Streamlining project tracking and data accuracy
Benefits
Qual IT advances their services business with a unified system for project billing
A New Zealand-based independent ICT Quality Assurance provider, Qual IT has dedicated the past 14 years to providing clients with highly-skilled senior resources ready to hit the ground running at any point throughout the software development life cycle. Founded in 2004, Qual IT delivers open, honest, no-surprises quality assurance solutions in the New Zealand market, and has grown into a thriving business with their team of over 200 permanent and contract test professionals servicing over 80 clients across multiple industry sectors.
Qual IT strives to provide well-qualified, technically-competent and proven Quality Assurance Specialists that clients can trust will deliver IT systems that work and any additional expected business outcomes. Their philosophy is simple: “Do it once, do it right” — and they maintain this expectation by emphasizing personal development, retention, and knowledge management within their staff.
Challenge
Manual data input causes administrative overhead for the delivery team
With over 200 permanent and contract employees working for over 80 clients across New Zealand and abroad, the Qual IT delivery support team had the challenging task of helping manage the collection of timesheets and employee hours across a variety of different projects and locations — most of which had to be communicated and gathered through email, due to their majority-remote workforce.
“95% of our employees work on-site for clients, so in the past we had to rely heavily on email to track down project hours and timesheets, and otherwise communicate with our remote employees,” says Ranui Robertson, Delivery Consultant at Qual IT. “This process was tedious and time-consuming, and we were taking on substantial administrative overhead just to complete simple delivery, invoicing, and payroll tasks.”
Before implementing Replicon, Qual IT utilized what Ranui Robertson refers to as a “dinosaur” of a system — one that didn’t integrate well with their additional systems and required significant manual intervention to keep things running and the data accurate.
“Our old system just wasn’t maintaining the standard of efficiency and data accuracy that we strive to uphold as an organization,” says Ranui Robertson, Delivery Consultant at Qual IT. “It was maintaining the standard of efficiency and data accuracy that we strive to uphold as an organization,” says Ranui Robertson, Delivery Consultant at Qual IT. “It was ultimately giving us a lot of dirty data that took time and effort to correct, and we knew we needed something more modern, streamlined, and automated that would allow our diverse resources to enter their project and time data in a uniform way.”
“95% of our employees work on-site for clients, so in the past we had to rely heavily on email to track down project hours and timesheets, and otherwise communicate with our remote employees. This process was tedious and time-consuming, and we were taking on substantial administrative overhead just to complete simple delivery, invoicing, and payroll tasks. ”
Solution
Replicon’s mobile, cloud-based platform enhances project tracking and client billing processes with standardized processes
In their search for a new solution, Qual IT tried integrating with two other solutions before landing on Replicon. The first solution simply didn’t integrate well with their existing systems and infrastructures, and the second solution — a custom-built timesheet delivery and billing system — experienced issues as well. Finally, they found Replicon — a system that not only integrated easily with their existing structures, but also alleviated the vast majority of administrative overhead associated with the collation, management, and review of project hours and invoicing.
“One of our biggest issues was a lack of control over the way people would enter their project and time information, which would result in data that was difficult to consolidate and wasn’t always accurate” says Ranui Robertson, Delivery Consultant at Qual IT. “With Replicon, not only is it a clear-cut and easy to use system for the end-user, but on the administrative side we can ensure that employees can only enter hours against the projects they are actually working on, and not just enter hours randomly.”
For Qual IT, this is one of the main benefits of Replicon — enabling consistency across their widespread, remote workforce. Replicon allows for administrators to pre-set which projects are available to different employees, significantly limiting errors in data input. Additionally, its cloud and mobile capabilities ensure both that remote employees can enter data on-the-go, anytime and anywhere, and that this data is then automatically consolidated.
This consistent, uniform data input has a direct effect on billing as well, as it ensures that invoicing of clients is both consistent and accurate the first time around. This helps Qual IT maintain their stellar, trust-based relationships with clients.
“As far as we’re concerned, Replicon is the single source of truth for Qual IT data.”
This control over data input not only works to streamline and unify Qual IT’s project data across the enterprise, but also enables easy and accurate reporting with the data automatically collating within the Replicon system.
“As far as we’re concerned, Replicon is the single source of truth for Qual IT data,” says Ranui Robertson, Delivery Consultant at Qual IT. “Everyone’s time is entered there, automatically sorted based on project, then checked for accuracy and approved by the relevant people. So, for anything that anyone wants to query regarding a project, Replicon is simple and easily accessible.”
With Replicon’s continued innovation and pipeline of new features and products, Qual IT and the delivery team are excited for their future relationship and continued partnership.
“We’re delighted with the ROI we’ve realized using Replicon, and very satisfied with the incredible and consistent support we’ve received from their customer support team,” says Ranui Robertson, Delivery Consultant at Qual IT, “We’re very happy with the system so far, and are looking forward to continuing to work with Replicon in the future.”
“Everyone’s time is entered there [Replicon], automatically sorted based on project, then checked for accuracy and approved by the relevant people. So, for anything that anyone wants to query regarding a project, Replicon is simple and easily accessible. ”
The Results
- Single source of truth for data across their enterprise, with the highest-accuracy ensured
- Automated system making life easier for administrators and remote employees alike
- Streamlined invoicing helps manage cash flows and improves customer relationships
- Easy integration with existing systems
“As far as we’re concerned, Replicon is the single source of truth for Qual IT data.”
Ranui Robertson
Delivery Consultant at Qual IT
