Kantata has published a case study that reveals how POP improved its project delivery efficiency with the Kantata Professional Services technology, Kantata OX. POP is a digital marketing agency with offices in Seattle and San Jose, Costa Rica.
It has worked with some of the biggest global brands, including Microsoft, Oracle, Starbucks, Kyndryl, F5, Intel, Target, Gap Inc., and US Bank.
Founded in 1996, like many other marketing agencies, it used homegrown solutions and a mix of third-party applications. These included Basecamp, Microsoft Project, and Smartsheets. As the company grew (it has over 50 employees, according to LinkedIn), it found its time tracking and resource management solution could not scale with the business growth.
Meeting the challenge with Kantata OX
POP reviewed the market thoroughly. It often found that something that looked promising did not ultimately deliver against their requirements when it looked at the details. This is an important point that many organisations forget. A single demonstration is often not enough to determine whether a tool meets an organisation’s requirements. It appears as though POP spent considerable time evaluating each solution.
When it approached Kantata, things changed. Sara Giuffrida, Senior Vice President of Delivery, POP, commented, “Kantata was so heavily invested in providing us with the answers we needed, we thought, ‘This feels good’. We knew we could make Kantata work for us, and we enjoyed having the freedom to personalize our deployment by making it as simple or as robust as we needed it to be.”
The solution was deployed in 2020. POP approached the project sensibly. It created the materials to support users following the Kantata training. This helped with adoption when it rolled out the solution.
Kantata was also able to deliver against the requirements of POP, with Giuffrida noting, “Kantata really listened to us and provided a customized solution that fit our specific requirements.”
Michael Speranza, CEO of Kantata, commented, “Our mission is to equip organizations like POP with the tools and insights to excel. The significant improvement in POP’s project delivery clearly indicates how our Professional Services Cloud can impact operational efficiency. It’s rewarding to see our role in their journey to more streamlined and successful operations.”
The benefits
Since the deployment, POP has improved its use and has seen an impressive set of improvements to its business metrics.
It now delivers 97% of its projects on time and within budget. Prior to using Kantata, it achieved 80%. Kantata helps with this through a tighter view of project financials. This is achieved by having resourcing, project management, and project accounting in one place.
Moving from a homegrown solution to Kantata OX also enabled POP to take advantage of the mature resource management functionality of the solution. The platform helped to reduce the number of scheduling conflicts that often occurred, giving a clear availability of resources. With this visibility, project managers improved resource management, which led to fewer delays and budget overruns during project execution. They can also better forecast demand across the entire organisation.
Giuffrida said, “We are a lot more thoughtful and strategic when we look at our projects and our pipeline in Kantata. Having that visibility allows us to get proactive and work through resource management issues before they become issues.”
POP did not reveal the improvement in utilisation that it achieved. Kantata has helped improve utilisation and, with greater visibility, now has a better oversight on commitments, helping to identify burnout risks or even attrition. In doing so, it has potentially reduced disruption to clients.
Onboarding is faster
With improved resource management and forecasting, onboarding is also much faster. Giuffrida noted, “Kantata allows us to be smarter, more efficient, and put guardrails in place that keep us on track and focused on our signed contracts. Now we have the ability to properly assess and staff a new project within a 1-week timeframe as well as quickly determine any long-term implications or impacts to other active work.
“Kantata has improved confidence in our time to staff and minimizes last-minute changes so we don’t end up ‘yo-yo’-ing our team members, including contractors, around.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
POP is also confident that the the product roadmap also ensures that the solution will continue to improve in the future and that it can take advantage of these improvements. Kantata OX is used across multiple Marketing Agencies. And POP is just the latest example where it has made a significant difference.
What is interesting about this case study is that POP was already using some professional services tools rather than spreadsheets. Historically, and even today, many service teams are using spreadsheets for project management and resource management.
However, some organisations have invested in point solutions. What they should often consider is a full professional services technology suite. This would complete the functionality that is required across the whole business, such as Kantata Professional Services Cloud.
Where this implementation story is less impressive is in its size and historic nature. It has taken over three years for Kantata to reveal the story. Kantata needs to increase the cadence of these announcements and find some more modern examples of where its software has helped.
