Helping TestArmy bring together people planning and budgeting features

Introduction

Founded in 2010, TestArmy is a Polish company that delivers advanced testing and QA consulting services focusing on cybersecurity, user experience, and quality excellence. The company’s dedicated QA engineers specialize in web, desktop, and mobile testing, including Virtual Reality (VR) and the Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

TestArmy used two separate tools for managing their people and tracking time, Cost Locker and Float. Since using two separate tools turned out to be time-consuming, inefficient, and costly, the company was looking for a solution that would integrate all of the key features under one roof.

This was when the TestArmy turned to us. After testing Primetric, the company decided to implement it and benefit from tailormade features and perfectly synchronized data.

TestArmy’s structure in a nutshell

At TestArmy, tasks related to people allocation and budget reporting were shared among three stakeholders - the Finance, Sales, and Project management department. TestArmy dedicated the task of overseeing the projects to Jarek, the company’s Delivery Manager.

Problem: Lack of single source of truth, and high-level view of project portfolio

TestArmy used Float for people planning and management and Cost Locker for time tracking and project settlement. This means that the Delivery Manager first needed to check a person’s availability and plan their work in Float and later track the time and settle projects with clients using Cost Locker.

Using two tools at the same time turned out to be time-consuming, inefficient, and costly.

‍The Delivery Manager had to create projects in both places and then configure them depending on whether the focus was on settlement and cost or people planning. Once resources were added to a project, it was necessary to configure them again in two places in relation to capacity, costs, or revenue.

"There was no simple way to compare plans to reality. In Float, people were booked and kept switching between projects, but there was no clear reflection of that in Cost Locker."

Jaroslaw Rafa - Delivery Manager at testarmy

TestArmy wanted to merge and compare data sources easily, which was impossible in this setup.

Moreover, a project at TestArmy could last as little as just a few hours. One person might have even three projects assigned to them within one day. The dynamic changes in specialists' availability forced managers to continually keep track of the calendar and manually reallocate people from one project to another.

That’s why TestArmy was looking for one tool that would deliver all of the features they needed cost-effectively. That way, the company would keep all of its critical data in one system, perfectly integrated to offer a holistic view of the employee, team, and company performance.

TestArmy was also looking for a system with the ability to automatically create project budgets on the basis of people planning. 

Solution

The COO of TestArmy, Wojciech Huminski, has heard of Primetric as a holistic business intelligence tool that smoothly combines data from different sources. The company decided to replace Float with Primetric to test the solution. After a while, it became clear that Primetric could replace Cost Locker as well.

“Primetric has everything a manager needs when running an IT services company.”

Wojciech Huminski - Chief Operating Officer at TestArmy

However, in order to replace Cost Locker, Primetric needed a few extra functionalities - for example, a detailed calendar view. Our team instantly jumped into action and added new features, customizing the tool so that it matched the unique processes of TestArmy. This also made transitioning from Cost Locker to Primetric much easier.

Connection between finances and people planning

‍During our collaboration, TestArmy didn’t only get a solution but an entire team that would dynamically react to their requirements and adjust the system instantly. 

Today, TestArmy uses Primetric to combine people allocation, skills management, time tracking, and finance management in a single tool. 

Once the Sales team receives an inquiry, the Delivery Manager can take a look into Primetric to immediately see whether it’s possible to assign someone to a task during a given time period. This is how TestArmy can also avoid overbooking. If a blind CV of a given employee has been sent to a client by one team member, others know about that and don’t allocate this employee to another project until they hear that their CV was rejected by the client. 

Results

• 3x larger cost savings 
• Single source of truth about finance, logged time, and specialists' availability 
• Simple and fast visualization of the most important data
• Ability to create blind CVs for clients quickly
• Improved collaboration between different departments