How Time Tracking Solved a Retail Consulting Crisis

Published {$created} by Carsten Blum

As a senior consultant specializing in operational efficiency, I'm accustomed to identifying bottlenecks. Recently, I encountered one of my own – a significant overrun on a critical project for a client in the retail sector. The initial problem wasn’s the scope itself, it was how we were tracking time against it. The team was using a rudimentary spreadsheet, leading to inaccuracies, lost hours, and ultimately, a frustrated client.

The situation was simple enough to understand on paper. We had multiple consultants working on distinct tasks within a larger project: system integrations, training documentation, user acceptance testing, and so on. The spreadsheet was a constant source of discrepancies. Hours logged didn’t always reconcile with project milestones, making accurate billing a nightmare and hindering our ability to forecast future project costs. We needed a task-based time tracking tool that could provide more granular visibility.

We began evaluating solutions, quickly realizing the complexity involved. Many options were too feature-rich (and expensive) for our needs, while others lacked the core functionality we required. That’s when we discovered Nureti. Its quick start guide was immediately helpful and showed us how we could tailor the system for our specific workflow. The team’s initial apprehension about adopting new software quickly evaporated. Registration types like the stopwatch and calendar features (see blog post: https://nureti.com/blog/simpel-tidsregistrering-kalender/) provided flexible methods for logging hours.

Precise Reporting and Client Transparency

The most significant benefit came from the advanced reporting capabilities. We could now generate detailed reports showing exactly how time was allocated across different tasks, consultants, and project phases. This transparency not only allowed us to identify areas where we were overspending but also facilitated more open and honest communication with our client. The statistics widget dashboard provided a real-time view of project progress, which was immensely valuable in demonstrating our commitment to efficiency. And we could export these reports in CSV (see: https://nureti.com/blog/quick-time-tracking-reports-dashboard/) for easy sharing and analysis. The system’s ability to create invoices directly from registration data https://nureti.com/blog/quick-invoicing-tracked-time/ streamlined our billing process considerably.

Looking Ahead: Compliance and Growth

Beyond the immediate project crisis, Nureti's features will support our long-term scalability. The administrator role and group management features https://nureti.com/features/ allow us to precisely control user access and permissions, which is especially important given the expanding number of contractors and freelancers we engage. We are also leveraging its EU working time directive compliance features https://nureti.com/blog/eu-tidsregistrering/ to ensure we meet all regulatory requirements.