About Renaissance Strategic Advisors
Renaissance Strategic Advisors (RSA), a professional services organization incorporated in 2008, began their professional services automation (PSA) search with a focus on automated time and expense tracking. By 2013, the firm’s workload had swelled to 130 projects managed annually amongst 9 project managers, with 30 resources utilized throughout RSA’s Arlington, VA, London, UK and virtual office locations worldwide.
Prior to implementing KeyedIn Projects, RSA’s resources, consisting of consulting and support staff, utilized multiple manual methods for time and expenses submissions. Benjamin Doeckel, Vice President Operations for RSA identified the need and benefits of process standardization using PSA. “Our growth outpaced our infrastructure. We recognized the need for uniform time and expense reporting, with the ability to proactively allocate resources as needed per project,” stated Doeckel.
After an extensive evaluation of five PSA products, RSA selected KeyedIn Projects as the most effective solution to meet RSA’s needs: a Cloud-based provider offering an implementation tailored to the company’s specific requirements. “After reviewing the PSA marketplace, KeyedIn Projects became the clear choice for us. Their system was configurable to our current and projected needs; we didn’t have to settle for an inflexible off-theshelf solution,” Doeckel commented.
"After reviewing the PSA marketplace, KeyedIn Projects became the clear choice for us. Their system was configurable to our current and projected needs; we didn't have to settle for an inflexible off-the-shelf solution."
- Benjamin Doeckel, Vice President Operations for RSA
KeyedIn Project's Impact
During the evaluation discussions between RSA and KeyedIn, additional objectives were discussed, leading to a greater impact for RSA beyond initial time and expense tracking. With the increasing project workload, resources were stretched thinly, and optimizing consultant billable hours became a priority. In addition, having organization-wide visibility and reporting of all previous and current projects provided informed decision-making going forward, as did focused profit analysis per project. Having this data available also enabled the optimization of RFI and RFP processes for new business development.
“We embraced our growth, along with operational challenges that came with it. A significant facet of our success has been a vastly improved ability to understand the true cost of resources applied to a project, and tracking key project parameters to objectives. KeyedInTM Projects’ staff understood this imperative through their hands-on professional service organization project management experience, and configured the solution to accomplish this,” emphasized Doeckel.
“Planning of current project management, as well as our firm’s strategic planning and forecasting was also simplified through KeyedIn Projects’ detailed reporting, available at any time for our staff and management’s review. Visibility of active and archived project documentation supports our ability to provide best-practice client services and our company’s continued growth.” RSA utilized KeyedIn Projects’ for invoice data collection and currency conversion, integrating with the company’s previously established QuickBooks application for client billing.
“Even more than KeyedIn Projects complete PSA functionality, what ultimately differentiated the solution was their staff’s commitment to providing us with a customized Cloud-based system that served our needs, and was easy to operate for our project management and consulting resources. They listened to our needs, offered experienced suggestions, and followed through to configure a system specifically tailored for us, from implementation to successful rollout throughout our company,” summarized Doeckel.
"They listened to our needs, offered experienced suggestions, and followed-through to configure a system specifically tailored for us, from implementation to successful rollout throughout our company."
- Benjamin Doeckel, Vice President Operations for RSA
