En este caso práctico, aprenderá:
- how precise allocations and long-term forecasting helped Flobotics control its finances better than ever,
- how a tool tailored to the needs of the IT industry simplified project management in the company,
- how connections between timesheets and finances helped Flobotics monitor its operations.
Introducción
Flobotics is an RPA development agency based in Warsaw, Poland. It specializes in consulting, analyzing, improving, and automating all types of processes across different industries, such as healthcare, fintech, insurance, manufacturing, telecom, and more.
Regardless of the field their customers work in, they can be confident that Flobotics’ work will help them speed up their processes, enhance efficiency, and unlock scalability - all while ensuring the legal compliance of the entire system.
Thanks to its extensive scope of work, Flobotics has already completed over 100 successful implementations, including projects for Paramount Residential Group, Docplanner, and T Bank. Importantly, each project resulted in an average ROI increase of over 350%, powering their customers to grow even more.
Flobotics’s projects and processes
Due to the characteristics of its projects, Flobotics primarily focuses on Time and Material services, billing the customers for the actual amount of work done in a given operation. They account for over 80% of all the contracts in Flobotics.
However, some of the company’s projects have fixed prices, while others are sold as demos, with an option of becoming Time and Material operations when the implementation starts. As a result, Flobotics’ processes need to facilitate such financial models.
The flexible teams posed another set of challenges in Flobotics. With numerous part-time allocations and constantly changing projects, the company needed precise allocation of resources to deliver its projects on time.
Chris’s role in Flobotics
Chris Szwed is a Delivery Leader in Flobotics. As such, he oversees all the operations, focusing on robotic process automation and everything that comes with it.
As a result, he focuses on not only project management but also:
- resource allocation and forecasting,
- long-term project planning,
- finance management,
- coordination of project processes with other managers.
To be successful in all of these operations, Chris needed to have an overview of all the critical aspects of the company’s operation in a single source of truth - and he intended to find it outside the exponentially growing number of Excel spreadsheets.
Challenges in Flobotics
Being a small company, Flobotics started with spreadsheets like many other businesses. However, even with some external tools for time tracking, the system struggled to efficiently respond to all the cases that Chris needed to supervise to make the right decisions.
"We were missing out on many opportunities in project management, as we mainly used Excel for that purpose."
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
As a result, the company found many processes challenging or requiring significant improvements. These processes included:
Long-term allocations and forecasting
As the company had flexible teams, it needed to have excellent visibility of the availability of its employees in both the short- and long-term. However, this was difficult to achieve in Excel spreadsheets or basic tools.
"We had very little idea of how our allocations would look like, for example, next month. Our tools did not provide us with such information."
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
The tools used in Flobotics then could only show simple assignments for a specified number of hours per day. They also couldn’t be used to reserve resources, see the workload from different points of view, or test out different scenarios the managers could use to make the best decisions possible. As a result, a long-term perspective for resource management was often unclear.
Lack of sufficient billing models with various currencies
At the time, Flobotics was already providing its services to companies worldwide, including Europe and the USA. Still, delivering solutions to entities in so many markets was challenging due to the many currencies needed to complete such processes successfully.
This required the managers to create separate spreadsheets for each currency, later used for more advanced calculations. However, due to their nature, they required lots of manual updates that were not always completed promptly.
"The Excel spreadsheets were used once in a while. While they were pretty straightforward, there was no guarantee that they contained the latest information. That was their greatest flaw: we never knew whether or not we were looking at the correct data."
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
Notably, the existing systems could also not reflect different billing models used by Flobotics. This posed yet another challenge for the company, requiring even more tailored spreadsheets and updates and forcing the company to create a network of scripts and automations that could handle such scenarios.
No connection between work and finances
While Flobotics was fully aware of the importance of time tracking, it struggled to convert the information into finances, as it required numerous separate spreadsheets. The problem was affecting both monitoring project progress and the invoicing itself.
At the time, the invoices were based on the information from the time tracking system and, later on, combined with work costs to give the managers a general idea of the actual spending. However, the system was far from perfect, as it was complicated and required many manual changes that were not always made on time.
As a result, preparing the necessary documents became a very burdensome process. The accountants needed to double-check every invoice, affecting the efficiency of the entire process.
Solution: Complete overview of work and finances in the same tool
After careful consideration and extensive market research, Flobotics has decided not to create yet another automation independently due to the costs and effort required by such an undertaking. Instead, it decided to look for a ready-to-implement solution that could cover all of its use cases - and that’s how it stumbled upon Primetric.
Soon enough, it turned out that Primetric was a perfect solution for an IT company such as Flobotics, providing it with benefits such as:
Complete overview of past, present, and future allocations
After the implementation of Primetric, finding the right and available people for the job was difficult, as the visibility and validity of such information were limited. Fortunately, that has changed.
"As far as the allocations are concerned, my work is much more comfortable now. Before, we had significant problems with data updates. Now, I am confident that everything I find in Primetric is the truth."
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
As a result, Chris and other managers can simply turn on Primetric and see which team - if any - can be assigned to a project. They can also reserve the time of specialists with specific skills, test out different plans, or inform the sales team that sufficient resources are not available. Regardless of the scenario, there are no more surprises in resource planning.
"Draft or reserved allocations also provide enormous value for me. Thanks to them, I can test out different scenarios and choose the best one depending on our successes in sales."
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
Transparent finances even before the project starts
As Primetric offers a variety of financial features, Flobotics decided to use them to improve the quality of all of its processes focused on income and spending.
First and foremost, with Primetric a huge chunk of these operations was automated. The data is now imported straight from the integrated time tracking tool and combined with particular employees' wages and hourly rates. As a result, the managers have a complete overview of every penny spent in the company.
"We plan, create invoices, and forecast our finances with Primetric. Thanks to the tool, we are aware of all the financial scenarios we might face, and we know the exact work costs. It drastically improved the quality of our planning. "
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
Significantly, such an automated approach not only reduced the workload and amount of spreadsheets in the company but it also contributed to the accuracy of the information. Why? It is simple:
- The billing models are ready to use right away - no special spreadsheets needed,
- All the currencies are available in the system - Chris only needs to choose the right one for a given project,
- Managers can choose monthly or hourly rates for their employees, making the finances more transparent,
- There are no dozens of files one would have to browse to come to the right conclusion.
Additionally, the data can quickly be aggregated to show the managers different views of the same operations.
"In Primetric, the data is much more precise. Thanks to them, I can quickly analyze and convey them, raising people's awareness in the company."
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
As a result of these improvements, the accountants no longer need additional confirmations from all the managers to issue customer invoices. Having a single source of truth allows all parties to see such information immediately.
Custom reports showing the essential data right away
Having all the data in one place is undoubtedly an excellent benefit for any manager - but what if you could process the data even further with the same tool?
That is also the case for Flobotics. Using the pre-defined and custom reports, Chris can quickly gather the information from the entire system and sort it as he sees fit, creating extensive summaries of all the critical information.
"Having the ready-to-use tool for project financial management, my work is much more natural than in Excel. It is much easier to understand and use the data. [...] I can also quickly switch between different perspectives to assess the situation from different points of view."
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
Comparing plans to reality in an instant
Gathering all the information above in one tool also allowed Chris to oversee all the operations on a more general level. Using one of our reports, he can easily see the progress in each project and show its advancements to the rest of the executives - and he doesn’t need any additional documentation to do that.
"During our weekly meetings, I can simply look at the report showing the planned and worked hours and determine whether or not we are on the right track. "
Chris Szwed, Delivery Leader at Flobotics
Ventajas de Primetric
- accurate planning using the actual data about people’s availability,
- advanced forecasting, allowing the managers to compare scenarios and choose the best option for the company,
- improved sales processes based on actual data on people’s availability,
- ready-to-use project finances that require minimal input from managers,
- raised awareness of financial and operational processes in the company,
- automated, shareable, and easily accessible reporting ready in just a few clicks,
- accurate invoices requiring no additional confirmations,
- simple yet effective project progress monitoring,
- ability to manage projects from all around the world with various currencies available in the system.
Resumen
While Flobotics might be a small RPA development company, now it has everything a business needs on its way to greatness: scalable processes that grow with the business while responding to all its needs.
As a result, we are certain that - with some help from Primetric - this company will soon cater to the needs of even more companies worldwide, generating more and more profits.
