CT Management Group
We spoke to Sharon, the Business Systems Manager at CT Management, about the unique way they use Projectworks.
CT Management Group specialises in providing organisations with independent financial advisory and leadership services. For the last 25 years, they have been one of Australia's most trusted local government professional services providers. They use their experience to support various sectors and organisations, including local government, education, emergency services, healthcare, and legal services. Furthermore, their network of over 80 Councils in Australia allows them to provide high-quality informed consultancy to deliver a wide range of products.
Sharon joined CT management 26 years ago as part of the admin team and has since moved through several roles at the company. She is now the Business Systems Manager and therefore needs a high level of oversight into all the projects her contractors are applying for or working on.
Challenge
Prior to moving to Projectworks, CT Management was attempting to operate from a large number of disparate spreadsheets. With 4 managers in various cities managing over 120 associates, they needed a powerful system to support their operations. Sharon’s team had simply outgrown the Excel Spreadsheet.
“We had lots of different spreadsheets, and they multiplied and bred over the years. And honestly, the insight that we were getting out, we couldn’t develop it any further. We’d reached a point where we needed to look at something else.”
A cloud-based program was something CT Management was looking for when identifying the best software for their business. With associates all over Australia, it was no longer practical to be sending spreadsheets back and forth. The potential risk of miscommunications was too high a burden to bear.
Additionally, they wanted a platform to manage all their potential tenders and the associated financials in one place. Having this viability would allow the team to review and forecast proposed upcoming projects.
"Our current system wasn't giving us the transparency behind the finances and our projects. So we had two very different silos in the company; the finance systems didn't match the project and the CRM systems.”
It was time for CT Management to upgrade to an effective system so they could stop juggling spreadsheets and get back to doing what they do best.
The Solution
After exploring several options, Projectworks stood out to CT Management, so they decided to book a demonstration from one of our product specialists.
"We were just so impressed with the demonstration and thought, oh my gosh, this covers everything that we want to be able to do. And it's on the cloud"!
Projectworks' exceptional customer support was a bonus for Sharon, and they decided to partner with our platform to enable them to manage their projects. Since joining, our customer success team has continued to provide CT Management with personalised support, ensuring the program meets all of their requirements.
“One of the biggest things for us was how flexible you guys are and how quick your turnaround is. My experience with companies that do programs, especially enterprise systems, and councils that do that sort of thing; you go and want to change something, and that can take a year or two to implement that. Projectworks is a really agile way of doing things on the cloud. It suits our needs really well. It's great".
Reporting has been another integral benefit Projectworks has brought to CT Management. Sharon says it has reduced their time developing reports from half a month to a day and a half. This has had an enormously positive effect on their ability to do their day-to-day work.
"We have a monthly board meeting with the Chairman of the Board and Executives, and we would spend anywhere from a week and a half pulling reports out, which was terribly onerous. With lots of bespoke spreadsheets, people would just be pulling information out of the air. There was no real process around who was doing it, how it was done, or anything like that. So, one of the first things we started doing was trying to get the data to comply as soon as we could report. As a result, we've reduced the reporting time for our board down, especially for our quarterly board meetings. Four times a year, we usually spent a day and a half doing reporting now. So, the efficiency gains have been huge".
With streamlined, efficient reports, the team can now focus on polishing up their data compliance.
"So right now, we're at a point where we're reviewing data compliance, that our team are filling in fields that we're asking them to do. The reporting tools on Projectworks, the data connection providing us with an Excel database, and a SQL code for a custom field was a big selling point"
The CT Management team now uses Projectworks as their primary PSA and CRM software. They are part of a small group of partners using Projectworks not only for resourcing but also as a sales tool to manage their tenders.
“Projectworks has given us more time to consider the work that we’re doing. We used to put in close to 100 tenders, which was a lot of work in the first three months of the financial year, whereas now we put in 70, but win over 54% of those, and usually the money is higher. So we’ve been gaining more for less work.”
Adapting the software to fit their sales needs, CT Management has extended the system's capabilities to address their unique needs. For example, the built-in option to create unsigned projects has allowed them to input all potential tender deals and assess their feasibility before submitting tenders. Consequently, they win more tenders with less submissions, as they can be strategic about their applications.
"We are also trying to teach our people that it doesn't matter whether it's an actual project with a budget or an opportunity; put it in, so we can review it and decide whether we go ahead. We want to see what our people are doing."
Seeing all the potential projects coming up allows the team to use the shadow resourcing function to assess the feasibility of projects. It also enables business systems manager Sharon to oversee what her people are doing.
“One of the biggest areas for us in Projectworks is having a proper system in place that provides credibility about how we manage our projects.”
Lastly, Sharon told us that the data they have been pulling from Projectworks has underpinned CT Management's operations and now informs 95% of all their decisions.
“We now run our pipeline out of Projectworks since we can see what is in the works, committed, uncommitted, and how many more months of work we have. Projectworks now informs 95% of what we do. It’s been huge for us. ”
The Result:
Watching CT Management adapt Projectworks' software to fit their sales needs has been a testament to the unrestrained power of the software. We look forward to working with Sharon and CT Management in the future and continuing to support their success.
“Nothing, but good things to say about Projectworks. I’ve not had a bad moment with you guys at all. It has just been a positive response from the customer service people, and as I said, Zabe is brilliant, and if he doesn’t know something, he ensures you get someone who does know. So it’s been really great, and it’s a very important working relationship for us.”
Rapid reporting
Best in class resource management
Faster and better quality tender submission
Ready for the next step?
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