From Data Chaos to Clarity: How Kantata Helps Professional Services Firms See, Decide, and Act Faster
For many professional services (PS) firms, data lives everywhere and nowhere at once. Project details sit in one system. Financials live in another. Forecasts rely on spreadsheets that get updated just often enough to be risky. Leaders know the information exists, but pulling it together takes time they don’t have.
IDC’s The Business Value of Kantata study makes one thing clear: When professional services organizations centralize their data and connect delivery, finance, and resourcing in a single platform, clarity follows.
Let’s break down the findings and how replacing fragmented systems with a shared, real-time source of truth, like Kantata, can help you turn chaos into clarity.
Key Takeaways from the IDC Research:
- 78% improvement in reporting accuracy
- 61% decrease in over-budget projects
- 51.5% increase in finance team efficiency
- 50% improvement in analytics efficiency
- 20% faster decision-making
When Everyone Sees Something Different, No One Moves Fast
Before adopting Kantata, the organizations IDC interviewed described environments where data fragmentation was the norm. Project teams tracked progress one way, while finance teams tracked it another. Too often, leaders found themselves having to reconcile multiple versions of the same story before they could act.
One IT consulting organization explained how deeply this fragmentation affected daily operations:
“Before adopting Kantata, we relied on a single, internally developed tool to manage activities, timesheets, and invoicing. It was very limited and difficult to maintain. We also lacked standardized practices and processes across the group. Each team operated differently, and even with that one tool, managers often used their own Excel calculations to report figures. We needed a robust, unified solution to manage our key activities from sales through to invoicing.”
Without a single system connecting projects, resources, and financials, reporting become a manual exercise, with late insights and lagging decision-making.
Kantata changes this by centralizing operational data and making it accessible across teams. Project plans, time tracking, utilization, and finances all update in real time. This shift removes the need to reconcile information after the fact and allows teams to operate from shared numbers.
Finance Moves Faster When the Data Is Already Aligned
Finance teams are often the first to feel the immediate impact of a PSA. IDC found that organizations using Kantata see a giant improvement in efficiency. They’re able to work with fewer people, while still maintaining the same, or greater, outputs. The biggest difference is seen from eliminating manual reconciliation and spreadsheet-based processes.
Month-end close times also drop. IDC reported a 61% reduction, with average close time shrinking from 11.5 days to just 4.5 days. Instead of chasing down project updates or correcting data inconsistencies, finance teams can rely on live project and resource data already flowing into financial workflows.
One managed services organization described the change in practical terms:
“As a private equity-backed company growing through acquisitions and organically, we faced major system fragmentation after three acquisitions. To support future scale and meet aggressive growth expectations, we needed to consolidate and build a strong ERP foundation. Fortunately, that’s exactly what we’ve achieved.”
A digital strategy firm shared a similar experience:
“End-of-month invoicing used to be a manual, time-consuming process involving Excel exports and rate adjustments. Now, we invoice all clients directly through Kantata in just a couple of days, provided the data is ready. It’s a much smoother process and a huge relief for the team.”
Reporting Accuracy Changes the Conversation
Speed is important, but so is the confidence that the numbers are right. Accuracy changes how organizations operate. IDC found that Kantata customers see a 78% improvement in reporting accuracy, driven by standardized time tracking, real-time data access, and centralized dashboards.
Some organizations find that standardizing time tracking with weekly submissions can be a major improvement. It enhances reporting accuracy and makes utilization reviews more actionable at both the department and individual level. This makes identifying underutilization faster and more practical, which helps teams make adjustments before issues escalate.
This level of accuracy also improves trust. When finance, delivery, and leadership work from the same data, conversations shift. Reviews focus less on validating numbers and more on what those numbers mean for the bottom line.
Analytics That Support Decisions, Not Just Dashboards
For analytics and business intelligence teams, Kantata eliminates the constant cycle of data extraction and manual reporting. IDC reported a 50% improvement in BI and analytics team efficiency, with the number of full-time employees needed cut in half, from six to three.
And dashboards that once took days to build? They can now be generated in minutes. More importantly, the data behind those dashboards is current and consistent. Teams can surface trends that were previously difficult to detect, including underutilization, allocation gaps, and project burn patterns.
One organization saw a 20% improvement in decision-making speed after adopting Kantata, a direct result of having real-time access to reliable data. Leaders are no longer stuck waiting for monthly reports to understand performance; they can see what is happening as it unfolds.
Visibility Reduces Risk and Strengthens Client Relationships
Clear data does more than improve internal operations. It also affects how organizations engage with clients. With real-time visibility into project health and budgets, teams can address risks early and communicate proactively.
Early warnings and standardized health reviews help teams intervene before issues reach the client. In fact, organizations using Kantata see a 60% decrease in projects receiving complaints or being escalated.
One organization described how Kantata gave them better visibility into project burn and forecasted end dates, allowing them to catch issues early and reduce overruns. With their old approach, they often reached the end of a project unsure where overages came from. But with weekly metric reviews and proactive alerts, they’ve gained far more control over their portfolio.
This kind of transparency also makes difficult conversations easier. When teams can point to shared data, discussions with clients are grounded in facts, not assumptions.
Clarity Extends Beyond Finance
The benefits of centralized data reach beyond finance and analytics. Thanks to better alignment between sales forecasts and staffing plans, resource management teams can improve planning accuracy, so staffing decisions become faster and more informed — reducing last-minute scrambles and improving project readiness.
Employee experience improves as well. IDC reported a 32% increase in employee satisfaction with Kantata users, driven in part by clearer visibility into workloads and utilization. When teams understand expectations and see how their work contributes to outcomes, engagement improves.
One organization even shared that improved utilization visibility allowed them to reassign underused staff to internal initiatives or training. This boosted morale, strengthened the talent pipeline, and reduced burnout risk.
Why Clarity Is a Strategic Advantage
The IDC findings show that data clarity is more than a nice-to-have. When information flows freely across delivery, finance, and leadership, organizations are able to move faster and with greater confidence.
Kantata helps the firms replace fragmented tools with a unified operating model. Reporting becomes more accurate, decisions become faster, and books are closed sooner so more time can be spent on strategy and revenue generation — not just chipping away at repetitive tasks.
For professional services leaders, clarity changes what is possible. It turns data into something teams can trust, act on, and build from.
Ready to replace fragmented reporting with real clarity? Learn how Kantata helps professional services organizations centralize data, accelerate decisions, and operate with confidence.
Ready to see smarter productivity in action? Download IDC’s full report and learn how Kantata helps professional services organizations take their data from chaos to clarity.