Better timekeeping and billing for CAD2M with Vtiger CRM

CAD2M is a Vtiger CRM user and a customer of Vicus since June 2011. In those 10+ years, CAD2M and Vicus have implemented many improvement projects. In 2021 Vicus performed major maintenance including an upgrade to the most current version, implementation of the purchasing process and improving the time registration and billing. Time to talk to Jaap Holweg about this.

Who are you and what is your background?

My name is Jaap Holweg. My background is that I had my own business in business services in a similar company like CAD2M. Since last year I am manager of the department Professional Services. This department consists of helpdesk, consultants and administrative support for project administration and planning.

What does CAD2M do and how many employees does it have?

CAD2M consists of about 50 people. We are a supplier of SOLIDWORKS and related systems, SolidCAM and 3D printers. Our customers are mainly in the manufacturing industry.

In what ways is Vtiger CRM currently deployed within CAD2M?

Everyone in our organization works with it in one way or another. We use Vtiger for quotations and assignments and for creating purchase orders. But we also use it for time registration on our projects. Finally, Vtiger is also a complete accounting system here.

Recently, Vicus had the opportunity to carry out a project for you to implement a CRM module for time recording. What was the reason you guys wanted to take this on?

In the past we offered our projects at a fixed price where the full risk lay with CAD2M. We didn't want that anymore because it made projects unnecessarily expensive and there was not enough transparency for the customer. Our projects have to go to a variable price based on time-and-material. If you want to do that, you have to keep a comprehensive time registration.

So when someone within our organization records their time we want to be able to indicate whether that time should be on the invoice or not. And if so, this is added on the back of the invoice. In this way, our customer not only receives an invoice for the number of hours spent, but also an insight into which consultant made those hours and on which day these activities took place. In this way we want to give our client a fully transparent insight into what we have done.

At what point did you decide you needed to work differently?

As of February 1, 2021, I am the manager of the Professional Services department. My work assignment is to ensure that we are doing more consulting (in addition to executive work) and that our services are more scalable. I translate that into a number of things: the way we run projects, the way we offer quotes, and how we establish a relationship with our client.

The changes were not just technical in nature. We were already using time registration within Vtiger CRM, but not much was being done with it. As a result, the motivation to fill it in was not too great. That has changed now that our people see that the hours they fill in also end up on the invoice. This means that our people no longer have to keep separate lists and shadow administrations.

In addition to the desired transparency in invoicing towards our clients and relieving our employees of their shadow administrations, we also wanted to scale up our services. This means more billable hours per consultant. But first you need to know how many billable hours each consultant is already realizing. Our old timekeeping system did not record whether hours were billable. We were writing time on fixed price projects and we couldn't get that information out properly.

Because we now link project hours worked to invoices, we know which hours are billable. We then aggregate this information at the monthly and annual level and by employee. And so you can also see the consultant's paid percentage.

We then use those insights in turn in our performance conversations. In these we set goals for the coming year to improve things. Thanks to this type of performance improvement, we can immediately deliver more added value to our customers.

What do your customers notice about this new way of working?

The first invoices have recently gone out, so this is all quite 'fresh'. But what we have already noticed is that those customers who used to always request timesheets no longer do so. After all, they now automatically receive these statements with the invoices without having to ask for them. In this way, no one is busy and the customer does not have to follow it up. Invoices are now also paid faster.

Meanwhile, the way we offer our services also changed. We now quote projects on the basis of time-and-material instead of fixed price. In the beginning, this required some adjustments from our sales people. They now had to explain why time-and-material is necessary for these projects and also better for the customer.

Can you say anything about the time investment in the administration of project hours?

Any time savings was never an objective of this project. Now, it is true that we spend virtually no time producing timesheets for clients, but most of the time savings are in the invoicing process.

That was always an extensive job and has now been reduced to almost zero. This is a gain in time but also in quality. Previously, we had to rely on the consultant when he reported that the project was ready and could be invoiced. That did not always happen. Sometimes hours were left uninvoiced but were invoiced late thanks to a checklist. I also do not exclude the possibility that some hours were not invoiced because the checklists were not complete.

How have you experienced working with Vicus?

On our side, some time was needed to communicate these changes internally. In addition, there was some alignment needed between Vicus and CAD2M in the beginning. The start-up phase is the most important phase in such a project. You have to get clear what you expect from each other. As soon as this was clear we could act adequately and quickly.

For example, I remember when we had to make an adjustment quite late in the process. Both organizations had overlooked something and it was adjusted in no time. The final go-live went smoothly. There was nothing that disturbed our way of working, and I'm happy about that.

What result was achieved in this project?

This is primarily due to the openness and transparency towards our clients regarding the hours invoiced. The ability to offer our projects on a post-calculated basis. Increased efficiency of our invoicing process (saves us time and invoices are paid faster). And the ability to control the paid utilization of consultants.