SUCCESS STORY
PlainJoe Studios Increases Projects Closing Within Budget by 50% with Kantata
PlainJoe Studios uses a team of artists, architects, strategists and problem solvers to drive connection, create value and captivate audiences. PlainJoe’s strategic storytelling is focused on defining everything from brand identity to corporate culture.

50%
Increase in projects, closing within budget
15%
Increase in billing rates
Industry
Company
What Kantata Replaced
Headquarters
The Challenge
PlainJoe’s success as an innovative design studio fostered continued growth, leading to larger teams and a greater amount and wider diversification of projects. This resulted in the use of many different project management solutions, from Google Sheets to Intervals. These manual processes resulted in unclear profitability, limited forecasting, and misunderstood project needs. While these solutions provided the team with important data, all of these processes had to be manually completed. As a result, the PlainJoe team experienced several challenges in how projects were handled and improved upon, including a lack of clarity into profitability and project needs.
“Kantata is a lot more intuitive than other project management solutions. As a leader of project managers, it’s proven to be a really great system.”
Director of Production, PlainJoe Studios
The Solution
Data Consolidation
PlainJoe’s goal in their project management solution search was to consolidate the functions being fulfilled by many different legacy solutions – combining scheduling, budgeting, tasking, and time entry all in one.
Business Intelligence Support for Resources
As PlainJoe took on contract workers to fulfill increasing demands, the organization began to analyze profitability in detail, but they couldn’t quantify their data for hiring needs. Kantata became a critical aid in effectively expanding their team.
Improving Resource Profitability
The ability to tie in accounting data with resources in Kantata helped PlainJoe Studios better understand its team’s demands through stronger reporting.
Benefits
- Improved data insights for project success
- Enablement of fast shift to remote work
- Improved budgeting
- Increased rates in billing