Supernova Award Category

Future of Work: Productivity and Collaboration

The Problem

Facing tremendous growth and an increasingly global and cross-functional workforce, silos of information made it increasingly difficult for Navigant to:

1. Scale an expertise-based, global practice. To successfully deliver client work, the Navigant team needed access to real-time information about consultants (eg skills, experience, interests, location, and availability). This process only became more complicated and less efficient as the team grew, and the search and coordination costs of staffing projects was eating up valuable, non-billable time.

2. Efficiently deploy resources. Consultants were either being under or over utilized because there was no way to see the global resource pool, which was impacting the firm’s profitability.

3. Capitalize on expertise. The team found that they were wasting time and money on repeatable tasks. For example, re-creating proposals for similar projects because team members in different offices didn’t know who to ask or where to look.

The Solution

The Navigant team began the search for a modern technology solution that would enhance collaboration and therefore drive better business outcomes. They declared their mission to deliver a transformational change in their operating model that would optimize skills and collective knowledge through a real-time resource, knowledge, and project management system. The new platform had to more than facilitate communication, it had to inherently change the way their employees were able to work together to enable growth while retaining strengths as a boutique consultancy.

In the end, it was Mavenlink’s forward-thinking approach to collaboration and vision for the future of a connected workforce, that beat the competition. In Mavenlink they found:

• A cloud-based solution to centralize knowledge  
• A platform for contextualized collaboration
• Access to real-time information about the distributed team
• Insights to help drive professional development

The results

Through Mavenlink, Navigant was able to:

Capitalize on Collective Knowledge, Improve Project Success and Client Relationships.
Using a powerful custom dashboard in Mavenlink Insights, Navigant has been able to capitalize on individual and collective knowledge in order to improve profitable delivery of projects. They use Mavenlink as an expertise database to better align staffing beyond just availability to include specific proficiency, experience and interests.

Reduce Non-Billable Time on Staffing Conflicts and Gathering Materials for Proposals.
Navigant has also streamlined operations from staffing to project delivery. The real-time staffing tool, along with access to the expertise database, has significantly improved the resource management processes. They also have a repository for recent materials to build proposals more efficiently.

Increase Transparency and Accountability.
Mavenlink has also helped to simplify communications and collaboration with team members. Having a centralized tool to manage projects from task assignments, to budgets, has increased the likelihood of project success.

Metrics

In the past year, the Life Sciences practice of the Healthcare division has experienced significant growth and expansion—annual revenue projected to increase 15-20%. Embedding Mavenlink into core business processes has helped the growing firm effectively leverage their team and work together efficiently.  

Reduced Non-Billable Time Staffing Projects from Days to Minutes
Before Mavenlink, Navigant would have to send emails and wait to hear back from people about availability and relevant expertise when putting together a proposal and staffing projects. Now, Mavenlink automates this information in real-time, reducing the time required to collaborate on projects from days, to minutes.

Improved Strategic Deployment of Resources
The team can look historically, as well as into the future, to determine if they are applying the right skillsets to the right projects. There is a huge difference between strategically deploying resources to projects or simply deploying the people who are available, and they have shifted to the former.

Better Hiring Practices Based on Forecasting Decisions
Navigant is able to leverage Mavenlink as a tool to enhance hiring practices. With Mavenlink, they can quickly forecast where resources are needed, and at what level. If the team knows they have to make a big push in a certain area, they can hire strategically. The team can now leverage a long term resource planning strategy.

The Technology

Today, teams have plenty of ways to communicate. So why are they struggling to stay in sync? In a word: fragmentation. Navigant was able to leverage Mavenlink to centralize project communication and task management tools in a unified, cloud-based project workspace, and in doing so, improve project delivery and financial performance.

Disruptive Factor

Scalability as an Expertise-based Consultancy
The deployment of Mavenlink’s technology platform has allowed Navigant to achieve scalability as an expertise-based consultancy in an innovative way, so that the firm can retain its core strengths as a practice. With this technology-enabled scalability, Mavenlink has provided Navigant with a solid foundation for significant future growth built on its core expertise-based value proposition to their clients.  

Shining Moment

Mavenlink has also become an excellent tool to offer professional development opportunities. Navigant tracks employees’ skills, professional goals and interests, all in Mavenlink. If an employee wants to get more experience or sharpen their skill set in a certain area, Mavenlink makes it easy to assign them to projects that foster personal and professional development. Employees use Mavenlink as a tool with managers and mentors to discuss past, current, and future skills and interests.