Making the Invisible Visible: Team Utilization Strategy with Michael Daoud of Visus LLC

Speaker A: With our team, we've made it so the data warehouse is accessible by them directly. If they want to look at their own utilization during the day, during the week, they can do that. They don't have to wait for someone to give them the report. And we built it in such a way that the reports are emailed to project managers to see everybody. To leadership to see how utilization is.

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Speaker C: ah, leadersofb2b.com hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of leaders of B2B. Today I'm very excited to have Michael Daoud, uh, on the call with vicis, and very excited to just dive in with you today, Michael. And what are we going to be talking about today? What's the big promise, the thing you're going to share with the audience here today?

Speaker A: Thanks, Jake. I'm excited to be here with you. I think the big promise today is about how impactful making utilization transparent can be on a team, but also on a company's revenue and profitability. Because as a professional services company, it's the hours you put in, the time that you put in that really benefits. That's the product that we provide. It's our time and our expertise.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love that. And so I'm really excited to dive into this topic on utilization. As we were chatting before, this is front and center for my own business where we're trying. We've literally built out our systems to track utilization over the past months, and we're starting to try to like, really analyze and move the needle with this. But I'm curious, you know, as you think about these utilization things, like, how do you typically even start to like, maybe understand or gather this data on what the utilization of your team looks like? What was that first step for you all there?

Speaker A: Yeah, we use a PSA platform, professional services automation platform. And in that the team enters in their time on what projects they spent them on, either external or internal, and that data is gathered in that platform. It's called Projector, the one that we use. And so being a web development and data firm having that expertise in house, we decided to tap into the API, a projector, to pull all the right data into a data warehouse that we built and start looking at utilization. Now, Projector does have utilization reports now, but at the time that we started it it didn't. And so we start building our data warehouse to get full transparency in our projects, how we're doing budget wise, things like that. And one of the components was utilization that we did. So we did that all in SQL Server. SQL Server reports back in the day. This has been a few years. And from there we start building and looking at that so we can track how we're doing utilization wise.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's super interesting. And so it's just really like you guys have the time tracking tool, that's your base level input and then you're pulling that off into a data so you guys can actually analyze this and look at this in more depth. And I'm curious, you know, what were some of the initial things that you learned as you actually started to track this, as you started to track, like how are your team members utilizing? Like what was kind of always sometimes scary when you actually get into the data. But like whenever you got in there, what did you initially see? Like, and what were some of the optimizations that came out of that initial lift to get that visibility?

Speaker A: Yeah, well, the first thing that we have to do is to make sure that all data was entered on a daily basis by the team. Right. Because we wanted to track things as much as possible. So having their time cards in on a daily basis allowed us to any day log in and look at the utilization for the previous day, the previous week, however long we wanted to. And so getting that kind of habit into the team was an important piece of. And that's in our data warehouse runs every morning very early. It processes all the time in case someone didn't get their time in the night before, at least early morning, we can process it and um, be ready for the day. And so when we started gathering this data, it was very eye opening because you got to see how much time was spent internally versus client projects, billable projects, and started creating a picture of where we're things going and how are they happening. And what we were also seeing is that the utilization was very lumpy. So you'd see like great utilization and that dives off. And because there was that balance between internal external projects, the team didn't know, they would just apply themselves. And sometimes we'd work on an internal project and because we didn't have any guardrails or specific metrics for utilization that we want to target, you know, they may just continue working on an internal project and lose sight of some something else. And you know, the project managers always keep things in mind for schedules and all that. But from a revenue point of view, it would be like this. And, uh, we would say, oh, focus on this, on the billable project so we can balance things out. Internal. Well, verbally saying it, even though we have the reports internally for management leadership CFO to see it, I didn't make a dent in things. It wasn't until the day when I was like, okay, something's got to change here. And I was always guarding utilization information because I don't want to put pressure on the team and show them this data every day and all this stuff. But I realized that, uh, without them having this data, they didn't know where they stood. They didn't have those calculations. So one day we just turned it over and said, okay, we were having daily huddles at that. This is way before COVID so it's going back a few years. We're having daily huddles. And so I decided, look, there's no harm. Let's try showing utilization report at our daily huddle to see how we did the day before. And it was like magic. Everybody would see their numbers. And so we had, we created these reports in SQL Server and reporting services. And we would have bar charts, so we'd have all the data and then we'd have a bar chart that if you hit your utilization number or more, it would be green and if you missed it, it would be red. So it was really easy to see by team member what was green and what was red. And so quickly then people, all of a sudden, they wanted to make sure they had green without me asking them to be in the green. It was just. And that helped tremendously. Just making, being transparent with utilization with the team.

Speaker C: Uh, I love that insight there. And I literally, you know, as I was sharing, like I'm building my own utilization and I'm literally the conversations, you know, we're several months into this now and with my coo, and we're just like, uh, ah, like this person's underutilized. Like, we're not leveraging, we're not getting them enough work. Like, we need to shift this around. And I love your focus there, where it's just like, hey, show the data. I love that it turns green when you hit your target. And then it's just like, let the team organize because they're not going to want to be in that spot because then you're concerned you're underperforming in that perspective. And it, I imagine it probably just instead of you trying to like manage and have all these conversations to, it just Kind of orients everybody in the right direction really quickly in that sense.

Speaker A: That's exactly it. But it's also helpful for management because when you see some people underutilized, then you say, okay, uh, maybe there's a blocker on a project, they're waiting on a third party to get back to them, and it causes conversation internally. Say, okay, what could be some good, valuable work for that person to do if they didn't have anything aligned or a project already there? So it's a, it's good for both, both the team members and leadership to really hone in on that. Right. Balance of utilization on external, um, work versus internal work.

Speaker C: So, yeah, I'm curious one thing too. Just, uh, I know we kind of hit on that at the beginning. Having everybody just kind of clock their time, getting them to move that toward daily. Was it any sort of lift there, trying to get people from their side to really put those proper inputs in? Was there any kind of, like, ways that you need to incentivize or make sure you drive that behavior? Because it sounds like the shift to get to that daily report was needed. So I'm just curious from like, behavioral, where you go out to your whole team, you say, hey, I need you all to do this other daily thing on top of your busy days, you know, or you do this time tracking. I don't feel like anybody loves. So how did you think about kind of making sure that behavior was driven forward?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I think one of the reasons to put in that time on a daily basis helps with utilization. But, uh, one of the things that we pride ourselves on and work really hard for our clients on is to make sure that we're delivering on time and on budget. And I know a lot of companies out there say it, uh, but that takes work and you've got to have that data to drive that. Especially when you're managing budgets. If maybe you're getting towards the end of a project and your budget has to be well controlled to get things to the finish line by entering that time daily. The incentive is it provides project management to monitor those budgets properly. Because if you do it once a week, you check it 52 times a year.

Speaker C: Yeah, Right.

Speaker A: If you do it once a month, it's 12 months, 12 times a year. But if you check it every day, you have over 300 days a year to be able to check it, given holidays, vacations, all that stuff. Right. And so it gives you that better control and saying, oh, wait, my budget changed this much. We had like, uh, a four People work on this yesterday. It's one issue that ate up that much budget. So that I think logically made sense for the team to say that's why this is important as well for that aspect. And I think making that a policy and saying, okay, this is the expectation to be able to run the projects well, to look at utilization allowed them to adopt it.

Speaker C: Yeah, that makes sense. Especially when you've got someone who's project managing the project and you're doing this to help your fellow team member, you know, help them do their job well and kind of drive that forward. That makes sense. Now that you have this utilization in place, like, what are other things that this has opened up or made possible for your business? Like how does this change how you operate as an entrepreneur or professional services firm owner there?

Speaker A: Well, I think it allows us to do a much better job in our delivery to our clients. Right. We are totally focused on utilization. We have an idea of how to allocate our resources properly to get projects done on time. It gives us the opportunity to think about what are the internal projects we want to work on that provide business value and to be able to plan ahead for those and not have to surprise bench time that people say, oh, I have nothing to do, I'm hanging out for the next two days. It allows you to kind of be proactive in planning those things out. And that's constant work, constant improvement. So I think, uh, those are really, really good opportunities that have helped us be a better team for our clients and a better team internally for the business to grow.

Speaker C: Yeah, that makes sense. And one of the things that I see a lot in businesses that I've seen in my own or a lot of growing companies too, is I think a self reporting of utilization is something that I see as kind of really common where people aren't fully, especially businesses where maybe you just have people on salary or it's not hourly basis and it's kind of deliverable basis. That's something that I've seen a lot of companies I think, struggle with, where they're just like, hey, how's everybody's capacity? And what I love about this approach, even if you know you're in a business model that is not straight hourly billing like professional services, I feel like there's a lot of value in figuring out what that utilization method is, even for team members. It's like, hey, you know, what's the utilization of our recruiters or what's the utilization of our finance team or anything like that. And so are you tracking that across other team members that even aren't client facing or how do you think about that as well?

Speaker A: That's a great question. We actually are not tracking that against other team members, but against the team members that we do track it for. It's not just development, it's testing, it's project management and it is role based utilization targets. Right. So for development when you have less administrative work, it could be higher utilized for project management may have more administrative work than the utilization target is lower than a developer.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And so you get to adjust those that way. But we only make it on client facing projects where we look at the utilization or client facing team members. I should say.

Speaker C: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's definitely interesting from that kind of perspective there. And I guess as you kind of look forward, you know, as like how do you, how else do you looking at those numbers for you, are you saying like, hey, we know this level of utilization hits our bare level of profitability and this is our target goal or like how else are you using those numbers as a business owner as you think going forward?

Speaker A: Well, so those numbers kind of inform your revenue. So we meet weekly. So we learned a lesson many, many years ago where we had kind of an unforeseen change happen on a project with a client where they paused it because of internal issues and other things. And so we used to look at our measurements of utilization financial KPIs on a monthly basis. Right. That means we only got a chance to check them 12 times a year. We moved that to weekly. And so now we're checking things 52 times a year. Right, 52 weeks. And so that gives us more maneuverability and adjustment as we go along versus once a month. And so by seeing the utilization on a weekly basis as well with the team and the huddles. So now we've gone to a Monday and Friday huddle. So on Monday we look at last Friday's utilization, but we also look at the previous week. That five minute snapshot that we look at the huddle informs me already of uh, what we're going to talk about at our uh, financial KPIs meeting on Tuesdays. Because I know the utilization already and I know what that impact's going to be. So that's been super helpful from that end.

Speaker C: Yeah, and I love that it just immediately kind of informs the entire health of the business. Did a bunch of work with the dev agents years ago and similar kind of thing where they had kind of all that tracked and everything there. And it's just Such a clear marker. And I think that transparency that is showing as well. Are you also beyond showing the individuals, are you showing overall company target, how you're moving toward that utilization and everything as well when you're sharing with the team?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's the entire team plus a total for the whole team. And so that helps us see. So maybe somebody's at uh, 90%, someone's at 95, someone's at 85. Then we have the overall average of the whole team against the target as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's beautiful.

Speaker A: Awesome.

Speaker C: Well, I mean, super interesting to hear on this. Any other thoughts that come to mind for you on just, you know, if a company is out there and they're, they're not really measuring, they're not really tracking this as well? Like what advice would you give to someone as they're trying to get started, kind of having this further visibility into how their team is spending their time, how they're focusing that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would say just start basic, right. If you don't have the technical know how internally, start with a spreadsheet at least. Uh, but one of the things that I tell all of our clients and people that I know, like when you have data and there is data that can help you navigate your company better, allow you to focus on the right things even if you don't have direct access to that data, find a way to pull that data out and work on it. Fortunately, we were like software engineers, developers were able to pull that stuff. But if you don't have that internally, find a company that can help you do that. Most systems out there have APIs. Maybe the system you're using already have utilization reports you haven't dug into. But if it doesn't, you can still pull that data. We built ourselves a data warehouse, as I said, and so we have a plethora of reports that allow us to see the health of every project, utilization and things like that. So my recommendation would be dig into that to allow you to make better decisions and have better visibility and clarity on how the team is doing and how projects are doing.

Speaker C: Uh, I love that. And I mean even from our own perspective, we are not developers by any means. And so for ours we, it's simple task based, it's a less hourly build model. But we built a simple way to just track how many tasks of various types each team member in each role did. Put that into a spreadsheet at the end of the month. And then we have our benchmark of how much you know what is an average task capacity that we think someone should be able to hit in a month. And so, you know, even from our side, it's very manual, very different in the way it's accomplished, but I think the level of visibility and what that opens up and lets you see. And then my next move from I gotta do from my side is make it public with the team so they can all see it as well and have those kind of insights as well there. So it's super helpful to share.

Speaker A: Yeah. And with our team, we've made it so the data warehouse is accessible by them directly. If they want to look at their own utilization during the day, during the week, they can do that. They don't have to wait for someone to give them the report. And we built it in such a way that the reports are emailed to project managers to see everybody, to leadership to see how utilization is. And then if a team member wants it emailed it to themselves, we can do that too.

Speaker C: So yeah, I love that.

Speaker A: Awesome.

Speaker C: Uh, well, Michael, if someone is looking to work with ISIS or kind of understand a bit more what you do, you know, what would you say about them and like, who'd be the right person to reach out to you if they're looking for support or help for their business as well?

Speaker A: Yeah, we do a lot of web development and data work and so anything to do with web development, APIs, integrations, pulling data, creating the data warehouse, that's the stuff that we help a lot of companies with. We do a lot of bespoke applications. We are pivoting into AI tailored solutions as well, which will be coming up here later this year. And if anybody needs any information, they can email us@, uh.helloicesllc.com so h e l L O V I s u s llc.com and we'll be happy to respond to them and see how we can help them.

Speaker C: Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Michael. I appreciate you taking the time to hop on here. I learned a ton from this as well and I've got some actionable things I'm doing with my team, so appreciate you taking the time to share.

Speaker A: Thanks for the opportunity, Jake. I enjoyed it.

Speaker C: All right, have a good one, Michael.

Speaker A: All right, take care.

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