Ackama
Ackama, a company of technical specialists focused on organizational change, believes thoughtful technology can help make the world a better place. When they acquired a new business based overseas, they needed an updated system to unite their offices and gain visibility across their resourcing.
Ackama specializes in large digital eco-systems, helping their clients with strategy, design, and implementation. Their customers range from corporate to startups to government, and they also dedicate time to work with charitable organizations. Ackama's core belief is that technology can make the world a better place. They strive to positively impact people through improved technology.
“After the acquisition and beginning work with the new office, it became clear that getting visibility for resourcing was harder than it should have been. Projectworks filled the gap we were looking for and has provided a cohesive view of workflow across our organization.”
— Breccan McLeod-Lundy, CEO
The Challenge:
Acquiring a company meant acquiring multiple systems. Ackama needed a single view across their offices to gain visibility over their resourcing.
As Ackama's business grew and spread across offices in two countries, it was clear they needed to rethink how they managed their projects to get the most out of their resourcing. The business knew that project tasks could be completed by staff in either office location, but without a single view of workflow, resourcing was conducted separately. This separation affected utilization and potentially meant lost revenue for the business.
Ackama needed a single system to help its growing team become more productive and utilized across multiple locations. They began searching for a tool that was reasonably priced, worked for the size of their organization, and integrated well with the accounting software they already knew and loved.
“With Projectworks, I'm able to share my operational and financial knowledge with the team more easily. In a resourcing meeting, I can pull up last month's utilization of all our staff vs. resourcing to actually look at what we did vs. what we thought we would do.”
— Breccan McLeod-Lundy, CEO
The Solution:
Projectworks offered the single view Ackama was looking for, leading to more effective utilization of their growing team.
Projectworks filled the gap for Ackama by offering a cohesive view of resourcing fit for multiple offices. Ackama can now complete resourcing as a team and spread project tasks between locations to ensure efficiency. Ackama can track utilization by person or project and uses the month-end billing report to understand their service business's financial performance.
The adoption of Projectworks among staff has been steady. The Ackama team realizes that time spent on project setup and tracking pays off in the amount of insight readily available to extract as reports.
Ackama has always been transparent with staff when it comes to business data, and Projectworks makes information more accessible to everyone on the team. More transparency enables everyone to make better business decisions together.
Reporting has simplified for Ackama since the implementation of Projectworks. Real-time reports replace clunky forecasting spreadsheets. Breccan, Ackama's CEO, can share more of his operational and financial knowledge of the business through generated insights. This has been particularly useful during conversations about resourcing and utilization.
While searching for a new system, one of Ackama's requirements was to seamlessly integrate with their existing accounting software Xero. Projectworks offers direct integration to multiple accounting programs, including Xero, so Ackama's invoicing process remained simple and familiar. Find out more about the direct integration between Projectworks and Xero.
The Results:
A single-view of resourcing across offices
More effective utilization of the entire team
Integration with an existing accounting system
As Ackama continues to grow their business, they will rely on Projectworks to manage their people, projects, and finance.
The ability to have multiple locations under one system helped Ackama simplify their business structure after the acquisition of a separate company. As a team of technologists, Ackama has future plans to utilize the customization of Projectworks' direct data connection to get the most out of the insights provided.
Ready for the next step?
For more information on how Projectworks can transform your services organization book a demo today.