“Beeye enables us to balance the continuity clients desire with the training needs of our team. We have more junior team members than ever before and we are able to keep everyone busy on meaningful opportunities with balanced workloads The value Beeye provided is to make us more efficient and effective”
Nigel Jacobs FCPA, CEO, Taylor Leibow
The Challenge: Disconnected scheduling and workflows impacting our efficiency
Before Beeye
Taylor Leibow, a prominent independent Canadian accounting firm, had long taken a proactive approach to resource planning. Unlike many firms of their size still reliant on Excel, Taylor Leibow had previously invested in ProStaff to schedule across their 30+ professionals and assign the right work to the right people.
The team tracked all jobs across tax, audit, assurance, and valuations in iChannel with a workflow. However, only the jobs that warranted advanced scheduling, for example, because they were off-site or had to be conducted in a specific time period, were logged in ProStaff.
What Triggered Change
As the firm was growing, it became more challenging for the resource advisor to work effectively with managers on their requests, to spread work evenly, and to confirm allocations of available resources. Working across two independent systems was a major factor:
- Limited visibility regarding staff capacity could unnecessary delay projects while tasks waited to be (re)allocated
- Query-based reporting tables meant insights lagged and were cumbersome to create and distribute
- The budgets in iChannel were not driving the schedule and were not maintained
Taylor Leibow knew they needed a solution which included both scheduling and workflow management that gave live visibility of staff capacity, which saved time for the resource advisor and managers, and kept jobs on budget.
The Solution: From two systems to one resource management tool
Prioritizing Beeye
Leaders at the firm knew further efficiencies and effectiveness was possible, and that combining staffing availability and workflow visibility into a single platform would achieve:
- Less time spent on scheduling and reporting
- Real-time visibility on project pipeline, budget and resource capacity for managers and partners
- Improved workload allocation and managing scheduling conflicts
Taylor Leibow worked collaboratively with Beeye to jointly develop syncing their workflow task management with the scheduling of those tasks including new features on task dependencies and dynamic due dates.
Modern workflow tooling automates the status and due dates of subsequent tasks based on triggers – for example; when task 1 is complete, task 2 status changes to ready and the due date recalculates. When a task is ready, it is assigned based on appropriate resources at that time. When changes occur, staff adjust their schedules to reflect the change which highlights conflicts so that the required resourcing changes can be made. Tasks are allocated faster and conflicts are resolved promptly.
The Impact: Efficient resourcing that improves utilization, visibility, and decision-making
After almost two years with Beeye, the audit and assurance teams have a comprehensive view of resource availability and suitability alongside task statuses, project budgets, and scheduled hours.
Efficient Scheduling
- Faster and better resourcing processes
- Task status and due date workflows keep work allocation dynamic and efficient
- Staff can directly adjust schedules to keep plans current, and impacted work can be reallocated
- Live dashboards eliminate reporting administration and give managers and partners immediate visibility
- Big-picture resource dashboard shows availability for incoming projects and reveals bottlenecks
- Accurate capacity and budget planning with roll-forward and batch update functionality
- Live view of availability and suitability alongside project budgets and scheduled hours
- Greater staff control and accountability for workload creates a stronger relationship with resource advisors
- Real-time status updates have improved communication
- Client continuity requests are objectively balanced alongside staff training needs and utilization rates
Budgeting & Capacity Planning
- Big-picture resource dashboard shows availability for incoming projects and reveals bottlenecks
- Accurate capacity and budget planning with roll-forward and batch update functionality
- Live view of availability and suitability alongside project budgets and scheduled hours
Cultural Impact
- Greater staff control and accountability for workload creates a stronger relationship with resource advisors
- Real-time status updates have improved communication
- Client continuity requests are objectively balanced alongside staff training needs and utilization rates
“We were inefficient in using two systems to allocate work and build reports. Beeye has given us a shared picture of upcoming work, statuses, capacity, scheduled hours, and budgets in one place.”
Carolyn Jeyaseelan, CPA, Director of Accounting & Assurance Services, Taylor Leibow
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