Kantata Feature Spotlight: How Scott Logic Maintains Revenue Accuracy With ‘What-If’ Modeling

In the world of consulting, where time is quite literally money, managing multiple currencies, cost rates, and project variables is fundamental to both the bottom line and strategic growth.

This Kantata feature spotlight highlights how Scott Logic, a bespoke software consultancy, is leveraging Kantata’s ‘What-If’ Scenarios to tackle these complexities head-on, ensuring precise forecasting and effective period management.

The Strategic Imperative: Scott Logic Needed a Way to Account for Rate Changes That Didn’t Involve Spreadsheets

For Scott Logic, accurately projecting future revenue is not just a financial exercise; it’s a strategic imperative critical to informed decision-making and sustainable growth. With a consultancy model built around day-rate charges across various projects and currencies, small inaccuracies in revenue forecasting can have compounded effects, skewing financial planning. 

Scott Logic determined they needed to get revenue forecasting and rate change adjustments out of spreadsheets and arm their teams with the tools needed to: 

• Gain absolute clarity and trust in their revenue forecasts, especially given the complexities introduced by exchange rate (FX) changes across multi-currency projects
• Streamline month-end processes that were traditionally labor-intensive and vulnerable to discrepancies due to unaligned data sources.
• Increase the accuracy of project estimates through up-to-date cost rates, accounting for promotions and annual rate uplifts as early as possible.

“We have clients globally, some paying in U.S. dollars, some in euros, some in pounds. A multi-currency operation like ours needs to be able to deal with fluctuating FX rates and account for those changes as we’re forecasting revenue for this month or this quarter.”

-Phil Pounder, Operations Manager, Scott Logic 

The Solution: Efficiently Cascade Rate Changes

Rates fluctuate, and it can be challenging when project commercials don’t keep up. Businesses like Scott Logic use Kantata SX to model the impact that adjusted cost, revenue, and exchange rates would have on existing assignments and milestones, recalculating the value of each item based on the new rates. 

Kantata provides the flexibility to apply rate changes selectively or in bulk, ensuring control over the accuracy of forecasts and project margin estimates.

• Revalue all items (assignments, milestones, annuities) impacted by rate changes in a ‘What-If’ Scenario
• Model and apply changes caused by exchange rate movement against your base currency
• Review context and accept or reject modeled What If Differences
• Upon acceptance, rate changes are applied from effective date
• Multiple processing methods with increasing levels of automation – manual, low-touch, and no-touch

Before adopting ‘What-If’, we’d have extra WIP in our forecasts because there could be multiple FX rates on an engagement at any time based on when the assignments were created. As soon as we realized what ‘What-If’ Modeling could do – amending revenue for open forecasting periods based on the FX rate you put in for the period – it was clear that it was exactly what we needed.”

-Phil Pounder, Operations Manager, Scott Logic 

The Process: Automating Rate Changes With ‘What-If’ 

Because maintaining accurate rates is key for Scott Logic, the business uses Kantata SX’s ‘What-If’ Modeling capabilities at regular intervals, ensuring rates that will be applied across the business account for up-to-date information on currency exchange rates, promotions, and annual rate uplifts.

Every Month

• Before month-end, Finance team advises what FX rates should be applied as a standard for upcoming month
• New FX rates are activated in Kantata and Salesforce at start of the month 
• ‘What-If’ Scenario is run capturing all items impacted by the FX rate changes, and all changes are accepted
• Monthly forecasting period is closed by working day two, reconciling revenue so all reports accurately reflect expected performance according to current FX rates

Twice Yearly

• Rates are updated for resources who have been promoted as part of promotion cycle
• ‘What-If’ Scenario is run capturing all items impacted by the FX rate changes, and all changes are accepted

Every Year

• In November, new standard rates that will take effect in January are added to Kantata (giving forward visibility into accurate rates when modeling upcoming work)
• ‘What-If’ Scenario is run capturing all items impacted by the FX rate changes, and all changes are accepted

“Prior to Kantata, month-end was painful, it would take weeks, with people parsing conflicting information across systems. We’re now in a position where we close our month on working day two – everything reconciled, FX rate changes cascaded, invoices done.”

-Phil Pounder, Operations Manager, Scott Logic 

The Results: Kantata Drives Efficiency and Accuracy at Scott Logic

Features like ‘What-If’ Scenarios and period management aren’t just helping Scott Logic streamline processes that were once manual and time-consuming — they are also highlighting issues that might disrupt forecast accuracy and optimal margin performance and equipping team members to prevent those issues going forward.

With Kantata, Scott Logic has reduced the time it takes to close periods from multiple weeks to days. Now, no matter the currency, the business is able to efficiently arm executives with revenue forecasts they can trust, sellers with cost rates they can use to model margins accurately, and operational leaders with insights that inform key process improvements.

Check out our full Scott Logic success story to learn about the many ways Kantata is empowering Scott Logic to optimize their operations.

When the Sales team are estimating margins, it’s important to have the right cost rates. Before ‘What-If’, we were doing manual corrections in Excel. Now, it’s much easier for sellers to come up with an accurate margin.”

-Phil Pounder, Operations Manager, Scott Logic 

Scott Logic isn’t the Only Business Seeing the Impact of Managing Periods in Kantata

Check out Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study, based on interviews with multiple Kantata customers, to learn how Kantata streamlines back office processes, cutting the time it takes to complete month end in half.