Kantata has published a case study that revealed how Suvoda, a global provider of clinical trial software solutions, switched to Kantata OX and reduced project timelines by 16%. Founded in 2013, Suvoda in Philadelphia had started to grow rapidly. It leveraged a combination of Excel and Teamwork to manage its project load. However, by 2017, it had opened its second office in Barcelona. With the technology unable to scale at the same pace as the organisation.
As the company still wanted to grow further, it needed to become more efficient to meet compliance obligations. Steve DeSantis, CFO at Suvoda, stated, “Pharmaceutical companies have FDA timelines they need to meet, or their drug launch can be derailed. Often, they will give priority to the company with the resources available to commit to that timeline.”
It reviewed the market and selected Kantata OX (then Mavenlink), one of the solutions within the Kantata Professional Services Cloud. The introduction may have been provided by Klaus Besier, who was a board member of both Suvoda and Mavenlink at the time. The project had three key objectives:
- To better understand project finance by project, customer and engagement
- To improve visibility, financial tracking and management across the organisation
- To improve project reporting and track performance
The implementation was rapid, as DeSantis explained, “The initial implementation was done in under three months. We then took that initial implementation and spent another two months doing the integrations, streamlining the data, and getting the reporting out. So, within six months total we were fully operational.”
The benefits
Kantata OX has delivered the aimed for benefits with:
- A 50% reduction in the number of team members required to deliver each project
- 16% faster average project implementation time
- The ability to commit to implementation times of under 60 days
- Enhanced confidence in project capacity forecasting, leading to higher project intake
- Real-time insights into billable utilisation, project performance, and profitability
Suvoda also improved project performance and profitability. It achieved this through the insights provided by its resource management capabilities. Suvoda was able to identify the key skills required for each project, rebalancing teams for an optimal mix, often with smaller teams able to deliver the same output.
The faster delivery also enabled the organisation to complete even more projects, enabling the company to scale without extra recruitment. Success also led to improved customer satisfaction, resulting in an increase in projects and revenue.
Real-time analytics have also improved visibility. DeSantis compared a historical audit with the most recent one. Previously, all data had to be pulled together manually; now, Kantata OX was able to produce the information within an hour.
Sarah Edwards, Chief Product Officer at Kantata, commented, “Suvoda is a perfect example of the transformative power of purpose-built professional services technology. This is exactly the kind of impact we know PSA software can deliver for software providers with embedded services teams.
“The insights leaders gain fundamentally change the math of professional services—unlocking the ability to do more work with the same capacity while getting customers live faster and delivering value sooner. We’re proud to support Suvoda’s mission and excited to see what they achieve next.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Another case study from a still satisfied Kantata OX customer. It would have been interesting to understand how the implementation has improved since it was deployed. Kantata will also, hopefully, produce some case studies from more recent wins. Nevertheless, Suvoda is a strong advocate for Kantata OX. It has enabled the organisation to scale, and the deliverables from the PSA solution are clear.
It is still surprising that organisations are using spreadsheets and task management solutions to run their businesses when PSA solutions can provide much more. Over the last few years, Suvoda has been able to complete over 1,800 trials across over 95 countries with a client NPS score of 55.
Kantata is a key component in its success and one that helps deliver this. Suvoda has recently completed a merger with Greenphire, it will be interesting to hear how the merger was dealt with using Kantata OX.
