Smart Communications Uses Kantata to Better Match Resources With Demand
Industry
Challenge
Employees
Geography
Smart Communications’ professional services team uses Kantata to ensure predictability while delivering PS engagements within scope, on-time and on-budget with the highest quality of services. Ryan Matthes, PMO Manager at Smart Communications, explained the company selected Kantata because they wanted to focus on operations, governance, and performance from a PS perspective. According to Ryan, “Kantata has been essential to get the intelligence we needed for management-level discussions.”
Kantata has reduced blind spots throughout the business. Leaders have greater insight into each project by monitoring project and resource level KPIs. Having a better view of demand also helps to resource effectively and increase project margin. Ryan shares, “Now we can see the full breadth of utilization and how the portfolio of engagements looks across lifecycles,” Ryan added. “Having Kantata in place has enabled us to develop greater predictability and consistency across our professional services engagements.”
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“We have been able to get a better view of demand and resource availability. That has enabled us to reduce our use of contractors and increase margin on many projects.”
PMO Manager, Smart Communications
The Solution
Director of Professional Services,, Joseph Gionta said that initially, Smart Communications used Kantata mainly for time management, invoicing, and budget control. But they subsequently built on that. “Operational and financial dashboards draw on data from Kantata to provide a real-time view of project health” says Joseph. “That allows the professional services team to get much greater insight than they had before. It is much easier to identify the projects that need intervention at an early stage – we couldn’t really see that before.”
The PS team is now able to look further ahead which allows them to recruit more strategically. Ryan shares, “We can look 30, 60, and 90 days out, that helps with staffing demands,” Ryan said. “We can see demand rising down the road, and recruit, not just keep hiring in more contractors. We have also got an improved line of sight across all the departments and we can see bench strength that we couldn’t see before. Putting all that together means we can resource more effectively and increase margin.”
Benefits
- Improved resourcing & recruiting
- Visibility into at-risk projects
- Streamlined time & expense capture
- Improved timeliness of invoicing process
More predictable forecasts
Improved cash flow