The Challenge
Dislodging and disrupting an established CRM system is a challenge for any company. Disrupting an ERP system is even worse. A Wisconsin global provider of enterprise Content Management Solutions, was fully committed to their CRM system and realized there would be many benefits if they could also leverage it to manage the delivery of customer projects.
The company’s support team works exclusively in the field and although their customer-base is primarily US-based, their service teams deliver work around the globe 24/7 with complex task billing and cost structures.
Previously using a standalone system for tracking time, management was frustrated with inaccurate data as the remote staff struggled with a cumbersome time recording process. As projects increased in size, capturing time with complex rates and cost parameters with larger projects was becoming more and more difficult. The additional work for the finance staff to rekey the data for billing, along with project details and related customer information, was both a costly additional step and process bottleneck. Understanding work profitability in real-time before it was “too late” was becoming increasingly and critically important to the health of their Professional Services Division.
With their customer information from sales and marketing efforts already residing within their CRM system, management recognized that the best solution would be to keep all functions within a single, integrated system. If it were possible, adding project management capabilities with time and expense capture functionality and approvals inside CRM would eliminate the need for rekeying data, would create minimal disruption to their back-office operations, and provide a seamless handoff from sales to delivery while providing a company-wide view of what was happening out in the field.
An even loftier goal was to pass the collected time and expense data to their existing ERP system for billing, A/R, A/P, and G/L purposes. The resulting continuous process would greatly improve business profitability.
The Solution
A number of commercial software products as well as the option to build a custom solution were under consideration. After researching these choices, the company found they could achieve all these benefits and more without replacing CRM or their ERP system.
The market leader in service management solutions in the CRM market has long been TimeLinx, and management found no other options that were comparable. The ease-of-use for the field staff, the comprehensive nature of accurate data collection, integrated scheduling and Gantt-based task assignments, complete customer support functions and ERP integration were the primary reasons why TimeLinx was selected.
The Results
Since deploying in 2012, TimeLinx has enabled them to:
- Accurately track and manage time spent on projects
- Easily manage complex and changing rates on a global scale
- Dramatically simplify and improve business processes
- Proactively manage profitability of work on a daily basis
- Successfully deliver larger projects without stretching their resources
- Leverage their existing CRM and ERP investments
- Quickly implement a robust solution with virtually no learning curve and with minimal disruption.
Today, TimeLinx provides the company with detailed reporting of actual versus budgeted time on work performed, staff utilization numbers, and with the included TimeLinx Revenue Optimization Engine™, automatically calculates the correct amounts to be invoiced to customers while applying the correct costs based on the staff person actually performing the work. TimeLinx also automatically calculates overtime and weekend work, after hours, regional pricing, and even the correct billing rates based on the skillset or resource level being deployed.
The company’s CFO says “TimeLinx has been a great win for us. We were able to keep our existing CRM system with virtually no disruption to our sales or support teams.”
TimeLinx has allowed them to take on larger projects by eliminating manual time and expense entry on all projects. The increased efficiency and accuracy allows management to have a real-time view of how resources are being allocated, where under-utilization may be occurring, and use that data to improve project profitability while the project is still being delivered.
Because TimeLinx is invisible to a CRM-only user (not a TimeLinx user), they were able to implement and fully adopt TimeLinx rapidly without the need to retrain users. The faster utilization meant immediate cost-savings, minimal confusion for staff, and virtually no disruption to the business.
TimeLinx’s flexibility was also seen by management as an important element. “As a career Project Manager, I appreciate the flexibility that TimeLinx brings. We are able to use the system the way we want to run our business rather than being restricted to the way the system dictates,” says a Project Manager. “We also see how the flexibility will allow us to expand over time without needing to implement a new system and start all over again.”
TimeLinx was able to deliver a robust system that provided exactly what the company needed – transformative project management capabilities embedded within their CRM system that accurately captured all work performed and automatically calculated the correct rates and costs regardless of the working situation. As TimeLinx also syncs the job revenues and costs into their ERP system, it also transformed their finance operations and sped up invoicing, meeting all their goals.