CELO Industry, a global leader in high-precision fastening and engineered assembly solutions, operates across four continents with over 580 employees. As the company rapidly scaled and diversified, managing its growing portfolio of global initiatives became increasingly complex. In this case study, David Serra, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of the Transformation Office, shares how CELO reimagined its project governance approach and selected Profit.co to bring alignment, structure, and strategic visibility to its project and portfolio management processes.
CELO is a global leader in high-precision fastening and engineered assembly solutions, serving customers across four continents. With manufacturing and commercial operations in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East, CELO is known for its innovation-driven approach and customer-centric product development.
At the heart of CELO’s ongoing transformation journey is David Serra, who holds dual roles as Chief Marketing Officer and Head of the Transformation Office. With a mission to unify operations, elevate customer experience, and digitize project governance, David has led initiatives that touch nearly every function in the business. In this case study, David shares how CELO identified a need for more cohesive project portfolio management, evaluated multiple platforms, and ultimately selected Profit.co’s PPM solution to align execution with strategy.
Q: Can you start by introducing CELO Industry and your role within the company?
David Serra, “CELO is a complex, family-owned company with a global presence we have locations across four continents. Our factories are based in Spain and Germany in Europe, in the U.S. and Mexico in the Americas, and in China. Additionally, we have commercial offices in locations such as Chile, Hungary, Poland, Morocco, and the Middle East.
As a company, we focus on providing B2B solutions for easy and fast assembly. Our principal value lies in offering technical solutions that save time and reduce assembly costs, all customized to the specific technical requirements of our customers. We also have a fixings division, with market-specific products focused on installation efficiencies, and more recently, a new division handling projects from design to complete installation of ventilated façades.
As Corporate CMO, my role is to empower and support internal teams to reach new customers, deliver expertise, and provide communication assets that our clients can leverage in their respective markets. Our ultimate focus is on maximizing customer satisfaction through the tools and services we offer. To achieve this, we have dedicated marketing teams strategically located in several countries to support these initiatives.
Q: Can you expand on the marketing role at CELO?
David Serra, “Yeah, sure. At CELO, marketing is built around three main pillars. The first is generating demand. That includes everything from developing and launching new products to executing our go-to-market strategies. It’s a role that overlaps quite a bit with product management we work together closely on that front. We also focus on finding new potential customers and guiding demand toward our most successful markets.
The second pillar is brand reputation. We’re very proud of our company and the quality of our work, so this pride must be reflected in everything we do. We want our brand to represent quality in every interaction.
And the third pillar is internal development and digitalization. In this role, we’re working to transform internal structures, enhance team performance, and leverage new technologies to bring the customer closer and deliver a superior service experience.”
Q: Digital transformation is a big theme at CELO. Can you tell us more about what that actually looks like in practice?
David Serra, “Sure. When I joined CELO about eight years ago, our digital footprint was limited, with only three websites and low customer engagement. Departments operated in silos, each using separate tools to manage and process data, which hindered collaboration and efficiency.
One of our first priorities was to transform how customers interact with us. We built a robust omnichannel structure so customers can reach us through any channel whether it’s a website form, email, WhatsApp, or phone and always receive a consistent, high-quality experience.
In the past seven years, we have launched 19 localized websites and e-commerce platforms, significantly expanding our global reach. We also implemented centralized systems, including a product information management solution and a CRM platform, to align our technical, project, and sales teams. This ensures that accurate information flows seamlessly across departments, enabling us to deliver solutions not bureaucracy to our customers.
Additionally, we have introduced customer satisfaction surveys to surface the pain points that matter most to our customers. On the backend, we’ve enabled features such as EDI for invoicing and automatic ordering, and we’ve started providing real-time data feeds to customers to enhance their processes.
We’ve gone from 280 employees to over 580 in this time, and the coordination brought by these digital tools has been crucial to scaling effectively. All of this is moving us closer to becoming a data-structured company, one that can respond quickly, intelligently, and globally.
Q: What challenges were you facing in project or portfolio management before adopting a PPM solution?
David Serra, “There were quite a few challenges, honestly. The biggest challenge was finding the right software, something that could scale with us yet remain easy to use. We’re a family-owned company with people who’ve been here for over 30 years, working with the same processes for decades. At the same time, we have younger employees who are comfortable with new technology. Bridging that gap isn’t easy.
So the tool had to be intuitive for everyone, regardless of background. If not, you risk creating silos, some teams fully adopting it and others opting out, even if they have valuable input to offer.
Another challenge was centralization. We had numerous tools across teams, and every time we introduced a new one, it felt like starting over. It became hard to track everything in one place.
With Profit.co, we’re working toward consolidating that. Now we can align everything, projects at both the corporate and local levels, under one strategic direction. That helps us ensure that every initiative supports the same larger goal, and it also improves how we manage resources within a single system.”
Q: What really triggered the need for a new project management tool, and what tools were already in use at CELO?
David Serra, “When new employees join, they come with different experiences and habits, and with that, different tools they are used to. We’re a flexible company, so we let people lead with what works for them, as long as it contributes to the business. However, this meant we ended up with a variety of tools being used across different teams.
Some teams used Asana, others used Jira, Trello, or even Excel-based trackers; depending on the team, the tool varied. The problem was that it became impossible to track everything in one place. We couldn’t really catch up or understand what was happening across the company.
It also created inconsistent levels of experience; some users were very advanced with certain tools, while others were not using them effectively at all. We began to notice duplicated tasks, inefficiencies, and misaligned objectives essentially a lack of visibility and coordination across the portfolio.
That’s when we knew we needed a tool that could bring everything together from product management to task-level execution. It had to provide us with a clear view of priorities, how projects contribute to strategic goals, and ultimately help us with budgeting. We wanted to track how budgets evolve across projects and can react quickly if something goes off course.
It was all about solving inefficiencies and aligning everyone under one structured platform.”
Q: Can you walk us through your decision-making and evaluation process? Who was involved, what alternatives did you consider, and how did Profit.co emerge as the chosen platform?
David Serra, “It was a team decision. Our core evaluation group included HR, IT, product management, and marketing, since we were among the heaviest users of project tools.
The initial question was: do we pick a basic tool just for development teams, or do we choose something that works across the entire company?
We still have some teams using tools like Asana due to older workflows and templates that’re more challenging to migrate, but we’re transitioning gradually. We explored Microsoft Project, but it felt too complex and lacked the flexibility to customize it for our needs. Some teams were still using Jira and Trello. But Jira was more for ticketing and Trello felt more like a to-do list, useful for individual routines but not scalable for cross-functional coordination.
Ultimately, Profit.co stood out because it provided a more collaborative, all-in-one environment that effectively met our needs. The platform gave us a way to centralize our project portfolio, align with strategy, and bring different teams together under one system.
The whole evaluation took about two to three months. We didn’t want to rush; we needed consensus and alignment across all key teams before moving forward.”
Q: Was there a specific moment during the evaluation that really helped solidify Profit.co as the right choice?
David Serra, “For us, the decisive factor was Profit.co’s ability to align our strategic objectives (OKRs) with the execution of projects and tasks throughout the company. The platform’s automation and comprehensive KPI tracking gave us a structured way to monitor the progress of key objectives and ensure all initiatives were contributing to our group’s overall strategy.
As a company, we place great importance on having full control and measurable visibility of our project portfolio and the return on investment for each initiative. Given CELO’s rapid growth, it was essential to have a solution that could scale with us and drive alignment across all teams, ensuring everyone worked toward our group’s most critical objectives.”
How do you plan to use Profit.co’s project and portfolio management platform, and what value do you expect to gain from it?
David Serra explained in detail:
- Most of our projects will run through the platform. As the corporate team, we develop initiatives that eventually roll out globally, so it’s important that we have a centralized system to coordinate that work.
- These projects usually go through a process of evaluation and validation by local teams before full execution. That means we need to manage milestones, assign the right tasks to the right people, and coordinate resources, both in terms of budget and time.
- Right now, we’re using Profit.co to structure that flow. We’ve been live with the platform for about six months, and we’re still getting used to it, but we already see the value. Our main teams are on board, and we’re able to get a quick overview of project status during our recurring check-ins.
- We’re currently working on building reusable templates for different project types, so we don’t waste time going through it again. These templates will include checklists, gates, and data structures that streamline execution.
- So far, the experience has been very positive. Most teams see this as the right tool for what we need.
Beyond time savings and alignment, what other long-term goals or value do you expect from your PPM solution?
David Serra replied:
“Beyond immediate time savings and improved alignment, our long-term vision for adopting a PPM solution is much broader. We are aiming to transform not only our tools, but also the way CELO operates as an organization. With artificial intelligence beginning to influence standard processes across the board, it is critical for us to establish a robust data foundation that can evolve alongside these new technologies.
Our ambition goes beyond simply having an efficient project management system. We are building a structured platform that enables AI-driven decision-making, helping us improve how we prioritize, allocate resources, and accelerate execution. Looking ahead, we expect the platform to support intelligent project selection and even to anticipate future needs based on evolving market conditions, customer demands, internal capacity, and organizational context.
The ultimate goal is to reach a point where project generation and prioritization become increasingly automated and aligned from the outset with CELO’s strategic objectives. While this transformation is a long-term journey likely taking more than 6 to 12 months we are focused right now on laying the groundwork: standardizing our processes, structuring data, and ensuring organizational adoption across all teams. This foundation will position us to leverage forecasting, project modeling, and ultimately, move towards truly intelligent and agile planning in the future.”
Reflecting on your experience, what advice would you give to others going through a product selection process?
David Serra:
- Well, I think first it’s important to sit down with the different teams and really understand the reality, how projects are being launched, managed, and held. You need to identify the key pain points and see which processes are working, and which ones need to be created from scratch.
- A big mistake we often make is wanting to run before we’ve learned how to walk. In many cases, there’s no clearly defined process or methodology, no clear roles or teams. And we assume that just because something has been done a certain way in the past, that’s the best way to keep doing it, but that’s not always true.
- This was very challenging for us. I’m not saying we got everything right, but we made an effort to bring everyone into the process, to ask them how they wanted to work and what they needed. When you do that, you’re in a better position to improve things and really address the needs of the team.
- And once you have everyone committed, it becomes much easier to evolve and move forward. I think that early phase, the one we tend to skip because we think we already know everything, is actually the best time to revisit our own methodologies, see what needs to change, and reset.
- It’s also really important to make sure the team understands that the tool is there to help them grow. When they see that, they’ll use it with more energy and commitment and that’s what makes the difference in the long run.
Conclusion
CELO’s transformation journey highlights the power of aligning strategy with execution through a unified platform. By adopting Profit.co’s Project and Portfolio Management solution, the organization has not only streamlined its global initiatives but also laid the groundwork for a data-driven, future-ready operating model. With improved visibility, standardized processes, and strategic clarity, CELO is now better equipped to scale efficiently and respond intelligently to a rapidly evolving business landscape.
