Kantata Helps BTM Global Improve Utilization Rates by 10%
INDUSTRY
CLIENT
HEADQUARTERS
The Challenge
Excel spreadsheets and a legacy PSA solution carried BTM through the early years. As the company grew, major customizations were needed. BTM reached the breaking point when these tools began to impact productivity and the accuracy of data used to forecast and make key decisions. BTM’s search for a better way led them to Kantata.
BTM Global Consulting provides system integration and development services for clients ranging from small regional chains to the world’s most recognized brands. BTM offers a holistic perspective of long-term needs to help clients succeed and grow.
“Kantata has helped us more accurately forecast revenue and resource availability. For a project-based company solely running on billable hours, not having a good revenue forecast and not having it reliable is a problem. When we switched to Kantata, that went away.”
Senior VP of Internal Operations, BTM Global
The Solution
Insights and Dashboards
BTM Global uses Kantata Insights to create dashboards that provide their teams with an up-to-date understanding of the relationship between projects and resources. Every user at BTM Global submits timesheets, and Kantata enables a relatively small team of delivery managers to stay on top of a growing portfolio of projects, with an understanding of where projects might be deviating from plan based on the actual work being done. With Kantata, delivery managers are also able to better understand emerging project needs and analyze the effectiveness of their past decisions.
Critical Reports on Business Needs
Kantata’s utilization reports, capacity planning reports, and a wide variety of customized reports helped BTM managers create the critical project and resource updates they needed with no coding. As an example, project margin reports are helping project managers make better informed decisions about adjustments on their projects, like bringing in an additional resource to get work done.
Forecasting for Success
“Kantata helps us more accurately forecast revenue and resource availability,” said Julie Sirek, Senior VP of Internal Operations. Where it previously took 8 hours to build forecasts that were often out-of-date by the time they were created, BTM Global is now able to forecast confidently up to four months into the future, with insights into availability that help the business better pursue the right projects that align with their capacity.
Benefits
- 15% increase in utilization for project managers
- 10% increase in companywide utilization
- 4-hour resource allocation work reduced to 30 minutes
- 100% Company-wide time tracking adoption
Increase in project manager utilization
reduction in time to allocate resources
The Results
Complete Dashboard Control
BTM Delivery Managers use a customized dashboard to better understand project financial health, resource needs and forecast work. Forecasts are shared with clients to help them understand project progress. Resource management dashboards created with Kantata Insights provide utilization rates by week and month, to compare actual to allocated and improve capacity planning. The finance dashboard helps the team forecast revenue in real-time without the need to export for analysis.
Improved Company-Wide Utilization
Kantata’s purpose-built project management and resource management capabilities have had a positive impact across BTM. BTM Global has been able to increase the utilization of their project managers by 15%, and utilization has improved by 10% companywide.
Greater Efficiency Everywhere
Before Kantata, it would take 3-4 hours to input resource allocations and check for accuracy. Today, it only takes 30 minutes, greatly reducing admin time that can be redirected to drive further efficiencies. BTM also experiences greater accuracy and time saved across all departments.
People believe in the data. It’s real time, so that’s pretty big, that has helped us, not only because everybody uses the same system, but because they trust it. Now our forecasts are actually accurate.
Senior VP of Internal Operations, BTM Global