Changepoint PSA Solution Serves as Central Link Uniting Sales, Consulting and Support for Legato
Business Challenge
Legato Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: LGTO), that pioneered the industry standard for storage management software products, provides its customers with software and consulting services for protecting, moving and making available business-critical company information.
Legato's Professional Consulting Group in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region used a homegrown system to track consultant information and time and expenses. Legato executives in Europe were confronted with a problem: during the course of completing an audit, its accounting firm PriceWaterhouse- Coopers identified that Legato failed to collect VAT (value added taxes) where appropriate due to the complexities of the countries involved.
Solution
Legato Systems in Europe looked at various consulting management and accounting systems, but decided on PSA (Professional Services Automation) software to help resolve multi-currency, multi-tax issues across the countries where it operated. It also looked for solutions to track consultant information and consultant availability.
A three-month intense review of vendors and their products resulted in the selection of Changepoint to manage its professional services business.
Results
Consistent and common communications for sales, consulting and tech support
Speedy problem identification and resolution
Centralized and complete view of all client engagement details
Access to accurate and up-to-date customer information leading to better service delivery
Accurate and timely capture of consultants time and expense
Accurate and rapid invoicing as a result of efficient T&E workflow
Enhanced knowledge management
Four percent increase in consultant productivity
About Legato Systems, Inc.
Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., Legato Systems has a global presence with offices in 23 countries and more than 10,000 customers, including Fortune 1000 companies.
Legato pioneered the industry standard for storage management software products. The company provides software and services that protect and make available business critical information. Legato specializes in software that ensures information protection, application availability and location and management of data. Legato's Professional Consulting Group is responsible for the software architecture and design, implementation, customization and support service.
For example, Legato software and solutions helped Merrill Lynch to recover data and systems following the World Trade disaster on September 11. With the help of Legato Systems and Consulting, Merrill Lynch was able to get its people and systems productive in new locations, within days of the disaster.
The Need for PSA
As software sales and the company's presence continued to grow in EMEA, so did the need for consulting services. The consulting revenue in EMEA has grown dramatically in the last three years and is now a significant contributor to the overall consulting revenue mix.
Management and Consultants in EMEA were using spreadsheets to track projects, time and expenses and skills. The decision was made in early 1999 to develop a worldwide system to capture this information. By the end of the year, management realized that the homegrown system was really a piecemeal solution. The system was unable to generate metrics on utilization, billable hours, training and quality assurance feedback and it could not facilitate a holistic view of the business.
Executives recognized the need to streamline processes and manage various consulting groups and implementation teams as a single unit to ensure consistency and quality of service delivery worldwide. The issue that finally escalated the need for PSA software was an audit completed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in late 1999. The audit revealed that Legato's European operations were not billing and collecting VAT taxes consistently.
VAT Billing and Collection
Legato has clients across 12 countries in EMEA and 12 different billing offices. The consultant rates and calculation of the VAT varied by the nature of the assignment, location of the client site, location of the consultant and location of the client billing office.
"We always take the auditors suggestions seriously, so resolving the VAT issue quickly and permanently was very important to us," said Mark Ethridge, Manager of Accounting for EMEA.
Selecting PSA and Changepoint
Accordingly, a core team, comprising the EMEA CFO, EMEA Vice President of Consulting, the Manager of Accounting for EMEA, one Area Consulting Manager, two EMEA Consulting Coordinators and John Arnott, Director of Worldwide Consulting Infrastructure, took up the search for a solution.
The team had a four-month window starting October 2000 to conduct research on PSA, identify and shortlist vendors, make the selection and complete installation and testing of the software in order to meet the January 31, 2001 deadline set by the auditors.
"It was an intense process," added Mark Ethridge. "We had to fix the problem in time for the start of the first billing cycle of our new fiscal year. Our goal was to get a live invoice out by January 31."
The team contacted industry analysts to learn more about the benefits of PSA software and the relative strengths of PSA vendors. This was followed by vendor interviews, product demonstrations and reference checks.
"We chose Changepoint because it represented the most complete and integrated solution on the market that also paralleled our consulting business processes," said John Arnott, Director of Worldwide Consulting Infrastructure, Legato Systems. "We looked at bigger vendors with published but unproven capabilities in PSA, and chose to stay with Changepoint due to its demonstrated success and references."
Also, instead of deploying PSA worldwide, Legato made the decision to use EMEA as a proof-of-concept. This approach proved to be very successful, and has led to the approval to implement PSA for the Professional Consulting group across North America.
Central Link Uniting Sales, Consulting and Support
Changepoint installation and testing was completed in the United Kingdom by January 27 and Legato was able to issue the first physical invoice of its new billing cycle, come January 31, 2001, in accordance with the European VAT requirements.
Integration of Changepoint into accounting has been completed in EMEA, with a major integration scheduled in 2002 with North America. The integration will link the North America Professional Consulting Group and EMEA Professional Consulting Group into the new Oracle financial system.
Today, Changepoint serves as the central hub for Legato sales, services and support employees in EMEA. Other EMEA sites are controlled from Legato's European headquarters in the United Kingdom.
"In EMEA, Changepoint has become the bedrock of our consulting process and it is becoming the preferred internal consultant communications vehicle," added John Arnott.
All leads and project-related information is captured in Changepoint. Legato also uses Changepoint for resource management which includes the ability to track skills, check availability or conflicts and match appropriate resources to projects.
Knowledge management is another key area for Legato, which also uses the system to store project-related documents. These documents are shared with the in-house technical support staff responsible for managing customer requests or resolving issues once a project is completed.
"In the past a customer would call the technical support group, and talk to a representative who unfortunately did not have a complete picture about the site or project. Therefore, they could not respond with a solution, thereby frustrating the customer," explained John Arnott. "The real value of this functionality is that it allows our in-house staff to access information online while they have a customer on the phone and help address or resolve issues in real time. This is very important to our customers."
Other Business Benefits of PSA
Changepoint's PSA software has helped Legato solve VAT and billing problems, improve communication and the knowledge management process. PSA is helping Legato to facilitate the transition of the North American and EMEA Professional Consulting groups to one worldwide consulting group.
So far, Legato has concluded that Changepoint permits them to take the average consultant and make him or her billable an additional seven days per year or by 4 percent. For Legato, the economies or benefits will continue to scale with the number of users.
