Emarsys Increases Projects Delivered on Budget by 12.5% Year Over Year with Kantata
INDUSTRY
CLIENT
SIZE
WHAT KANTATA REPLACED
The Challenge - Growing Beyond Homegrown Solutions
The team at Emarsys built a custom internal project management system using Salesforce to support their everyday tasks. However, the inherent limitations of the homegrown solution became more and more obvious as the company grew into a global organization.
The homegrown solution was built when Emarsys was a small company and the software implementation process was much simpler. Scaling was a challenge with the system and it became increasingly difficult to assign tasks, as there was little flexibility in back-end reporting, and inherent scale limitations. To match the growth of their offering, a different solution was needed.
The most significant limitations experienced by the Emarsys team were:
The Need for Detailed Project Reporting
Emarsys needed a project management solution that could provide them with implementation reporting, including details regarding efficiency and time tracking, so that they could continue to improve on their processes and increase client satisfaction.
Lack of Resource Visibility
The Emarsys team found that, as they grew, the need for adequate resource management grew with them, something that did not easily scale with their previous solution. This issue only grew as the company expanded into different locations and was unable to feed all of their processes back into their Salesforce solution for effective resource management. In addition, it wasn’t cost effective to continue developing their homegrown tool, so Emarsys sought out a new project management solution for their needs.
Emarsys is the largest independent marketing platform company in the world, providing software that enables personalized, one-to-one interactions between marketers and customers across all channels to build loyalty, enrich the customer journey, and increase revenue.
“The fluidity of Kantata’s task tracking capacity helps our team members adjust projects on the fly. As a business that isn’t rigid in our approach to task management, the ability to adapt to what clients need has been a real benefit from Kantata.”
Head of Implementation, Emarsys
Revolutionizing the Role of the Marketer
Emarsys began as an Email Service Provider in 2000 and evolved into a global marketing platform. Emarsys has focused on innovation to create leading marketing technology that has been built from the ground up, with marketing automation, omnichannel communication, and more helping their clients scale marketing decisions and actions beyond human capabilities. The result is that Emarsys is revolutionizing the traditional role of the marketer. As the company continued to evolve, they needed a new project management solution to support their growing, global needs as a successful company.
“Over- and underestimating resources can be a tricky process for stakeholders. The ability to manage all of our stakeholders through Kantata has been a big improvement for us.”
Head of Implementation, Emarsys
The Switch to Kantata - A Platform for a Bigger Business
Growing into a global company meant that Emarsys needed more readily available and accurate time tracking reporting and a better understanding of utilization rates for their implementation department. Emarsys’ growing need for a project management solution that could support their needs while also allowing them to scale as a global organization led them to Kantata.
The choice by Emarsys was made based on Kantata’s ability to meet several key criteria, including:
Reporting Insights
Emarsys needed easy-to-access reports that could give them detailed insights into their implementation process, which is now possible through Kantata’s rate card functionality, time tracking, and more reporting capabilities.
Scalability
Emarsys’ new project management solution needed to support a global organization with offices located around the world, as well as the ability to scale up as the organization continued to grow and succeed in new markets.
Customization
The Emarsys implementation team needed the ability to be flexible and adjust their detailed processes on the fly, with Kantata templates used to begin the process and then customized to respond to unique changes within each project.
“Once I realized how easy the system is to use, I became a fan really quickly,” said Harvey Clarke, Head of Implementation at Emarsys.
Benefits
- Simultaneous global implementation of business process updates
- 12.5% increase in projects delivered on budget year over year
- Company-wide increase in number one KPI - client satisfaction
- Greater visibility regarding project margins, issues, utilization, and more
Increased client satisfaction companywide
Standardized data analysis and reporting
“Kantata helps us constantly audit and review how we’re executing projects across our business.”
Head of Implementation, Emarsys
The Results - Marketing Success Around the World
Global Alignment Supports Future Success
Using Kantata’s project management solution throughout the organization has helped Emarsys achieve global alignment across their many different offices. “We can now roll out changes to our business and implementation processes that go into effect immediately across our global offices, instead of having to update the systems one by one in each of our locations,” said Clarke. As a result, Emarsys has experienced a 12.5% year-over-year increase in projects delivered on budget since they adopted Kantata.
Increased Client Satisfaction
Kantata provides data the Emarsys team needs to more effectively prepare for each client’s specific needs. With client satisfaction as Emarsys’ number one Key Performance Indicator across the business, these improved insights increased satisfaction rates and enabled better customer support.
Project Health Helps Refine Processes
Kantata’s Project Health insights have helped the company proactively address issues in order to more effectively improve their projects based on health data. In addition, the ability to drill down in project reports and compare total budget versus actual has helped to quickly reveal margins and identify issues that may be holding back project success.
Company-Wide Adoption
Kantata has been adopted by teams across Emarsys, from design teams to campaign builders to the training department to better track resources to projects as needed. All client-facing services teams are also now using Kantata. Integrating everyone at Emarsys into a single project management system has helped improve business processes throughout the organization.
“We’re an ever-changing business and our implementation process is growing and evolving, as well. The ability to manage that all within Kantata and have all our teams understand it has been a real help for us.”
Head of Implementation, Emarsys