Challenge
An international financial and economic consulting firm wanted to better manage consultant availability and project assignments. The off-the-shelf software they were using was no longer meeting their needs. Instead, they wanted a solution that not only offered more comprehensive availability and assignment tracking and reporting, but one that also incorporated employee development into the staffing process.
The client wanted to have ready access to information on employee skills and knowledge at the moment when they were searching for and selecting employees for new projects. They also wanted to understand employee development priorities, so they could staff employees on projects that would give them practical experience in areas they were interested in but didn’t necessarily already have prior exposure or capability in. They were not able to find these features in any current off-the-shelf software, so they came to Cambria for help.
Solution
Cambria’s Excelerated® Professional Development platform allows tailored solutions to be implemented by combining its library of building blocks in unique combinations to address specific client needs. Starting with an understanding of the specific functionality requested for the solution, we collaborated with the client to ensure we fully understood the core problem(s) they were trying to solve. From this shared discovery process, we leveraged the flexibility of Excelerated to combine its role profiling, employee profile with tags and notes, project assignment and insights features of Excelerated® to provide a tailored tool for the client. As an Excelerated® application, this approach provided a tailored solution for the client while retaining the continuous upgrade and support advantages of an off-the-shelf software-as-a-service application.
The following features were combined for this solution:
Role
Profiler
The client defined consulting roles, along with a set of skills and knowledge relevant to the role.
Employee
Profile
Employees enter job history and education, rate themselves on relevant skill and knowledge areas, and indicate areas of future interest.
Project
Assignment
Employees are assigned to projects, and future time commitments identified.
Project
Insights
Aggregate reports, charts and pivot tables provide real-time tracking of project availability and resourcing issues.
Data
Synchronization
Timesheet data is synchronized into Excelerated to provide a global view of availability and project commitments.
Tags and
Notes
Confidential staffing decision and assignment notes can be captured and linked to employees and projects
Results
The application is now used by the client’s entire staffing team to manage project assignments and availability for the whole organization, encompassing thousands of projects.
The additional skills and knowledge data, along with development preferences has allowed decisions on project team staffing to be made with a wider candidate pool, rather than relying on physical location and pre-existing relationships with existing team members which enhances knowledge sharing across the organization, thus creating a larger talent pool.
For the employee, including professional development and interest areas in the project assignment process encourages them to play a larger role in their own development, and provides visibility into additional career path opportunities.
