The Excel Exterminator: Two ways to save time, increase profit, and boost growth

In this guide, we'll offer you two ways to manage resources, forecast scenarios, and track project profitability: with clunky, manual spreadsheets, or seamlessly with CMap!

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Running your firm on spreadsheets?

In this guide, we'll offer you two ways to manage resources, forecast scenarios, and track porject profitability:

Option one: using a step-by-step manual process on Excel

Option two: using CMap, the easy-to-use software built for consulting firms

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Chapters

Keeping on top of staff availability
Creating scenario plans
Assessing client and project profitability
Practical insight
Tactical insight

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1) Keeping on top of staff availability

To set and track your staff availability and efficiently manage resources, these are the steps to follow on your spreadsheets:

Begin by forecasting pipeline and live projects in one view
Track billable and non-billable activities
Get your people to track time, so the data flows in real-time (at least weekly!)
With this, you can create a visualization to highlight who is on the bench, near capacity, or at risk of burn-out
Then, create a skills matrix so you can find the best person for the job
Bonus points: fill in vacation, away days & public holidays in the schedules

...or take care of it all in one click

You can use CMap's staff availability report to do all of this in one place, in real-time, at the click of a button.

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2) Creating scenario plans

If you’re looking to track your team’s capacity and manage pipeline forecast resourcing on spreadsheets, follow these six steps:

Break down each team’s capacity by month over c. 12 months
Forecast client & pipeline demand by role against the same timeframes
Identify the peaks & troughs in demand vs. capacity based on different scenarios
Highlight specific roles who will be over or under capacity (this is great data for recruitment)
Spot where sales & new business should focus on pipeline
Run this weekly - monthly for the strongest view on hiring and business development

...or combine all of the data you need and run scenarios in seconds

With CMap, you can see live and potential projects in real-time, as well as your staff capacity and demand, with just the click of a button.

Want to see how you can plan scenarios in CMap? Watch our live demo!

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3) Assessing client and project profitability

Here are the manual steps you need to follow to get full visibility of ongoing and future projects:

For each client and project, start by breaking down what was in the SOW - e.g. deliverables, projected time, people cost & charge rates, any rate-cards & discounts used, commercial model (fixed fee, T&M, retainer etc).
Then, plan your resource requirements by role or person for the project
After that, plan your invoicing schedule & revenue recognition
Once live, have all time tracked against the client & project
Then, start evaluating where scope creep or over-delivery is coming in based on that time used vs. projections & budget
Raise change orders or new SOWs if there is scope creep, extensions, etc.
Highlight projects with strong or weak margins internally to inform future pricing & productization strategies - plus, this will help sales & delivery improve with valuable data
Ensure invoices are being sent whenever a milestone or date is hit to improve cashflow
At project close, review client, project & individual performance

...or get this instantly in real-time

You guessed it - just use CMap! Client margin tracking is visible in real-time on every project.

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4) Practical insight

How Bioregional ditched spreadsheets to improve their resourcing

In 2024, Bioregional decided to implement CMap’s PSA solution for Consulting Firms, bringing their resourcing, project financials, reporting, and more into one system.

For Tom Schuurman, Director of Finance & Resources, one of the highlights of CMap was visibility over the individual project history attached to each user. This showed the areas where each consultant was building experience, which was “massively beneficial” for resourcing future projects.

One of the most significant benefits of CMap for Bioregional was the amount of time saved; the company has now been able to move to a nine-day fortnight.

Want to hear Tom share Bioregional's success story? Watch the testimonial here!

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5) Tactical insight

Listen to our podcast with SBR Consulting on the power of predictable pipeline

It’s easy to say firms need to better manage pipeline to accurately scenario plan... but not many have perfected the art of forecasting, deal reviews, and managing opportunities.

We talked to SBR Consulting, experts in sales & business development, to give other consulting firms the insight needed to turn pipeline management from a pipedream to a reality ... and enable your scenario planning to be accurate and realistic.

Listen here.

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