SUCCESS STORY
Scaling Smart: How Phase 2 Leveled Up Operational Maturity with Kantata
Phase 2 is a Custom Software and AI Consulting Firm that designs and delivers custom enterprise-level solutions for clients across a wide range of industries.
From 1 to 10+
Project financial ownership scaled across the team
Industry
Company
Headquarters
What Kantata Replaced
Phase 2, a leading Custom Software and AI Consulting Firm specializing in complex, enterprise-level technology solutions, turned to Kantata to replace brittle homegrown tools and unlock operational scalability. With deep expertise spanning industries — from government to oil and gas to restaurant chains — Phase 2 was no stranger to solving big problems. But as the company grew rapidly and transitioned to employee ownership, their internal systems struggled to keep up.
“Kantata is a core operational platform for a business,” says Kris Kettner, COO of Phase 2. “If you invest the time to implement it right, it is incredibly powerful and will save you a tremendous amount of time.”
Kantata became more than just software — it became a strategic partner in Phase 2’s maturity journey. Through a collaborative implementation and a strong emphasis on best practices, the organization empowered its teams, streamlined its processes, and laid a foundation for long-term success.
Understanding the Challenge
As Phase 2 quadrupled in size over the course of a few years, the cracks in their legacy systems became harder to ignore. Their operational model — built around spreadsheets and managed by a handful of senior leaders — wasn’t designed to scale. It required enormous manual effort and created operational risk, especially as new layers of complexity emerged from fixed-fee contracts and shared resources.
“We had some explosive growth,” said Kris Kettner, COO of Phase 2. “And we came out of that growth spurt and looked around and said: ‘What cracks formed while we were running fast?’ And the fact that there were three senior leaders managing most of the operational workflow out of spreadsheets was one of those cracks.”
The team recognized that continuing to manually manage spreadsheets would increase risk as they scaled and result in pulling executives away from strategic or customer-facing work. Without a centralized system, data was fragmented and difficult to act on consistently. Reporting varied from person to person, and leadership was heavily relied on to interpret performance and keep things running.
“We needed to decentralize the work and make it visible to more people,” said Kettner. “The need to distract our management and executive team to maintain complex spreadsheets full of sensitive data just wasn’t working anymore. We knew we had to scale and mature beyond that.”
The company’s transition to employee ownership raised the stakes even further. New valuation processes, board-level reporting, and the need for repeatable, scalable financial modeling created an urgent need to mature internal systems. “We now have to forecast with more accuracy,” said Kettner. “We needed to be more efficient and repeatable.”
Phase 2 needed a system that could centralize operations, increase visibility, and free up their teams to focus on what they do best — delivering high-value solutions for clients.
Benefits
- Freed up executive hours with self-service project data
- Accelerated forecasting through reusable models
- Increased project manager autonomy and ownership
- Reduced reporting bottlenecks and manual effort
“With Kantata, we now have a mechanism to compare actuals with expectation. We used to track it manually, but Kantata makes it so much easier. We don’t have to pull data by hand or rebuild reports every time.”
COO, Phase 2
Implementing the Solution
As a consultancy that helps clients solve complex technology problems, Phase 2 understood the classic “build vs. buy” dilemma. They knew they could attempt to build a solution in-house with their immense in-house technical expertise — but they quickly decided that wasn’t the right call.
“We build things that don’t exist,” Kettner said. “We recognized that this was a solved problem.”
Phase 2 evaluated multiple PSA platforms, but what set Kantata apart was its consultative approach and platform maturity. “Some of the younger companies were kind of sketchy on how cheap they were,” said Justin Blackwelder, Director of Operations. “We needed the service and the experience that Kantata had. Kantata stood out because of the service we received even before we signed. The pre-sales team was incredibly attentive, and that gave us confidence that implementation and support would follow suit.”
The Kantata team didn’t just support the rollout — they actively partnered with Phase 2 to define the right implementation strategy, simplify workflows, and prevent overcomplication.
“They were really good at understanding where we were coming from, what we were trying to accomplish, and didn’t let us get too complicated, which was really helpful,” recalled Kettner. “They helped us start small and guided us through best practices. That’s what we needed: not just a tool, but a partner.”
This approach helped Phase 2 roll out the platform in a way that aligned with their internal capabilities and long-term goals. Instead of overbuilding or rushing to deploy every feature at once, they focused on what mattered most: setting up a strong operational foundation. That approach ensured Phase 2 was able to move quickly and deliberately — laying the groundwork for organization-wide adoption and long-term success.
“We’re able to actually change allocations across timelines and get better answers, rather than just straight linear math across a spreadsheet.”
Director of Operations, Phase 2
Reaping the Benefits
Dispersed Expertise and Scalable Workflows
Once dependent on a small circle of operational leaders, Phase 2 is now empowering project managers to own more of the day-to-day execution—from invoicing to resource planning. This shift created efficiency and resilience, reducing dependence on a few individuals and giving teams the tools and visibility they need to manage projects effectively.
“After the implementation, project managers started to offload some of the work that I was doing. Now the project managers generate invoices. They’ve got insight into finances and allocations. Before, it was all opaque. Now they can operate with little to no oversight, which is a huge help for us and gives us a lot of confidence that we can keep scaling to grow.”
Faster, Data-Driven Forecasting
Forecasting at Phase 2 used to mean building custom spreadsheets for nearly every scenario. Even simple budget questions required time-consuming, manual effort — pulling salary data, adjusting for timelines, and recalculating everything from scratch.
With Kantata, the team now uses estimate projects and flexible resource allocations to quickly model how staffing changes impact revenue. What was once a tedious one-off task is now a repeatable, scalable part of how they plan, budget, and evaluate new work.
“The insights in Kantata have given us more consistent reporting across groups. Now, we’ve got more of a handle on repeatability and have been able to compare more apples to apples.”
Improved Planning for Shared Resources
As Phase 2 evolved from straightforward agile team delivery to more complex project structures, shared services like UX/UI design became increasingly essential — but difficult to manage. These resources floated between teams without a consistent planning mechanism, often being treated as reactive rather than strategic inputs.
Kantata changed that. By centralizing visibility and enabling forward-looking allocation, Phase 2 can now plan shared service usage in advance. This shift has turned a historical afterthought into a core component of delivery strategy.
“We can actually plan and allocate shared services ahead of time now. That was one of the biggest surprises — something we couldn’t really do at all before.”
Gained Executive Trust and System Adoption
The ultimate signal of success? The moment their founder — formerly a spreadsheet power user—began using Kantata as his source of truth for financial reporting.This milestone proved that Kantata didn’t just support operations — it had earned the trust of the most discerning stakeholders and decision-makers in the business.
“The day our founder went to Kantata to look for financial information was when we knew it worked. He trusted the information, and that meant it was working.”
“Our project managers now have deeper insight into the inner workings of finances and allocations. They’re even generating invoices now — which they weren’t doing before.”
COO, Phase 2