Enhancing performance and risk management with Project Intelligence
Discover how AcctTwo leveraged Project Intelligence to automate personalized employee work-hour calculations and easily track individual and team performance against expectations.
Client background
AcctTwo Shared Services, LLC (AcctTwo) was a top value-added reseller of Sage Intacct. They developed Project Intelligence out of their own business need and have since successfully introduced it to other Sage Intacct customers. AcctTwo provided the people, processes and technology to transform finance and accounting into a strategic asset. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, AcctTwo existed to remove the clutter of manual tasks and to provide clarity to finance and business leaders. AcctTwo primarily served high-growth organizations in North America with a focus on not-for-profit, software-as-a-service, home services and energy companies. In October 2021, AcctTwo was acquired by Baker Tilly.
Brett Michalson, former Chief Technology Officer, AcctTwo Shared Services, LLCProject Intelligence automates the data capture, calculations and presentation, allowing management to focus on taking action. We use the tool as a central source of truth to set and track transparent utilization targets, giving staff real-time visibility into their performance. At the same time, project managers can see right away how teams and projects are performing, allowing them to proactively remove barriers to success and mitigate project risks.
The business challenge
Services organizations like AcctTwo aim to keep well-balanced teams that work efficiently and communicate clearly to meet their goals. Key to understanding productivity and team balance is monitoring how employees utilize their time. At first, AcctTwo used Microsoft Excel for utilization tracking, but as the team grew, this became impractical. Their growth brought new challenges, such as placing employees in the right roles, evaluating how new hires performed against ramp-up expectations and ensuring experienced staff knew when to delegate and when to seek out more work. Adding to the challenge was the variety in AcctTwo's projects and staff, including different billing models and a global team of part-time and full-time employees. Growing scale and complexity made it difficult to track staff and project profitability, to understand who contributed efficiently and to get an early view of which projects were at risk. The team needed more insight and clarity than they could get with their existing tools.
Brett Michalson, former Chief Technology Officer, AcctTwo Shared Services, LLCWithout the critical information Project Intelligence provides, we would be running our business on anecdotes, not data. As the steward of a team of professionals and the organization's financial success, this wasn't good enough. The impact of this information far exceeds its costs. The ability to see trends and data that indicate burnout, people in the wrong roles, ineffective people development, lack of delegation and overall team staffing fit is critical to our ongoing success.
Solution and results
In response, AcctTwo adopted Project Intelligence, a turnkey solution built by and for service organizations using Sage Intacct. Project Intelligence automated individualized employee work hour calculations and adapted to different employment types, roles, start dates, holiday schedules, and billing methods. Its custom utilization schedules made tracking individual and team performance against expectations easier—crucial for a growing team with varied expectations. Staff could see how they tracked against their targets in real-time, supporting data-driven performance and compensation discussions. Not only were individual contributions clearer, but project managers could also monitor project risk calculations that show expected overages based on current progress, improving monitoring and controlling in project management and communication with team members and clients.
With Project Intelligence, AcctTwo could calculate not just utilization, but realization as well. The product did the work to allocate revenues from fixed fee projects to staff working on those projects, leading to additional insights. For example, some less experienced but effective team members were driving higher profitability. At the same time, some individuals who were highly utilized did not contribute much to profit because they were consistently over budget on fixed fee engagements.
Using Project Intelligence was an important milestone for AcctTwo. They saw less burnout and better staff retention, leading to a more engaged team. The tool helped them balance workloads, recognize individual achievements, and identify where changes were needed. With immediate and transparent access to data compared to expectations, they were able to develop a more effective incentive compensation model that the team could directly see and act on. By implementing Project Intelligence, AcctTwo improved their operations and created a more transparent and supportive environment.