Kantata has revealed how Advania UK has taken with Kantata SX. Advania UK is the fast-growing subsidiary of Advania, a Nordics-based system integrator. Advania arrived in the UK when it acquired professional and managed IT services provider Content+Cloud. The firm has grown from 40 people in the UK to over 1,000, and the Advania Group has 4,500 employees across six countries.
When the acquisition went through, Content+Cloud was already in place. The leadership team saw the potential of the solution.
Patrick Thatcher, Group Professional Services Director at Advania UK, commented, “We weren’t in a position to leverage all the features in the Kantata Professional Services Cloud right away, but we knew Kantata was the Ferrari we’d ultimately need. At the time, we were just driving around the suburbs, but now we’re on the motorways and soon Kantata will take us to the autobahn.”
I asked Thatcher about the challenges during the initial implementation. He answered, “Ensuring our business design/operating model was right ahead of time. Also, ensuring that it aligned well to best practice use of Kantata.”
With so many acquisitions, this was doubly important. Each acquisition had a different approach; one used Google Sheets, another had only basic scheduling tools, and another had added customisations to MS Office.
The advantage of the cloud-based Kantata SX platform was that the team could roll out the application, delivering immediate visibility benefits to the leadership.
The second challenge Patrick spoke about is often faced by expanding organisations. He added, “Data, data, data. All your data must be right for any implementation of this type. Take all the time and care required to get this right. Bad data is very challenging to get right once in the system.”
The benefits
Advania has gained some notable business benefits from using Kantata across its operations. The monthly close cycle was reduced by 75%, from 12 days to 3 days. It was achieved through streamlining timesheet approvals and automating invoicing across project delivery. The real-time insights have enabled the finance team to close the period ends much faster.
The firm also has precise control over project margins and is able to maximise profitability while fulfilling its core value statement of “never lose a customer.”
While the scheduling saw immediate improvements, Advania has also seen benefits to its long-term planning. Thatcher stated, “It’s not about scheduling anymore. It’s about how we plan for the long term, aligning complex talent programs with future business needs.
“Kantata is at the centre of our client operations, allowing us to accurately forecast revenue and demand and identify where we have drops in utilization or shortfalls in our sales pipeline. It has become a critical tool that I’m in all day, every day. Kantata allows us to have the right skills ready for our clients on any given day, week or month.”
Another key benefit has been the onboarding of new acquisitions. Recently, Advania acquired 70 new consultants and hundreds of projects. It was able to bring them all onto Kantata to consolidate project data, standardize resource management, and automate financial processes without losing business momentum.
While Advania could not provide any detailed productivity (other than the period end) or utilisation gains, Kantata has made a difference. Advania can now measure KPIs across the whole organisation. With so many acquisitions happening, Advania would have found it difficult to benchmark.
Why did a Microsoft Partner opt for Kantata?
What is unusual about this announcement is that Advania is a Microsoft Partner, yet selected a solution that leverages the Salesforce platform. Advania UK uses Dynamics Sales for CRM and Business Central for finance. For Advania UK, Kantata Professional Services Cloud already had a strong reputation, was scalable and, from 2021 has offered robust resource management and forecasting capabilities.
The Advania team focused on delivering, scheduling and resource allocation across the different entities, bringing together resourcing under a single solution. Thatcher gave his reasons for selecting the PSA solution, saying, “Kantata was the right choice for both where we were and where we were heading—the Kantata team gave us incredible confidence.”
“Other products we looked at had a much shorter horizon before we would need to upgrade—we understood the pain involved in implementing an enterprise-wide solution, and we were only willing to put that kind of strain on the organization once.”
Are they alone?
Interestingly, Advania is not alone in selecting Kantata alongside Microsoft. I asked Lucy Butterton, Vice President of Product Management at Kantata, whether other clients have selected Kantata SX alongside Dynamics.
She replied, “Yes, there are many Kantata customers using our powerful integration capabilities to connect Kantata SX with Microsoft Dynamics 365.
“This includes two other customers for which Kantata has public success stories, reinforcing that while the lion’s share of Kantata SX customers do gravitate to it because it embeds in their Salesforce ecosystem, businesses that are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 rather than Salesforce for CRM are experiencing transformative results.”
The integration is achieved using Workato. Where does Kantata fit into the software architecture?
Butterton replied, “Kantata SX acts as a bridge between CRM (Front Office) and ERP (Back Office), delivering continuous forecasting, real-time revenue recognition, and unparalleled financial transparency.
“It does this by connecting CRM opportunities to Kantata proposals, bringing that opportunity to life throughout the services delivery lifecycle as a project, and exporting project financial data to ledgers (AP, GL, AR). And through APIs, this interplay can be achieved with any CRM or ERP, from Microsoft Dynamics to SAP to Workday.”
Kantata also has a strong and direct integration with Sage Intacct, and has several customers using that combination.
Looking forward to Kantata
The journey with Kantata SX is ongoing. I asked Thatcher what was next. How will Advania UK improve their use of Kantata over the next 18 months? He replied, “Gain a deeper understanding of what skills/products are in high demand. This will ensure we can better meet our client’s demands. Refine and improve some of our integration points with our Microsoft stack. Understand how AI can better help us make better business decisions and show great value to our clients.”
With Advania UK established users of Kantata and advocates, are other Advania countries considering the solution, such as Sweden, where it is headquartered?
Thatcher replied, “Part of the key to success for Advania Group is it runs a federated model by country, meaning each country has autonomy. Each country knows their clients best and how to work best with their clients. We always look to share best practices across the countries. Over time, Kantata may well become the right solution for another country – time will tell.”
It’s certainly not a definitive no, and with Advania UK within the group as a proof point, there are many benefits to the wider Advania adopting Kantata.
Butterton concluded, “We do often get asked by buyers like Advania UK who are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 whether Kantata SX, which is our Saleforce-native PSA solution, can deliver the same results if the business isn’t committed to a Salesforce-centric infrastructure.
“And we always confidently answer that Kantata SX integrating with Microsoft Dynamics 365 absolutely can, and the story of what we’ve been able to help Advania UK achieve over the years as they’ve grown from 40 users to over 1,000 users really speaks to that.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
While vendors with applications on the Salesforce platform are often seen as only appealing to those organisations that already use Sales Cloud, this story proves, at least for Kantata, not to be the case. There are numerous PSA solutions in the Dynamics marketplace, but the strength of the Kantata SX solution clearly stood above them for its functionality and scalability.
The platform is important for many software purchasing decisions, but the Advania UK choice also demonstrates that companies do not have to stick to a single platform. It is more about choosing the right solution for the business. Over four years in and Advania UK is still very happy with Kantata SX, and it looks like other group members are starting to consider it as well.
