Summary
To manage its growth and set the stage for its digital transformation, SKS Consulting Group (SKS) engaged Wipfli’s organizational performance and technology consulting teams. The results have been more efficient processes that can handle future growth, improved internal collaboration and increased client satisfaction.
Situation
Having experienced tremendous growth over the past few years, SKS had outgrown its processes.
With its current system, the SKS operations team had difficulty determining which consultants to assign to its various assessment projects, as well as which consultants made up a given client team.
Information was being entered in multiple places, from Outlook calendars to Excel documents to the assessment delivery platform. This not only made it challenging to deliver services efficiently but also increased the risk of information getting overlooked in the shuffle or even mistyped when manually re-entering it across platforms. And because it made reporting nearly impossible, billing clients was a labor-intensive and time-consuming process.
SKS was looking for a technology solution to centralize its data, streamline its process for assigning consultants to assessment projects, make it easy to create invoices, and improve its client and candidate experience — as well as the experience of its internal operations team. By operationalizing and eliminating a lot of the administrative work, SKS could enable its team members to spend more time doing what they do best — interacting with clients and building relationships.
Strategy
First, the Wipfli team worked with SKS team members to define the assessment process. A two-day workshop mapped out the current process, identified their pain points, and pinpointed where there was waste. The workshop enabled the SKS team to see where they could adjust to eliminate bottlenecks and steps that didn’t add value, as well as make the process more consistent from client to client.
Once the process was mapped out, it was time to implement a new technology platform. Microsoft Dynamics 365 was the best fit, but implementing any technology can be a challenge. The best results come from working with a team that can tweak elements of the solution to further customize it, as well as provide training to help ensure the tool gains high adoption and that employees know how to take full advantage of its features.
With the implementation now complete, Wipfli is currently providing managed services support through the tool’s go-live and beyond — holding quarterly road-mapping sessions, implementing business-driven enhancements, providing support during Dynamics’ bi-annual upgrades, and more.
Results
The two-day process workshop and Dynamics 365 implementation have combined to create a more efficient and consistent process that enables SKS team members to collaborate more effectively.
With its centralized dashboard, Dynamics 365 helps SKS’s partners to track consultant productivity and overall company performance. They can see what upcoming appointments they have, monitor the upcoming assessment pipeline and access live candidate statuses within the assessment process.
Because many clients request updates on specific candidates, Dynamics 365 enables SKS to provide quick replies. Having that centralized data and the ability to slice and dice it also means SKS can even give clients lists of every candidate they requested an assessment on in the previous year. Before, this would have been a very time-consuming and manual process.
Eliminating paper processes and putting Dynamics 365 into place also made the sudden transition to remote work so much easier, helping to lessen the impact of COVID-19 on the firm and keep SKS operations running. Melissa Robinson, Business Operations Leader, said, “We are very grateful to have Dynamics in place; otherwise it would have been absolutely crazy to manage through all our project work without the information readily available in the system.”
With Dynamics 365, SKS is well-positioned to manage its continued business growth and move into the next stage of its digital evolution. SKS describes Dynamics 365 as a launching pad for the future of the firm. And it will be working with Wipfli to further build out the features and functionality that will help it continue to manage its growth and success.
Client profile
With expertise in understanding how people function on the job, SKS Consulting Group helps organizations identify, use and grow the capabilities and competencies of their employees. For over 40 years, SKS has improved the quality of organizational decision-making in the critical areas of selection and development of key employees.
