Typeqast Tripled in Size Using Productive
Typeqast is a nearshore software development agency with headquarters in Amsterdam and offices in Croatia and Serbia. We spoke with Marko Barić, CEO and Vedran Marušić, Operations Manager to learn how they increased their efficiency and tripled in size since they started to manage their entire agency in Productive.
Tell us a bit about your agency.
Marko: Typeqast is a Dutch software development agency with three development offices in Croatia and one office in Serbia. We’re basically a provider of nearshore development services for international customers.
What challenges were you looking to solve before you found Productive?
Marko: Profit margins are very important for us. Before we started using Productive it was very hard to keep track of profitability and utilization rates due to not having consolidated data. We were growing rapidly and we were already in two offices, so we knew we needed more transparency in our data. At that point, it took us several days to build invoices at the end of the month.
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How long have you been using Productive?
We started using Productive around two years ago, when we were around 40 people in size. Currently, we are 155 people across four offices.
How has your day-to-day work changed since switching over?
After switching to Productive, instead of wasting hours on generating reports, we now have real-time insights. My daily work changed since I started using Productive in a way that I don’t have to do as much manual work as I used to do and all of the data to make strategic decisions is available instantly.
“Productive gives me an immediate answer to questions such as: Are we on track? How much work is there? And the most important one: are we profitable at all?“
As the Operations Manager at Typeqast, how did Productive help you get an overview of the “health” of each project?
Vedran: Dealing with operations is always complex. I’m the bridge between Sales, delivery, and hiring. I need a clear overview of our capacity at all times. I also need to be able to plan for the future. Productive gives me an instant answer to questions such as: are we on track? How much more work do we have on that project? And, the most important one: are we profitable at all?
Operations managers need to work with large amounts of data daily. Is it easy to get that data in Productive?
Vedran: For us, our central source of truth is Productive. It’s simple for me to get the data we need to make the right decisions using Productive’s Reports.
What’s your process for identifying and overcoming bottlenecks in your projects?
Vedran: My main goal is to ensure that we have the right people doing the right job. That’s what makes our projects successful. To do that, we need to identify our current and future availability and make staffing plans. In parallel, we can also get an insight into future requirements through the potential deals in our sales pipeline. That serves as input to our recruitment team.
What was your learning curve like? Did you reveal some extra benefits that you didn’t expect from Productive at first?
Marko: What I really liked about the tool was that it was easy to use by both our management and our team members.
Vedran: Our mission was to find a solution and establish processes that would be easy to use throughout the company. Tracking time needed to be as simple as possible. Productive offered that right from the start. By doing a hard cut-over to Productive, we had the whole company tracking time within a week – with minimal supervision and need of assistance.
Last, but not least: how would you feel if you didn’t have Productive?
If it wasn’t for Productive, we would have struggled to steer our company’s growth. We tripled in size since we started using it. We see Productive as an essential ally for the future expansion of our business.
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