How Innovation Unit Uses Kantata to Improve Consultant Experience
Industry
Challenge
Employees
Geography
Innovation Unit, a not-for-profit management consulting firm focusing on providing innovative solutions to complex societal problems, introduced Kantata in 2016. Among other things, they use it to support proactive resourcing.
According to Innovation Unit’s COO Winnie Armah, “It is very difficult to manage resources effectively with spreadsheets. Kantata makes this easier. At a glance, we can see who is on what and how we can reallocate them. We can look ahead and plan better. This also helps with recruitment.”
Innovation Unit is a global enterprise based in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand focused on applying disciplined approaches to develop new solutions and create impact at scale. They identify, create and scale evidence-based solutions, mainly focused on: children’s social care, learning & schools, healthy lives, early years, and mental health.
“It is very difficult to manage resources effectively with spreadsheets. Kantata makes this easier. At a glance, we can see who is on what and how we can reallocate them. We can look ahead and plan better. This also helps with recruitment.”
Chief Operating Officer, Innovation Unit
The Solution
When Winnie joined Innovation Unit as COO, Kantata was being used primarily for time and expense tracking. Understanding that Kantata was the key to unlocking reliable data that would give the leadership team a more concrete foundation for decision-making, Winnie led a transformation and adoption initiative.
Now Innovation Unit is reaping benefits in the form of better forecasting, decreased revenue leakage and less time spent on administrative activities. Winnie said: “Kantata has been invaluable for determining the true direction of travel for revenue, especially during Covid-19. It has given us a very solid platform for financial analysis and forecasting. Now, in every leadership conversation we refer to the data in Kantata.” She explains, “We don’t want to chuck people at engagements – we want our consultants to be able to develop their skills and experience and Kantata helps us to achieve that.”
Benefits
- Proactively allocate resources
- Visibility into resource capacity
- Ability to recruit proactively
- Disciplined month-end close
- Improved invoice accuracy
Improved forecast accuracy
Streamlined time & expense entry