yes but user never gets notified of assignment | x |
Views | ServiceNow | Jira | MS Teams | SharePoint | Trello | Asana |
Kaban |
| x | x |
| x | x |
Calendar |
|
|
|
| Power up | x |
Timeline |
| x |
|
| x | x |
List View | x | x | x | x | x | x |
Editable Columns in List View | x |
|
| x |
| x |
Gantt Chart |
|
|
|
| Power up | x |
Workload Planning |
|
|
|
| Power up | x |
Long Term Planning |
| x |
|
|
| x |
Source: Developed by case writer
Exhibit 7: Jira Interface Examples
Source: Atlassian
Exhibit 8: Confluence Interface Examples
Source: Atlassian
Exhibit 9: ServiceNow Interface Examples
Source: ServiceNow
Exhibit 10: Trello Interface Examples
Source: Atlassian
Exhibit 11: Microsoft Planner, Teams, SharePoint Interface Examples
Source: Microsoft
Exhibit 12: Asana Interface Examples
Source: Asana
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