Specializing in end-to-end digital transformation, Praxent is a financial technology consulting and engineering firm that supports clients in launching bespoke digital experiences and delivering on their digital experience roadmaps. 

The firm was experiencing forecasting and resourcing challenges, which were made more difficult by their homegrown tools and spreadsheets. The leadership team wanted to grow the firm, but first needed a centralized tool that gave them a future-forward view and allowed them to cascade resourcing and project margin information to middle management. They turned to Parallax for help. 

We sat down with Praxent’s founder and CEO, Tim Hamilton, to hear why they adopted Parallax and what business outcomes they’ve experienced since. 

Here’s what we learned.

What problems did Praxent face before using Parallax? 

I work very closely with leaders in just about every discipline – project management, engineering, operations – to make sense of the bigger picture and understand our demand versus supply to inform hiring decisions. This process was taking up more (and more and more) time during weekly leadership meetings. 

We also had a bunch of homebuilt Google sheets that were prone to breaking. It created a decision-making bottleneck when it came to resourcing. Whether to put Sally on project A or B and John on project C or D—those were daily decisions that were a real challenge for the firm. We weren’t ever going to be able to distribute decision-making and feel confident about it. We needed a single source of truth or a system of record that would tie it all together.

What kickstarted your search for a new solution? 

When we had about 50 employees, we were using 10,000ft for time and resource tracking, plus homebuilt spreadsheets and Google docs. When I stepped back and took a look at how often our processes were breaking down, it became pretty clear that our tools were the issue. There was an opportunity for us to go and find something that could support resource management more holistically.

Did you consider any other tools? 

We looked at a lot of platforms. I got frustrated when it became clear tools were resource management bundled with project and task management. That wouldn’t be a solution that would work for us, a software product engineering firm. We needed to track tasks and manage projects in agile lifecycle management tools like JIRA, so that became a filter we put on our search—basically any tools that combined resource management with tasks wasn’t going to work for us.

Why did you choose Parallax?

First, CEO, Tom O’Neill, shared the philosophy around resource management being divorced very intentionally from task management, and it was clear to me that Parallax had considered the unique needs of a firm like Praxent. That decoupling was really important to us. 

Another thing I really liked about Parallax was their opinion about the overlap between sales and delivery in ways that we hadn’t ever considered before. We knew we had an opportunity to improve the coordination between sales and delivery because, in Parallax, the resource planning starts with placeholders in the sales process, and then those placeholders flow into the tool, which gives you a really clear view of your capacity before you actually assign individuals to projects. That concept of a placeholder was also unique in the competitive set and was a very compelling part of the demo.

Finally, one of the demos addressed a very specific pain point around how homebuilt systems make it very difficult to do scenario planning. We saw how much attention Parallax had paid to making the UI fast and efficient and productive to empower “what if” analysis.

Any specific functionalities that stand out to you?

Parallax’s project margin tracking capabilities are very powerful. You can do project estimating and cost-based accounting starting in the sales process so we know what our margin is for any given price point, how much leeway we have to negotiate, and how much margin to manage once we sign the contract in delivery. Having that bundled into the tool allowed us to cascade critical information to the next level of leaders and empower them to make decisions that would ultimately influence the financial health and performance of the company.

Any key takeaways you learned or experienced during the onboarding process?

After stepping back and going through a couple of questionnaires and onboarding processes with Parallax, it became clear that our rhythm was part of the problem, too. That prompted us to do a complete reset to our rhythms and institute a playbook so we knew exactly what was going to happen on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc., which integrated really nicely with the tool. 

What business outcomes are you experiencing? 

We’ve been with Parallax for a couple of years now. We’ve seen a 48% average increase in project margin and a 50% average increase in revenue. The platform also made information accessible and transparent, and we’ve been able to cascade it down throughout the organization, which created an opportunity for greater empowerment and autonomy. It’s also increased our leadership capacity and wherewithal within the team. We’ve grown from 50 employees to 120, and we’ve only been able to make that transition because we distributed decision making—with access to information, along with a set of principles and guidelines for making resourcing decisions. All of that is now in one centralized location.

How has your leadership team been impacted by Parallax? 

If you’re thinking about doubling your firm in the next few years, you’ve got to think critically about how you are cultivating leadership capacity so that you’ve got headroom to grow. In hindsight, switching to Parallax increased the leadership capacity of the firm by cascading important information, by empowering the team, and then by helping us to lock in with productive rhythms to build an effective, high-functioning middle management layer within the firm. That is the most significant role that Parallax has played: helping us double our headcount. 

What’s on the horizon? 

We’re looking to increase our planning horizon. A lot of people in the industry refer to that as your cliff. With that, we’re getting more strategic about the types of engagement models that we enter into in order to increase our planning horizon. We used to forecast 60 days in advance. Now, we can confidently forecast 90 days in advance. Where I’d really like to get to, using Parallax, is six months and beyond. That will allow us to craft longer term, more committed relationships with the clients that we’re serving in a mutual win-win fashion.

Would you recommend Parallax to others? 

Yes. We thought we had resourcing problems, but zooming out, the problems started much earlier up in the chain. Our sales to delivery pipeline wasn’t working. We had a series of systemic issues along the entire course of the client lifecycle. Parallax was the right tool to address all of those challenges from sales to resourcing to delivery to forecasting. It’s become the centralized heartbeat of the company and has informed every major planning cycle. It has been a game changer, and it set the stage for us to double the firm. We’re hoping to do that again here in the next couple of years.