Benefits

Cloud-based solution supports global time tracking across geographies and time zones

Easy-to-use, efficient time tracking system ensures data accuracy, saving 1-2 days a month

Flexible tracking of project progress and all hours, anytime, anywhere

Corporater Inc., a privately held company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Norway, is the leading provider of Enterprise Performance Management solutions enabling businesses of all types and sizes to more effectively maintain organizational alignment and execute strategy.

Challenge

Seeking scalable time tracking support
As a fast growing company with over 200,000 users in small and medium-sized to Fortune 500 companies, Corporater now has offices in India, the U.S., Argentina, Sweden, Romania, and the United Arab Emirates. According to Rune Halvorsen, President, “Our goals are to optimize processes and continue expanding our international business in the most efficient way possible.”

To that end, the company sought to enhance support for global clients by ensuring billing accuracy and transparency. Corporater also needed an easier way to track employee and consultant time spent on projects and tasks, and deliver an outstanding customer experience.

In the company’s earlier days, all project time was tracked on Excel spreadsheets, but this process wasn’t scalable as they grew, and the lack of accuracy was an on-going concern. Consultants found it time consuming to fill out timesheets, and often filled them out incorrectly or submitted them late, while managers were uncertain if they were tracking the right time for billing. With this in mind, Halvorsen decided to look for a modern solution to the company’s time tracking needs.

“Consultants found it time consuming to fill out timesheets, and often filled them out incorrectly or submitted them late, while managers were uncertain if they were tracking the right time for billing. ”

Solution

Cloud-based platform supports company needs
Halvorsen evaluated software from a number of local vendors, but most were limited to supporting only Norway or the Scandinavia region.

Having used Replicon successfully at previous companies, he considered them for Corporater. Once Halvorsen learned about Replicon’s new cloud-based platform, he knew he had found what he was looking for.

“I wanted the ease of use that comes from a systematic and automated solution in the cloud, and Replicon had that. With the cloud-based platform, we don’t have to deal with customizations or upgrades. Everyone is always on the same updated version, and this was a very important factor.” Replicon’s 24x7x365 customer support and ease of use allowing for high user adoption were also critical.

For the company’s managers it was critical to have an efficient time tracking system that ensures data accuracy. For employees, it was important to have a system that is simple to use. With Replicon, they have the best of both worlds.

“Tracking external and internal time and expenses online in the cloud is a significant improvement to using Excel spreadsheets,” reveals Halvorsen. “Reports in Replicon are much more robust, and we have access to better information to manage the company. Internal feedback indicates Replicon is easy to use and enables all employees to be more productive.

“We also now track absences and holidays in the same system instead of Excel, which ensures we’re accurately tracking time off. With Replicon, we’re saving a half day a month to track time.”

Global considerations
“We’re a global operation working across multiple time zones and currencies,” states Halvorsen. “Our company strategy is to be the worldwide leader in enterprise performance management, and to do that we have to ensure outstanding customer service to clients wherever they are located. Another deciding factor in favor of Replicon was that we can use it worldwide to support our international time tracking needs.”

Corporater implemented TimeAttend, TimeBill, and WebExpense in Norway, Sweden, and Romania. This is being expanded to all offices worldwide, starting with Argentina. “Overall, Replicon was easy to deploy and adopt. It was a successful implementation and I expect to see a payback in three months.”

“Replicon delivers excellent overall functionality for projects requiring staff from several offices,” says Halvorsen. “Corporater now has the ability to track time for external client projects and all internal projects across the business, such as in general administration, sales, and marketing. We have consultants working on a global basis, and with the Replicon cloud-based solutions we can flexibly track project progress and all hours worked anytime, anywhere. We’re now able to see how we’re using time and how we can optimize it.”

“Replicon provides the data we need to help drive our business, and we’ll use it to calculate key performance indicators on productivity and how resources deliver against project targets. In the short term, we already know we’ve increased productivity, because our consultants spend more time with clients and getting work done, rather than spending so much time entering their hours.”

Corporater can also now identify how much time is spent on developing their own solutions for better product accounting and payback analysis from their investment in internal development.

Future Considerations

“A notable benefit of the Replicon implementation is the ease and automation of invoicing,” states Halvorsen. “Before, we used a manual process to gather invoicing data. With the reports now automated, we’re saving two days a month.” Halvorsen predicts additional savings after the global rollout is complete.

“We use Replicon to bill time against projects for specific clients. And some of our clients have multiple projects using many of our consultants, who often bill out at different hourly rates,” he continued. “With Replicon, we can document exactly how much time was spent by whom on what. Our consultants can see at a glance how much of the budget has been spent, and can inform clients if project hours are running out.”

“Replicon also gives us the ability to include comments on invoices, which improves customer satisfaction because of the increased transparency. They don’t have to ask us: ‘What have you done?’ They see detailed descriptions in the invoices of exactly what work has been completed.”

“I’ve been very pleased with the support from Replicon,” concludes Halvorsen, “and will continue to engage with them to discuss future needs, such as using Replicon for resource management and perhaps forecasting. Most immediately, we plan to feed time data into our own EPM solution internally to create scorecards for enhanced project performance analytics. Corporater is a growing company and we are happy with Replicon and confident in its ability to scale with us.”

“Corporater is a growing company and we are happy with Replicon and confident in its ability to scale with us. ”