DSK Salvaged Unprofitable Projects and Saved Hours of Time With BigTime

About DSK

DSK is a leading Polish law firm specializing in legal advisory for businesses, tax consultancy, and debt management.

In its operations, DSK values responsiveness and efficient yet simple communication - qualities immensely valued by its partners. Thanks to them, DSK’s expertise and experience earned the trust of dozens of the most innovative companies on the market, helping IT, technological, and construction businesses navigate complex regulations. 

• Industry: Legal & Tax Services 
• Size: 80+ employees 
• Use cases: Time Tracking, Billing & Invoicing, Resource & Profitability Management

Overview

In pursuit of perfect profitability, DSK was determined to use time-tracking and financial data effectively while ensuring the success of its customers and employee satisfaction. 

Unfortunately, insufficient tools sidetracked its operational ambitions, putting additional pressure on the company’s management. 

Jakub Depa, Managing Partner at DSK, felt the impact of those shortcomings firsthand. With multiple sources of information, he needed at least an hour to obtain a single piece of information on utilization, project budgets, or their performance, and he could not monitor or optimize all the operations effectively. 

As a result, many unprofitable operations and decisions escaped his notice, leaving the business to cover additional costs, lowering the profit margin, and limiting business scalability.

That needed to change. 

With BigTime, the company's goal of data-driven growth was achieved. With a complete overview of project finances based on live time tracking and cost monitoring adapted by all the employees, Jakub could easily monitor projects’ profitability, employee utilization level, and project delivery status. 

As a result, the profitability of DSK’s projects improved — and so did the customer satisfaction rates.

"With BigTime, I can easily analyze who works where and how from a bird's eye view. Also, the financial results in the system answer how much we did on a given project in a given time without any major problems."

Jakub Depa, Managing Partner in DSK

Challenge: Lack of Visibility Over Project Profitability and Resource Availability

Like many other legal companies, DSK started its management processes in spreadsheets and a simple time-tracking tool. Such a combination allowed Jakub to track information like hours spent on projects and, by exporting those data to spreadsheets, combine them with income and cost rates.

As  the organization grew, the size of its documents soon became a burden instead of a help.  

"When we founded DSK, I mostly worked with spreadsheets. Later on, it wasn’t that simple, as it took a lot of time."

Jakub Depa, Managing Partner in DSK

This statement particularly rang true for project finances that could not be monitored daily. To obtain necessary information on the project budget or its status, Jakub had to import the data from time tracking tools into Excel spreadsheets and combine them with wages and project plans, spending hours calculating basic costs and incomes.

The consequences of this situation were visible in the company's financial results.

Many operations were becoming unprofitable—some of their types more than others—and their troubles successfully escaped Jakub’s attention, jeopardizing the whole business.

Under such circumstances, other processes also suffered. Even though Jakub “wanted to assign people to projects they could complete quickly and within the budget,” he had no means. He was also unable to forecast allocations or use them to prepare offers for new customers without spending hours editing tables. The limited capabilities of the tools used by DSK were at the root of many of Jakub's problems.

"Compiling and comparing a large amount of data took too much time, and it took a lot of work to obtain all the critical data elements instantly."

Jakub Depa, Managing Partner in DSK

To change the situation, DSK needed to solve problems such as: 

• No connection between time tracking and finances. Jakub needed to manually combine the data on tracked hours, income and cost rates to create an outline of project progress and budget - and he could never be certain of the accuracy of such a report. 
• Suboptimal work allocation for lawyers. DSK wanted to assign employees tasks that reflect their seniority and wages while optimizing the operation costs. Without a single source of truth with lawyers’ skills, availability, and wages, finding the right specialist was time-consuming and not always precise, leaving experienced and expensive lawyers working on mundane cases. 
• Unknown project profitability. With no automated overview of project finances, Jakub spent hours calculating work costs. He also couldn’t determine which projects or types of operations were profitable, which direct and indirect costs affect project margins, and how projects with different billing models are doing compared to others. 
• Time-consuming offer creation stripped of financial information. To prepare an offer for a prospective customer, Jakub had to manually obtain and combine information on people’s availability and wages to ensure that estimates and revenue rates would generate profits. The process negatively affected the company’s response time and was imprecise, resulting in incorrect estimates being delivered to customers. 

Solution: Single Source of Truth on Time, Projects, and Margins

The implementation of BigTime has significantly improved DSK's financial and project management information systems. With the introduction of the new tool, the data on project profitability, budget status, people workload, allocations, and forecasts were gathered into a single system, “giving [Jakub] a perfect overview of both costs and productivity”.

"BigTime gives me easy access to the data that helps me make key decisions and boost my company’s profits. [...] With this tool, two people can manage all that data for a company with millions in turnover and dozens of customers."

Jakub Depa, Managing Partner in DSK

With constant support from BigTime’s implementation specialists, the company could quickly combine its data, learn all about the tool’s capabilities, solve emerging challenges, and start using the tool to the fullest immediately while gaining additional knowledge about the “golden standards” in the industry.

"Big Time offers a flexible and accurate implementation process. First, it shows you its features, and then you get an implementation consultant who guides you through the entire implementation process in your company: map use cases, adjust the tool, and train you, managers, and employees to use the tool efficiently."

Jakub Depa, Managing Partner in DSK

‍

The exact duration also applies to forecasting and creating offers. Testing different scenarios and finding the right people for the job is now a matter of minutes, allowing DSK to leave their competitors’ hours behind them in any sales process. 

‍

With BigTime, DSK now has:

• Time-tracking the employees enjoy using. In BigTime, time tracking takes just a few seconds. Consequently, employees are eager to participate in the process, reporting every hour into the system and giving their managers a source of information on their performance, as well as the costs of work. 
• Instant overview of projects’ finances. Jakub can now access the project budget and see all the costs and incomes in the customer’s panel without manually making a single calculation, ensuring that all projects are profitable at every stage. 
• Real-time data to make proactive business decisions. Manual reports are long gone. Their automated counterparts powered by BigTime can be created in under 3 minutes, providing managers with information on finances, staff, allocations, plans, forecasts, and more. 
• Balanced juniors-to-seniors ratio. With advanced allocations and staff management, Jakub can quickly assign the right specialists to the projects while considering their skills, seniority, and individual specializations and ensuring their wages won’t exceed the budget. 
• Quick forecasts and precise offers estimates. DSK can now create draft allocations for prospective projects, estimate their budgets, and issue an offer to the customer in minutes, gaining a competitive edge. 

Results

With the implementation of BigTime, DSK gained access to data that reshaped its operational and management processes. That change was reflected in Jakub’s later decisions, which helped the company optimize its profit margins, focus on more profitable projects, and boost the entire business's performance. 

Thanks to BigTime, DSK gets to enjoy benefits such as: 

• Eliminating unprofitable projects and optimizing profitable operations.
• Reporting time was reduced by 92% - from one hour to max. 5 minutes, leaving Jakub with more time to make critical decisions. 
• Offers for new customers can be created in under 3 minutes, ensuring DSK’s responsiveness and high-quality customer service. 
• Optimized work costs. DSK now uses its specialists to the fullest, using their skills in the right places without incurring additional costs caused by experienced lawyers working on simple tasks.