3 Project & Resource Management Upgrades MBB Made In Order To Grow Their Team By 300%

MBB’s operations team were forecasting explosive growth, from a small team of 20 to a consulting group of 200+ people. To make sure their systems keep pace with that growth, MBB Group needed to upgrade their resource and project management systems - fast.

For Operations Director Jemima Butt there were three critical upgrades MBB needed to make to their resource management planning, in order for it to keep up with their ambitious growth plans:

1. Trustworthy Data
2. On-Demand Availability
3. Scalable Automation

Keep reading to find out how they made those upgrades happen using Projectworks’ resource management software - in under two months.

1. Trustworthy Utilization Data Unlocks Better Resourcing Decisions

At MBB, utilization is the metric that matters. Targets are set weekly and interrogated daily. That cadence demands live, trustworthy data that leaders can rely on to make fast-paced resourcing decisions.

Until now, MBB's operations team had taken a high-touch approach to tracking key project metrics: they spent a week per month pulling project data from different sources, sanitising it, checking it, and reporting it back to project leads. It was an approach that worked when MBB was a team of 20 people, but as the team grew they needed a way to track accurate utilization rates at scale.

MBB’s operations team trialled four different Professional Services Automation software options, looking for the one that would provide project data that was both fast and trustworthy. Projectworks stood out as the only truly integrated system that would bring together MBB’s timesheet, leave, financial forecasting and resource planning data into a single source of utilization truth - in real-time.

"A business is only as good as the data it has. So having access to that live project data makes that day-to-day decision making so much easier."
- James Woods, MBB Regional Director

The impact - with trustworthy utilization data embedded in daily operations, MBB’s executive team and project leads are now spotting pockets of under and over-utilization earlier. That's protecting delivery as the project portfolio scales, while also supporting retention as the team grows. As Jemima puts it; “We have a team of hundreds of incredibly smart people and in order to retain them, we have to make sure they’re never bored”.

Steal MBB’s strategy:

• Treat utilization as a decision tool, not a retrospective report.
• Make utilization trustworthy by integrating the inputs that shape it: timesheets, leave, forecasting, and resource planning.
• Put the same numbers in front of CFO, executives, and project leads so decisions are aligned and faster.

2. On Demand Availability Equals More People - Without More Resource Management Planning Meetings

Fast growth can multiply meetings. MBB took a different path: instead of increasing resourcing meeting load as their team expanded, they focused on increasing shared visibility so project resourcing decisions could happen at a project level.

MBB’s Operations team quickly saw how much time their team would save, if they decentralised their resourcing decision-making processes. In order to do that their project leads would need to have live and on-demand access to the whole team’s availability data - both current and forecast. That’s where a Professional Services Automation platform like Projectworks really came into its own.

The entire executive team and project leads now have access to up-to-the-minute data on the team’s availability, removing the need for time-hungry project and resource management meetings. When a new project’s confirmed, or things shift on an existing project, the team can make confident resourcing calls, right there and then.

For MBB more projects and people no longer means more resourcing meetings. And as they continue to acquire complementary consultancies, they’re able to adopt the same meeting-lean project and resource management approach across all parts of their organisation.

"We use Projectworks like the bible. The response from the Directors is, if it's not in Projectworks it's not correct. It's where we take all our data from."
- Jemima Butt, MBB Operations Director

Steal MBB’s strategy:

• Give project leads and executives the same live view of availability, current and forecast.
• Reduce meetings by default, and keep only exceptions-focused conversations.
• Make the system the place decisions are made, so scaling headcount does not scale coordination overhead.

3. Scalable Professional Services Automation That Gives 400+ Hours Back To The Operations Team

As headcount grows, the operational load does too. The firms that scale cleanly are the ones that automate repeatable workflows early, so operations can focus on higher-leverage work as complexity increases.

No team in a consulting firm feels the ‘admin tax’ of growth faster than the Operations Team. MBB’s operations team wanted to make sure their new resource and project management approach automated as many of their core project workflows as possible - timesheets, leave, forecasting, and resource planning - so they could focus their time onsolving the more complex operational challenges that come with growth.

They’ve done it - by selecting a single integrated Professional Services Automation tool like Projectworks, rather than clicking together a whole bunch of disconnected point solutions. That single piece of software is now the beating heart of MBB's operational engine, and reclaiming a week per month for the operations team. As Jemima Butt puts it: "Projectworks is my bible. I’m in there every day looking at resourcing, leave and forecasts, looking for project arcs, gaps, red flags. If something's not right, I spot it in Projectworks."

Steal MBB’s Strategy For Building A Project & Resource Management Process That’s Primed For Growth

• Automate the workflows that create operational drag first: timesheets, leave, forecasting, and resource planning.
• Choose one integrated system over disconnected point solutions when you need consistent, organization-wide decision-making.
• Shift Ops from compiling data to scanning for exceptions and acting on signals: arcs, gaps, and red flags.

MBB Group's growth story shows what matters most when complexity accelerates: align everyone on the same utilization and availability signals, put that information in the hands of the people making day-to-day calls, and automate the workflows that otherwise turn growth into admin. With timesheets, forecasting, invoicing and project resource planning brought together in a Professional Services Automation tool like Projectworks, MBB built a resourcing rhythm that stays fast and consistent as the team scales, so leaders spend less time coordinating and more time delivering.

Gearing up for growth? Book in a demo with the Projectworks team.