Switching from Excel to Furious: SMASH Group’s choice to support its growth
Auteur vérifié
3 June 2024
In short
- Rapid growth: from 0 to over 50 employees in 4 years.
- Annual growth of 50%, with 22 new hires per year.
- We work with companies that have between 10 and 100 employees (90% of our new clients come to us through word of mouth).
- Furious enabled us to effectively manage rapid expansion while maintaining high-quality service.
- Sustained growth thanks to optimized management via Furious.
Initial Challenges & Objectives
Faced with rapid growth—expanding from 0 to 55 employees in four years—SMASH Group recognized the need to optimize its time management and centralize its tools in order to maintain the quality of service it provides to its clients, while anticipating time overruns and the potential need for additional staffing that could be deployed flexibly.
Their main goal
- Improve team visibility and time management to prevent work overloads and optimize profitability.
Their secondary objectives
- Be able to plan better
- Provide clients with concrete metrics regarding time spent on projects.
Who are they?
- Consulting firm, shared-service functions (HR, Legal, Finance)
- France – Paris / Marseille
- Founded in 2018
- 55 employees (an increase of 22 employees per year)
Results with Furious
— Clear visibility
Get insights into staffing, scheduling, and time spent per client in just two clicks.
— 1 unique tool
To manage projects and employee availability (from 0 to 50 employees in 4 years) as well as oversee revenue and margins
— An overview of key performance indicators
Dynamic, with the ability to monitor and secure data
Before Furious
Before implementing Furious, SMASH primarily relied on Excel spreadsheets to track work hours and manage administrative tasks. While convenient, this method was severely lacking in flexibility and did not provide a real-time view of the teams’ workload. The result: general inefficiency in project management and a lack of flexibility that was sorely felt, especially in a context of rapid growth. Jean-Baptiste, co-founder of SMASH, tells us:
We’ve moved from the medieval era to the digital age. With the arrival of Furious, we’ve entered a much more dynamic era, one that also involves monitoring and, of course, data security.
Jean-Baptiste Cousin
SMASH had clear objectives: to anticipate, plan, and staff more effectively; to reduce the stress on teams caused by excessive workloads; and to ensure that every minute worked was properly tracked and billed to optimize profitability.
Management also wanted to ensure that the teams themselves could see and plan their future workload (one of the keys to avoiding unpleasant surprises and delays).
After Furious
The integration of Furious has resolved several issues at SMASH.
Real-time tracking
This feature was crucial for SMASH, which wanted to ensure that its teams weren’t overwhelmed, to anticipate potential hiring needs even before signing new clients, and to plan their tasks efficiently.
Jean-Baptiste Cousin, co-founder of SMASH
We use Furious to monitor their time very closely, primarily to make sure we aren’t overloading them or putting them in stressful situations.
Planning and Task Assignment
In addition to real-time monitoring, detailed schedules organized by team and project have been implemented. Thanks to these shared schedules and automatic reminders configured for certain actions (task reminders, invoicing, vacation periods, etc.), task allocation and the ability to anticipate periods of high workload have been greatly improved.
There’s nothing worse than not knowing how you’re going to work or what you’ll be working on in the future. So it’s also a matter of planning.
Jean-Baptiste Cousin
Tracking in just two clicks and easy management for management
SMASH Group’s management was facing a persistent problem of lacking visibility into what was really happening within the teams, especially as the team grew rapidly. This issue was resolved with the introduction of Furious.
With Furious, it’s now possible to track team performance and workloads with just a few clicks, enabling more precise and effective management. Management can now see in real time where projects stand, which teams are overloaded, and where adjustments are needed, thereby facilitating quick and informed decision-making.
Manage your teams in just a few clicks
Jean-Baptiste’s 3 favorite killer features
Feature #1: Project Progress
My favorite feature is the little slider widget that lets you track your time in a fun way while getting a bird’s-eye view of all your projects.
Jean-Baptiste Cousin
This feature makes time tracking simple and engaging for teams, which improves adoption and usage of the tool and, in turn, provides greater visibility into project profitability.
This widget allows users to quickly and easily track time spent on projects—specifically, the progress of each project—providing a clear and intuitive overview for each one: Are you behind schedule? Is it time to start billing? Add billed time? Automatic alerts can also be configured here.
Feature #2: Team Schedules
The second feature I really like is the big-picture view of the system—specifically, the team schedules—which gives me an overview of how many days have been staffed, how much vacation time has been requested, and so on.
Jean-Baptiste Cousin
This comprehensive view of schedules enables effective human resources management and better forecasting of staffing needs. Shift schedules facilitate task allocation and project organization, ensuring that workloads are balanced and that objectives are met in a coordinated manner.
Feature #3: Per-person allocation
This feature allows you to accurately track each employee’s time usage, compare billed time to total available time, and identify discrepancies. This helps identify inefficiencies and optimize billing, ensuring that employees’ time is used cost-effectively.
Results obtained
Furious had an immediate and significant impact on SMASH. The company saw a marked improvement in tracking time spent on projects and was able to plan staffing more accurately based on periods of high workload or the signing of new clients requiring support. Jean-Baptiste explains:
Switching to Furious was a no-brainer. It saved us from spending too much time trying to figure out what was going on with the teams, and it also gave the teams a clear picture of their workload.
Jean-Baptiste Cousin
Finally, as far as the teams are concerned, it’s been a complete success—despite a few “hiccups” during the tool’s implementation: they now have greater predictability regarding their workload, which allows them to better organize their week and avoid delays.
Thanks to this solution, SMASH has transformed its time management, moving from manual, static tracking to dynamic, proactive management. This transformation has reduced errors and delays in projects, thereby improving customer satisfaction and team well-being.
Augustin Marcotte, co-founder of SMASH
Today, thanks to Furious, we’re able to effectively track our leads, converted leads, prospects in the pipeline, and the time it takes to convert a prospect (…), which has allowed us to make progress, analyze why we were losing certain leads, and understand our performance.
Training & Support
To ensure the tool is adopted successfully, we’ve pulled out all the stops! First, we organized highly engaging training sessions to demonstrate all the features and benefits of our tool. And that’s not all! We provide ongoing technical support so that, even if a problem arises, it’s quickly resolved.
But that’s not all. We stay in regular contact with SMASH to make sure everything is running smoothly and to take their feedback into account. After all, it’s thanks to that feedback that we can continue to improve our tool and make it even more effective.
Ready to transform your management and boost your performance?
SMASH Group has chosen Furious to support its growth and optimize its processes. Why shouldn’t you? Gain visibility, streamline your management, and maximize the profitability of your projects with a solution designed to meet the needs of ambitious businesses.
Switch to Furious today