Meltlake: forecasting revenue and staffing projects with a Microsoft Dynamics integration

Meltlake is recognized as one of the top Microsoft consultancies in the Nordics. In client engagements, Meltlake is working actively around integrations and making their customers’ operational systems and processes work like a charm. It’s no wonder that Meltlake was also eager to make their own operations work smoothly by linking different points of data together with Operating being the connector in the middle.

Before Operating

Before Operating, Meltlake used spreadsheets and Harvest Forecast for resource management and capacity forecasting. It worked for scheduling time in projects, but what it meant was that Meltlake had to have separate spreadsheets for forecasting their revenue, no centralized skill database, and there was no possibility to connect the operational setup using APIs. A lot of time was spent on double data input, and as the business kept on growing, there was a need for more visibility.

The Benefits

Taking Operating into use meant many upgrades to how Meltlake was running their operations.

• Revenue forecasting: rate cards, and project budgets, long-term forecast
  • Meltlake can forecast their future capacity and revenue to make better hiring & sales decisions
  • No need to update separate revenue spreadsheets: when consultants update their allocations, the forecast updates automatically
  • Meltlake is able to provide their board with more accurate and timely reporting of their future revenue
• Operating offers a integrations and a full REST API, helping Meltlake get rid of playing with csv-files and making it easy to visualize data in different formats
  • Meltlake has connected their Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Operating, syncing their sales pipeline with project staffing
  • The ready-made Harvest time tracking connection lets Meltlake create projects in Harvest from Operating, and analyze planned allocations to actual hours spent
  • Meltlake is able to pass on relevant data to their financial reporting using the Operating REST API.

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What Was Done

Meltlake integrated Operating to their Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and acts as Operating’s official Microsoft partner, helping other customers with Dynamics CRM reap the full benefits of Operating. Using the ready-made integration to Harvest time tracking, Meltlake was also able to get visibility on planned allocations and actual hours spent. Cherry on top, Meltlake utilizes the Operating REST API to visualize their data in Power BI.

This enables different things for different roles:

• The sales team and project leads have an accurate picture of upcoming project staffing needs.
• Consultants get visibility into the sales pipeline, planned vs. actual hours, and are able to update their project allocations in one place.
• The leadership has a birds-eye view of future revenue and utilization, being able to steer the business better.

Final Touch: Skill Management and Resource Allocation on The Same Platform

One thing Meltlake lacked before Operating was a place to manage everyone’s skills. Operating comes with a built-in competence management and project-consultant matchmaking system, helping Meltlake centralize yet one more core function of an IT consultancy under one platform. Consultants can keep their skills up-to-date for efficient project staffing, people in sales can easily filter for the right skills and roles for upcoming projects, and HR has a place to see what people enjoy doing and what their learning goals are!