Kantata Feature Spotlight: How West Monroe Completes Month End in One Day

This Kantata feature spotlight highlights how leading digital consulting firm West Monroe leverages Kantata’s robust period management capabilities to build accurate forecasts and manage resources proactively.

The Strategic Imperative

West Monroe needed a solution that could support a disciplined operational cadence. Closing weekly and monthly periods on a strict timeline is very important to West Monroe. 

• It allows the Finance team to lock in revenue and commence reporting in downstream systems
• It locks down accounts receivable (AR) values and revenue adjustments for a given month so monthly financial figures can be run without the risk of those values changing
• It preserves historical data for weekly utilization reporting used by Resourcing and Operations groups

Since that data is based on time entry, West Monroe needs it locked down as quickly as possible to be able to run their business in real time.

“We’re about 2,000 people so obviously we have a lot of timesheets coming in. We recognize revenue on the notional level, so we recognize revenue based on our time entries. So time entry is very important for us, as is the process we use to close our weekly tracking periods and monthly forecasting periods.”

-Laura Turner, West Monroe

The Solution

Businesses like West Monroe use Kantata SX, Kantata’s Salesforce native solution, to streamline operational processes that expedite closure of financial periods and prevent billing disputes and revenue leakage.

Centralized Period Management screens in Kantata SX show where unaccounted for revenue in a period is held up, helping to identify outstanding, unsubmitted or unresourced time, enabling professional services organizations to:

• Track and close weekly and monthly periods
• See everything that should have happened in a period but didn’t
• Easily send multiple reminders at once
• Ensure all revenue that was forecast for a period is either recognized or re-forecast to a later period
• Automatically update forecasts for future periods

“Kantata gives us the mechanism to report on missed time, submitted hours, and revenue that’s been generated so that we can compare performance to our plan, to previous years, and across different practices.”

– Laura Turner, West Monroe

The Process

Weekly and monthly close processes are on a strict schedule at West Monroe, completed on the first business day of the week and/or month. Leading up to this, multiple automated timesheet reminders are sent to all employees, and leadership subscribes to reports that show missing time. This gives practice leaders the chance to track down resources who have not yet submitted their timesheets.

Every Week

• Monday at 11 am, the process of closing the previous week begins
• Automated timesheet reminders are sent on Fridays, and then early on Monday mornings to anyone whose time entries don’t equal their full capacity
• Project managers are encouraged to maintain forecasts via the Operational Management dashboard on engagements ahead of period close
• Draft and forecast time that is not submitted by the deadline is deleted

Every Month

• Monthly forecast periods are closed on first business day of the following month
• Reports are shared with project owners to remind them of milestones due
• Open milestones are auto-completed to expedite period close
• The Period Management dashboard is used to monitor open proposals with a close date in the month, with follow-up with opportunity owners to adjust dates
• Deadlines are communicated across the business, drawing hard-lines

“Closing periods by early afternoon every Monday helps our finance team run through their financial processes. We rely heavily on utilization reports and forecast reports, so it’s super helpful for us to have everything locked in tight every week on Monday.”

– Laura Turner, West Monroe

The Results

West Monroe uses Kantata to forecast with confidence. Features like period management aren’t just helping West Monroe streamline what could be time-consuming processes — they also drive the discipline needed to get an accurate and up-to-date view of what’s happening across the business.

One of the biggest efficiency gains Kantata has delivered to West Monroe is in resource and revenue forecasting accuracy. With Kantata, decision-makers can be confident that the data fueling these forecasts is accurate and up-to-date. Check out our full West Monroe success story to learn about the many ways Kantata is empowering West Monroe to make decisions rooted in data.

“We have buy-in across the organization that our period close process is a priority since  it drives things like hiring – because we can clearly see when we’re hitting or exceeding financial goals and when we need more people.”

– Laura Turner, West Monroe

West Monroe Isn’t the Only Business Seeing the Impact of Managing Periods in Kantata 

Check out Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study, based on interviews with multiple Kantata customers, to learn how Kantata streamlines back office processes, cutting the time it takes to complete month end in half.