Scaling without the chaos: How Scendea grew 168%

Published On:
August 11, 2025
Go deeper
Download our professional services ‘cheat sheet’ now

Growing a consultancy sounds exciting. In reality, it often feels like holding everything together with spreadsheets, shared drives, and late-night phone calls. That was where Scendea, a specialist biotech consultancy, found themselves in 2020. They were delivering world-class regulatory and product development support to life sciences clients, but their internal systems weren’t keeping up. Budgets were in Excel. Timesheets in ClickTime. Resourcing happened through phone calls. It got them by for a while, but it wasn’t sustainable — and it certainly wasn’t going to get them where they wanted to go.

The Problem: Growth outpacing operations

The Scendea team knew their work was impactful. But scaling a consultancy requires more than great client service. It demands visibility over projects, resources, and finances in a way that keeps decision-making clear and operations under control.

With different systems scattered across functions, Scendea’s leadership lacked the integrated view they needed to make confident growth decisions.

The Change: One platform for the whole consultancy

In early 2020, Scendea implemented Projectworks, a consulting-specific platform that replaced five disconnected systems with one source of truth.

That meant:

  • Smarter resourcing with instant visibility of team availability
  • Time and expenses in one place, feeding directly into financials
  • Live dashboards showing project and company profitability
  • A collaborative roadmap that incorporated Scendea’s feedback to improve the platform

This wasn’t just a software purchase. It became a partnership.

The Results: 168% growth without chaos

Five years later, the results speak for themselves.

  • 168% growth
  • Faster hiring decisions backed by accurate forecasting
  • Consultants freed up to focus on high-value client work
  • Greater impact for clients and patients
“My advice to other consultancies: make the jump now. If you wait, it’ll only become more complex and time-consuming to transfer. Do it earlier, understand the product, bite the bullet - you won’t regret it.”
— Charles Camp, Managing Director (UK & EU) & CFO, Scendea

The takeaway for consultancies on a growth journey

Scendea’s success didn’t happen by chance. It was strategic, deliberate, and supported by the right operational foundation.

If your consultancy is on a growth journey, their story is worth a closer look. Read more about Scendea's growth here.

‍

Share:
Hardcover book titled 'Benchmark report' for consulting industry with green and black geometric design.
learn more

Download our professional services ‘cheat sheet’.

Whether you’re at $5M, $15M, or $50M, this cheat sheet maps the moves that separate firms who stall from firms who scale.

UP next:
By subscribing you agree with our Privacy Policy.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Keep reading

Read similar resources from Projectworks

How Much Pipeline Coverage Does a Consulting Firm Need?

Most pipeline coverage advice is written for SaaS. Here's how a consulting firm sets coverage by deal stage and plans for the clients it will lose.

Ria Parish
October 12, 2026
resource type
A guide to revenue recognition for professional services

Let’s say a consulting firm signs a $30,000 engagement in July and invoices the full fee upfront. The client pays quickly and the cash lands, but the work runs from July through September. By the end of July the firm has completed about one-third of the engagement - the project’s on track but the finance team have some work to do to match revenue with the costs incurred (the “matching principle” of having costs and revenue in the same period is a key accounting concept). Only a third of the project’s fee has been earned (because only a third of the work has been done), and the remaining $20k of revenue is deferred to a future period.

Jacob Lawrie
October 9, 2026
resource type

It's the end of September and expenses got a lot of love this month, with a couple of big changes you can start using today and more on the way! We've also made updates across financial reporting, resourcing, HubSpot, and invoicing, dive in to see what's new.

Bernadette Keating
October 1, 2026
resource type