Fragmented data on allocations, time-consuming reporting and limited tracking capabilities – these issues prevented itCraft from perfecting its resource management and profiting from it. Fortunately, with Foresight Connect, the schedule accuracy was improved, boosting itCraft’s performance in the process.
About itCraft
itCraft is a global software development company with over a decade of experience in web and mobile development. Operating from six international branches in the US and Europe, itCraft has delivered over 250 projects across diverse industries such as healthcare, telecommunications, transport & logistics, enterprise solutions, and m-commerce, delivering exceptional results to international clients such as Rossmann, Deloitte, Roche, and DHL.
Today, itCraft remains dedicated to the quality and security of its services. Certified with ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 and recognized with multiple awards from Clutch, Tech Reviewer, and The Manifest, itCraft continues to set benchmarks in delivering innovative and reliable solutions.
- Industry: Software Development
- Size: ~110 employees
- Use cases:
Overview
With hundreds of successful projects and over 100 specialists on board, itCraft was determined to keep its planning and monitoring processes as simple as possible. Still, without sufficient tools, achieving this goal was only possible with time-consuming meetings—a solution that wasn’t sustainable in a growing software development company.
Fortunately, that changed with the implementation of Foresight Connect. As the tool was introduced to itCraft’s managers, they gained a complete overview of all the key processes and simplified their planning while achieving maximum capacity rates. Simultaneously, they also improved their long-term plans and quickly reacted to any arising issues, boosting success rates across all the projects.
Challenges Before Foresight Connect
As the company grew, itCraft had to master resource management to ensure the quality of its projects. However, with employees simultaneously working on many projects, keeping track of key allocation data was challenging.
This issue was particularly pressing for Agnieszka Uznańska, Head of Delivery at itCraft. While she tirelessly worked towards high utilization rates, a lack of schedule conflicts, and timely project delivery, her hands were tied by insufficient tools incapable of offering her a bigger picture of all key operations. Therefore, to make precise scheduling decisions, she spent hours planning meetings—often to no avail.
Still, inefficient planning was just a part of the problem. With limited tracking capabilities, both for projects and employees, Agnieszka also struggled to compare plans and actuals, react to unforeseen obstacles, and monitor project finances in different currencies. As a result, her work often consisted of numerous attempts to collect that data instead of making the most of it.
Issues itCraft faced before implementing Foresight Connect included:
- Inefficient tools with no bigger picture of data. Existing solutions like Excel and Harvest couldn’t provide a comprehensive long-term project overview, financial forecasting, or accurate employee utilization reports, leaving managers with little to no data for making better decisions.
- Time-consuming meetings. Weekly scheduling discussions were lengthy, inefficient, and based on potentially outdated data, creating confusion and delays and preventing the company from scaling.
- Limited tracking capabilities. The tools couldn’t monitor employee utilization track their working hours, compare plans to reality, or manage different currencies and settlement models effectively, limiting Agnieszka’s overview of key processes.
Transparent Processes Powered By Foresight Connect
After the implementation of Foresight Connect, numerous tools were consolidated into a single source of truth, which brought a number of benefits for both managers and employees.
At first, flexible allocations with notifications on low capacity or overbooking translated into shorter scheduling meetings, allowing Agnieszka to focus only on critical decisions. The change also improved employee experience, as now they tracked time and monitored their assignments in a single system.
Then, the single source of data was translated into enhanced reporting and forecasting. With the ability to generate advanced reports and compare plans to reality, managers improved planning accuracy and perfected their forecasts. They also didn’t have to spend hours in meetings to do that, as all the information they needed was immediately available in Foresight Connect.
With BigTime, itCraft has:
- Comprehensive project planning in a single source of truth. itCraft uses BigTime Foresight to manage both billable and non-billable projects with full-time and part-time allocations. Such a long-term perspective with all the data in a single tool enabled the executives to optimize utilization and avoid schedule conflicts.
- Enhanced reporting and forecasting. BigTime Foresight provides detailed reports on utilization, capacity, and project finances, helping the Head of Delivery and project managers align financial forecasts with targets and improve planning accuracy.
- Improved employee and PM experience. Managers can easily alter, and employees can quickly access schedules. Executives, on the other hand, benefit from a single source of truth for allocations, financial forecasts, and project statuses, enabling more efficient meetings and insights.
Results
Implementing BigTime Foresight at itCraft transformed the company’s project and resource management processes. By unifying tools for time logging and people allocation into one comprehensive platform, BigTime Foresight streamlined workflows and introduced new processes, such as locking time logs for settled periods to maintain process integrity.
Since its introduction, BigTime Foresight provided a single source of truth for project managers and the Head of Delivery, ensuring that all decisions were based on accurate and up-to-date data, eliminating allocation errors and faulty reports. Its robust reporting capabilities delivered valuable insights that improved decision-making and approval processes, allowing for detailed and portfolio-level overviews. These advancements solidified BigTime Foresight as an indispensable tool for optimizing operations and achieving greater efficiency at itCraft.
