As Head of Digital, Arno De Ryst leads the digital development at LINK Arkitektur in Sweden. Since LINK Arkitektur implemented Silverbucket roughly a year ago, Arno has been following the positive impact of Silverbucket on the company's efficiency. Before starting to make resource planning with Silverbucket, the company was struggling with different Excels for seven offices in Sweden and people weren´t able to see each other's allocations.
Efficient resource planning with scalable Silverbucket
LINK Arkitektur works on all kinds of architectural projects, both public and private sector projects. The size of those projects varies from short two-resource projects to projects which employ tens of people for many years. Especially in financially challenging times, it is vital to make sure that the companies' resources are utilized in the best possible way. With that, Silverbucket has been a great help for LINK Arkitektur, says Arno De Ryst.
"With spreadsheets, it was difficult to handle seven offices, especially when we wanted to borrow resources from one office to another", Arno says. Earlier, in such case, they used to send an email about the request to another office. That, of course, took time and was ineffective.
Overview of whole company
"We are more than happy with the way Silverbucket has solved our resource planning issues"
Arno says and explains, that as a bonus, there are also other problems that Silverbucket solved alongside: Before there was much more writing reports about people having something to do. All seven offices had their own Excel of people and projects and another Excel with the upcoming projects. All these things needed to be reported. "Instead of that, we now put everything in Silverbucket and it gives us one result. Also, it helps us follow up on the projects and gives us a great overview of the company. We see both past and future in one tool." Arno says.
Full benefit of special expertise
LINK Arkitektur does cross-resourcing between the offices on all levels. Some of the resources are really specialized, for instance certain people can make technical documentation. This special competence is hard to find. So, when there is a lot of work it´s important to make sure to use this expertise as efficiently as possible. "We have user groups in Silverbucket for the people with special expertise, so we can easily see, over the different offices, who has this special expertise, who could help and who has too much to do." tells Arno.
"It helps us a lot when we can see if some office needs support. In economically challenging times, it really helps to see the peaks and the valleys of the graphs in Silverbucket. The tool can also help to remind people that we must continue to sell new projects to keep busy.
Better data makes us a better company.", summarizes Arno.
Different offices working tightly together
According to Arno, the implementation of Silverbucket was easy at LINK Arkitektur. Everybody was pretty much done with Excels. "We understood as a company that we needed to do something to improve efficiency and results and work better together." he remembers and goes on
"Silverbucket is indeed the tool that allows us work together even more than before."
When it comes to basic allocating time and projects, the implementation was fast. The mindset and understanding the tool on a more detailed level takes more time of course. "We are very happy with how Silverbucket came out to be.
There is nothing I miss from excels.", states Arno.
Resources and budget in one tool
What Arno likes best about Silverbucket is the outcome between allocations and actuals. "I also really like that we can collect the whole economy of the projects in Silverbucket: We can follow up the budget. Resources and budget are linked, and it is important that we have the whole unity. How we resource a project is important for the whole budget and economical outcome of the project." phrases Arno. As a company, LINK Arkitektur has been happy to see that the planned and actuals curves are much alike -so they have been very good in planning. To have everything in one tool is very useful, says Arno and goes on: Silverbucket is an educational tool for the project leaders as well.
The surprising additional benefit
So, the resource planning with Silverbucket has brought much wanted efficiency. "When we launched Silverbucket, it was very much about allocations and planning. What surprised me is the fact that we can follow up the projects budget so well in Silverbucket." Arno explains and tells that it had been challenging for LINK Arkitektur to find a tool which could help to follow up the projects the way they want to:
"I have found out that Silverbucket is the best way possible we could imagine for combining resources and budgeting."
Silverbucket makes life easier
"Silverbucket has made our resource meetings easier because we have the graphs and the information right in front of us.
Thanks to Silverbucket, we have saved a lot of time.
And we use our time more efficiently than before." repeats Arno De Ryst. "We know when projects will end, and we can allocate people to new projects way easier. Also, by following up the outcome of allocations we know if something needs to be adjusted." he say.
"Resourcing with Silverbucket is almost like a vacation", Arno compliments.
“It´s like a fun game playing with different bricks in Silverbucket and making the graph work. In Silverbucket, it's very clear when someone is working too hard or doesn´t have enough projects.
The result of how much efficiency Silverbucket has brought for LINK Arkitektur and how easy it is to work between the offices with the tool has been more positive than we expected.”, Arno finishes.
