Think Company, a digital design consultancy based in Philadelphia, PA, has grown from a team of 75 professionals to one of more than 150 over recent years. Providing innovative solutions to both middle-market companies and Fortune 500 enterprises since 2007, Think Company prides themselves on their ability to solve complex problems that require innovative design solutions.

And as a result, Think Company’s award-winning UX, UI, digital and content strategy, and software development methodologies have not only named them as a Top Workplace, but has carved for them a well-deserved place amongst top national digital experience design firms. 

Despite these obvious accolades, we wanted to sit down with Think Company COO, Bruce McMahon, to dig a bit deeper. Specifically, we were hoping to unpack one critical thing: how has Parallax served as a key part of a deeply integrated system that has helped the team increase efficiency and focus even more on growth.

Here’s what we learned.

What Does Think Company Do?

MCMAHON: “Think Company is an experience design consultancy. We do research, design, and development of user interfaces for mostly enterprise level companies for mostly enterprise level companies.”

What was the impetus of deciding to integrate a tool like Parallax? And why Parallax, specifically?

MCMAHON: Our current toolset, while it worked, had limited scalability. We were leveraging homegrown tools, mostly Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets—very process intensive, very fragile from a user perspective and from a permissions perspective, and we didn’t really have the ability to implement features that we wanted based on the limitations of the tools. So while we were able to run the business at that time we were probably 75 people or so, I knew that we would soon outgrow that tool set. So we started looking.

What do you attribute to that early business growth, going from starting with however many people you had to a team of 75?

MCMAHON: I think the foundation was really like always focusing on quality of work.

and also the quality of talent. So we had a philosophy where we wouldn’t rush to fill a role just to fill it. We wanted to make sure we found talent that shared our same values and our same commitment to client service. And at the end of the day, I think the clients saw that and appreciated it. A lot of our growth that we saw and that we continue to see, is repeat business with customers. I think that’s a testament to the focus on quality.

Do you remember why you guys chose Parallax, 4 years ago?

MCMAHON: Yes. Primarily because, I’ll call it customer service but it was more than that. It was the idea of when I first met with the Parallax team, I immediately felt like we were important, that our opinion mattered, that our feedback would be considered for influencing the future updates.

With Parallax, I felt like I could be a partner in helping evolve the platform.

How does your team use Parallax? Who gets involved?

MCMAHON: So primarily it’s used by department heads and managers who are involved with resource allocation. Deciding who’s going to work on what project when. The biggest value we’ve been able to realize is the integration with HubSpot and Harvest. And it sits in between the two.

Where previously we had our CRM, [which housed] lots of data. We had our resource planning work allocation tool, which required a lot of updates, and stood alone. And then we had Harvest, which was timesheets, invoicing, that kind of stuff. All three separate systems had to be kept in sync manually. It was a lot of work, and that’s the part that wouldn’t scale.

Now it’s beautiful. We use HubSpot. When a deal hits a certain stage, it goes right into Parallax. We have a pretty efficient process for shaping the various service offerings. Once a project is marked as won in HubSpot, Parallax knows it. It then triggers our internal workflows to make sure we have it staffed.

And we can compare our bookings versus our actuals through the Harvest integration. So it saves a lot from just manual updating. It made things more efficient.

What do you think that opens up for the team doing the work?

MCMAHON: I think every manager might give you a different answer on that, but primarily it creates efficiency. 

Anything you’d like to close with?

MCMAHON: I’ve said this before. I’ll continue to say it until it’s not true. Parallax is the best…don’t call them vendor…partner I’ve ever worked with. From a customer service perspective—they just make me feel valued.