In a nutshell
- Revenue doubled in 2 years since integrating Furious.
- Clear visibility on upcoming projects and proactive management of time overruns.
- Precise tracking of profitability and team satisfaction.
- Automation of administrative tasks, freeing up 15% of work time for higher-value activities.
- Transformation of operational performance and enhanced employee engagement thanks to Furious.
Initial challenges
Amid rapid growth, with the team expanding from 25 employees in 2016 to 50-60 in 2021, Ceetadel felt the need to optimize its management processes and centralize its tools to maintain the quality of service provided to its clients. The increasing diversity of projects, with multiple agencies within the same group, each with its own specialties, made communication and coordination essential.
Additionally, Ceetadel faced several critical challenges: talent retention, team growth, and keeping top performers to drive the company’s growth. Finally, the rapid expansion through the acquisition and merger of several agencies required the integration of different systems and management practices, highlighting the need for a single, centralized tool to harmonize operations and improve efficiency.
Who are they?
- Independent communication and marketing group, composed of 5 specialized agencies:
Results with Furious
Increased visibility
Real-time monitoring of margins and time spent on each project.
Operational efficiency
Improved profitability
Team satisfaction
Improved work organization, increasing employee satisfaction.
We switched to Furious when we were making just over €6M in revenue—we needed a tool to manage our business and track our growth. Since implementing Furious, we've doubled our revenue in 2 years.
Objectives
- Improve visibility and management of gross project margins, both actual and forecasted, to gain a clear and precise view of profitability.
- Optimize resource management to maximize project profitability.
- Enhance team satisfaction by implementing tools that improve work organization and reduce time overruns.
- Facilitate decision-making with real-time data to enable quick and informed decisions.
Amaury Bataille, General Manager of Ceetadel Group
We've set up a purchasing management system that gives us an overview of gross margin profitability by project and enables us to monitor it automatically. We're able to aggregate our gross margin estimates for both actual and forecast figures, which enables us to steer the business.
Before Furious
Prior to the integration of Furious, Ceetadel operated mainly with manual methods and disparate tools to manage working hours and administrative tasks. Amaury, Managing Director of Ceetadel Group, explains, “Prior to the implementation of Furious in the summer of 2021, we were not piloting the margins of our time spent on our projects.” The structure was small enough and on expertise in the same scope to allow management at sight, without requiring sophisticated steering tools.
Project management was also done manually, which made it difficult to accurately track time spent and associated costs.
Bénédicte Raffin, Studio Director at Ceetadel Group, says: “Before Furious, we operated with a pen and paper on which we wrote who the customer was, the customer’s request and then roughly estimated how long it might take.”
Inadequate tools led to increasing inefficiency as the agency grew and diversified its services. Amaury adds, “In 2019-2020 (we realize that) common sense, our follow-up, our knowledge is no longer sufficient to drive the business.”
After Furious
The integration of Furious marked a decisive turning point for Ceetadel, radically transforming their approach to project management and resource optimization. The tool addressed several critical challenges and brought significant improvements to their day-to-day operations.
Real-time tracking
Today, Furious enables Ceetadel to track gross margins and time spent on each project in real time. Amaury explains: “What we monitor today in Furious operates on multiple levels. We track the time spent by teams on projects to ensure that the time sold matches the time actually spent (…) So, we have an approach where we closely monitor the time at a macro level to ensure we’re staying on track.“
This functionality is crucial for ensuring that projects remain profitable and for making informed decisions quickly.
Operational efficiency
The implementation of Furious has enabled more precise schedule management and significantly reduced time overruns. Bénédicte highlights:
Furious indicates directly when there is a time overrun. Je sais dès que ça dépasse 100%.
Furious indicates directly when there is a time overrun. Je sais dès que ça dépasse 100%.
This has made it possible to readjust estimates in real time and optimise the use of resources. Thanks to Furious, Bénédicte and her production teams have clear visibility of upcoming projects, often 15 days in advance.
Optimizing resources
Thanks to Furious, Ceetadel can now allocate its resources more efficiently, thereby maximizing project profitability. Clémence Vuillermet, Sales Manager, explains:
With Furious, what's also interesting is the CRM aspect, which gives us an additional perspective alongside the project management side, allowing us to measure profitability from the start of a project all the way through to its completion.
Although her role is focused on the commercial side, her testimony highlights how the integration of Furious’s CRM features complements project management. This integration is essential for seamless synchronization between the sales and production teams, ensuring a holistic view of the profitability of each project from start to finish.
Improved profitability
The use of Furious has led to more rigorous cost and budget management, thereby increasing project profitability. Clémence mentions:
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Team satisfaction
Furious has also contributed to better work organization, reducing stress and increasing employee satisfaction. Clémence states: “Today, as Ceetadel, we also have KPIs for employee and client satisfaction. And now, Furious allows us to measure and assess these as well. (…)“
Amaury's 3 favorite killing features
Feature #1: Gross margin by business unit
“We’ve switched to gross margin produced by business unit. This is the flagship KPI that enables us to make sure that the production sold to our customers enables us to absorb the costs of our business units.”
- Above: gross margin generated by business unit on Furious
Amaury explains that this approach is vital for the company, as it allows for the effective onboarding of various managers and business unit leaders. With multiple legal entities and cross-functional business units, tracking the gross margin generated is essential for optimal management and clear visibility into financial performance. Without this functionality, Ceetadel would no longer be able to manage its operations effectively.
Feature #2: Gross margin invoiced by business unit
“The second key aspect, from a purely financial perspective, is the billed gross margin by business unit. This metric ultimately serves as the final measure, even if the produced gross margin equals the billed gross margin at the end of the project. In our financial management, we also use this approach to measure the profitability of a project.“
- Above: financial dashboard view on Furious showing purchases entered and invoiced over a given period, gross margin invoiced, estimated gross margin with projects not created and gross margin signed.
Another key feature for Ceetadel is tracking the billed gross margin per project. This approach allows them to measure a project’s profitability and assess the company’s ability to cover its costs.
Amaury adds: “It’s with this billed gross margin per project that we can determine, ‘Okay, for this project, yes, we can pay this supplier, there’s still margin left, we remove the provision, manage our purchases, and ensure that the overall profitability of the company is sufficient.‘”
Feature #3: The budget dashboard
“One of the features I use very regularly is the budget dashboard, which allows me to review project by project, client by client, the gross margin generated, and especially the pending purchases […] It’s a tool that provides us with a comprehensive view of our financial KPIs.” – Amaury Bataille
- Above: example of a widget on the Finance dashboard
This feature is particularly useful because it allows for a conservative approach to cost management. Amaury adds: “We take a rather conservative approach by estimating, if I’m unsure whether the costs are 8 or 9 on the project, I’ll budget 10. Then, if the final cost is 8.5, I remove 1.5 from the provision, and it feels like good news.“
Results achieved
In a nutshell
In summary, Furious has transformed Ceetadel’s management by enabling:
1. Dynamic and proactive management.
2. Reduction of errors and delays.
3. Improved client satisfaction and team well-being.
Fine-tuned project management
Amaury Bataille, General Manager of Ceetadel Group.
Today, the way we operate, we monitor progress based on project dates, which enables us to manage the gross margin produced in a way that's fairly accurate in relation to reality, because we sell man-time (...) so it enables us to eliminate billing discrepancies where I've billed on account, or where I've only billed at the end. We have a vision of the gross margin produced based on progress, on project dates.
Happy Ceetadel & Furious (no ending)
Time management is crucial for us in driving profitability because we are a service agency—we sell man-hours, so that’s essentially our core resource. (…) We sell man-hours, and we need to manage and understand where our resources are allocated and whether we are placing the right resource in the right place to generate enough profitability for the organization. This profitability enables us to reinvest in our development, grow our teams, continue prospecting, invest in the market, and invest in communication to keep expanding. We need to understand where our margins are, and today, our margins are the difference between the time we’ve sold and the valued time we spend on it.
And you, when are you starting?
