Client

Cathexis Consulting is an evaluation consulting firm based in Toronto, Ontario, with 10 staff members and an extended team of associates. They work with government organizations, non-profit organizations and private corporations to assist with program evaluations and planning. The culture of the organization is distinct, with an emphasis on transparency and accountability.

Situation

The organization uses a number of Excel worksheets to manage different aspects of their business - from costing proposals and planning projects, to financial management of key performance indicators. Over the years, they’ve looked into more unified, integrated solutions - especially for project management - but none seemed quite right for their business.

Their core business operations involved:

• Inquiries from website and referrals sent directly to emails of the partners
• Project tasks, status and hours managed through individual Excel files
• Day-to-day tasks across the team managed through ClickUp, though not integrated with project management files in Excel to understand status
• Time to projects tracked in Journyx, but not integrated with project management files in Excel to understand actual vs. budget hours
• Internal documentation stored in OneDrive, with control and access managed through SharePoint sites

Rochelle Zorzi, one of the partners in the business, recognized that as Cathexis scales and the team has transitioned to remote work, the business will need to operate more efficiently in their core operations.

Our team was asked to assist this business in looking across their business to identify and confirm the areas that can benefit from technology and to give them a head start in planning their digital initiatives.

Project Goals

• To validate the need for a project management and CRM tool
• To identify other technology solutions that are in alignment with their strategic goals and business model
• To develop a digital adoption plan, including an implementation roadmap for their technology initiatives
• To provide options for each technology solution

Impact & Results

In total, we identified 13 technology initiatives that will make an impact on the business and enable Cathexis to meet its business goals.

These include:

• Implementing a work management tool that can support project management, time tracking, resource deployment and documenting critical internal knowledge/SOPs
• Implementing a CRM to manage leads, pipeline and all interactions, with integrations to the new cloud phone system and work management tool
• Automating mundane tasks across their applications with an automation tool, and creating a process to review automations throughout the year to ensure they are optimized
• Introducing a password manager to better secure sensitive business information

As a result of the recommended technology initiatives, the impact on the business will be:

• An integrated view of their work across the team, including “who’s working on what”
• A reduction in manual data entry/effort for understanding and analyzing project status and metrics
• A more efficient way to work for their people, through communications on projects within the work management tool and easy-to-find internal docs/SOPs
• An improvement in data security through training, planning and the use of a password manager
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Want to learn more about the Canada Digital Adoption Plan (CDAP)? Book a call with us and find out how we can help your business utilize this program to digitize your business.