Avaza helped us take our international standing to truly global!

Their Story

ThinkPlace is a management consultancy with a global footprint. Their niche is focused on using the latest innovations in the realm of human-centered research and design thinking to help drive change toward vibrant communities, strong economies, sustainable environments, and trusted institutions.

From origins in the ANZ ( Australia-New Zealand) region, they have now expanded to a presence in the US, UK, Asia, and Africa.

Today their team of award-winning consultants are helping key decision makers from the public, private and NGO sectors globally tackle complex challenges, using a vast toolbox of expertise and research-fueled solutions.

" With the lack of real-time visibility on project key performance indicators, we were unable to track project costs against budget, and scale the processes for the growing needs of the business."

What were the challenges?

ThinkPlace, as a business consultancy with global aspirations, was using a range of tools to manage their projects scattered across different geographical locations. Their projects are predominantly fixed-fee and milestone-based. Their project managers need to schedule projects based on deliverables, and keep an eye on budget, expenses, and invoicing. The nature of work is highly collaborative.

They were previously using a separate SaaS tool for resource scheduling and time-tracking, another for accounting, and yet another to keep track of project expenses, Not only did this incur multiple SaaS subscription costs, it also required a number of “clunky” manual processes to tie the project data together.

We needed a system that would meet the requirements of all the countries that we are in, and sort of “do it all”. We got all 3 offices to use Xero for Accounting and switched to Avaza for project management as it is all integrated and that makes it easier, more streamlined, and more efficient. And just the possibility of rolling it across to every other location that we have opened since then. So all of our offices are at the moment running on Avaza.

Bede Riley – Operations Manager

Their Victory

ThinkPlace switched to Avaza for resource scheduling, time and expense tracking, invoicing, and overall project management. Avaza’s global capabilities, and native integration with accounting software Xero, made it a good choice for ThinkPlace to adopt both solutions at all it’s offices. Since the adoption, they have managed to open additional offices in the US, UK, Kenya and Senegal.

Now their project managers are able to utlize various real time reports to track staff ultization, project profitability and more.

“What drew us to Avaza was that we could roll it out on a global scale. Avaza helped us take our international standing to truly global. ”

“ Avaza has given us the freedom that project managers are able to really look at all facets of their projects, from timesheet entries, expenses and scheduling - using the various reports and functions that Avaza supports - and quickly get a project summary report that tells you everything you need to know about the project. The ability to do that has really saved our operations team a lot of time. The full-on impact is huge.”

Bede Riley – Operations Manager