How to migrate with efficiency and visibility at all levels

From Missouri to Munich, consumers across the globe say, “Show me the CARFAX!” when they want vehicle history information. After all, CARFAX is the largest database of its kind in the world. However, many don’t realize that the company has expanded to offer additional products and services as part of its greater mission: to provide trusted information that helps millions of people shop, buy, own, and sell used cars with more confidence.

To fuel this growth, CARFAX added over 100 new employees to their delivery team over the past four years – an increase of almost 50%. As the team grew, so did the demand for a more robust, integrated system to manage their products and people. They were using 3-6 different tools, none of which were connected to each other or well-aligned with CARFAX’s processes.

While gathering platform suggestions from his team and exploring their options at tradeshows, Aaron noticed that Atlassian stood out. “They were a clear thought leader,” he explains. “They weren’t just creating a single product and bolting other things onto it. They were looking holistically at culture, cohesion, and how people work.”

While many CARFAX team members were advocating for Atlassian, Aaron wanted to be sure it was the right choice for them and, even more importantly, enlist hands-on help with strategy and implementation. He started researching solution partners, and after vetting several firms, he landed on Cprime. He recalls, “They had the knowledge to guide us down the road, as well as the culture, services, and approach to make us successful. They also provided a dedicated, on-site consultant throughout implementation so we wouldn’t be on our own.”

Cprime’s Vice President of Professional Services, Swati Jain, agrees that the partnership was a natural fit because CARFAX was looking for a solution, not just a tool. “We’re a solutions provider,” she says. “We wanted to fully understand CARFAX’s needs so we could architect, design, and implement a solution not only for today, but one that could also scale with their future growth.”

In the months following the transition to Atlassian, CARFAX has achieved all the results they hoped for and more. From day-to-day tactical improvements (like increasing efficiency and better managing backlogs) to strategic organizational growth (like building transparency and visibility throughout the enterprise), Aaron describes the change as “seismic.”

Alison agrees, saying their team now lives in Jira day in and day out. “Jira is core to what we do. It’s how we get work done,” she explains. “What’s even better is that the developers don’t even know they’re enabling key management decisions. Jira is providing direct insights that are tactically serving developers, all the way up to management as they make decisions about where we invest time and resources.”

Aaron adds that CARFAX executives not only rely on Atlassian data for strategic insights around team productivity, but also enjoy seeing real-time data. “Executives never signed in to our old system. Now, they actually want to sit down with me and look at Jira so they can see what’s happening in real time and filter down to specific problems that we never would have noticed before.”

With invaluable support from Cprime, CARFAX has successfully completed the migration to Atlassian and experienced improvements enterprise-wide. From greater development efficiency for Engineering, to more regular updates and scalability without interruption for IT, to consistent and real-time analytics for the C-suite, staff across the organization can work faster and smarter than ever before.

These improvements have not only made a difference in employees’ day-to-day work, but also helped reinforce the Project Management Office’s value as part of a broader focus on the team’s competence and capability. “We’re pivoting to more of a hub-and-spoke model with our Product and Technology Teams, where they are embedded in the business,” Aaron describes. “The business leaders at CARFAX are looking to our team for people who can bridge the gap between Technology and Management. Atlassian’s solutions help us do that.” The team's work has even earned them a PMO of the year nomination from PMNetwork.

For Aaron and Alison, that’s where Atlassian has made the biggest impact: breaking down barriers between teams and having access to real-time, portfolio-wide data for smarter decision-making. “The depth of Atlassian’s functionality and the breadth of business functions have been head and shoulders above the rest,” Aaron says. “But to me, the transparency and visibility have been the biggest wins.”