Professional ServicesProfessional services firm, ~120 consultants

Operating system for a professional services firm

An anonymized engagement consolidating engagements, utilization, billing, and people operations for a professional services firm into a single operating picture.

Tools / product used · Vestval One + Vestval People

Challenge

Engagements lived in a project tool, utilization in a spreadsheet, billing in an accounting package, and people data in an HRMS. Partners…

Solution

Vestval One as the operating system for engagements, time, and billing. Vestval People for the consultant graph, skills, and availability.…

Architecture

We modeled the engagement-to-cash lifecycle end-to-end, replaced the spreadsheet reconciliations with derived fields on Vestval One, and…

Timeline

4-phase implementation · Vestval One + Vestval People

Impact

Single live operating picture across engagements, utilization, and billing

Challenge

Engagements lived in a project tool, utilization in a spreadsheet, billing in an accounting package, and people data in an HRMS. Partners reconciled it manually each Monday. Realized rates were a guess until quarter-end.

Objectives

Single live view of engagements, utilization, realized rate, and billing
Cut the Monday partner reconciliation to zero
Surface utilization risk at the consultant level, weekly, with no manual lift
Move billing from month-end scramble to continuous

Approach

We modeled the engagement-to-cash lifecycle end-to-end, replaced the spreadsheet reconciliations with derived fields on Vestval One, and connected people, time, and billing as one graph rather than four reports.

Solution

Vestval One as the operating system for engagements, time, and billing. Vestval People for the consultant graph, skills, and availability. Partner dashboards with live realized rate, utilization by practice, and engagement health.

Implementation approach

1
Engagement-to-cash model
Mapped the full lifecycle — pursuit, staffing, delivery, time capture, WIP, billing, collections — and defined the canonical objects before touching any UI.
2
Replace reconciliations with derivations
Every metric the partners reconciled by hand was redefined as a derived field over the canonical model. The Monday spreadsheet was retired on day one.
3
People graph as foundation
Consultant skills, availability, and engagement history modeled in Vestval People so staffing decisions stop being tribal knowledge.
4
Continuous billing
Time and WIP reviewed weekly with partner sign-off in-platform, billing generated continuously instead of in a month-end push.

Technologies used

Vestval One
Vestval People
Time and WIP engine
Partner dashboards
Accounting integration

Outcomes

Single live operating picture across engagements, utilization, and billing
Monday partner reconciliation eliminated
Realized rate visible weekly at the engagement and practice level
Billing moved from month-end scramble to a continuous flow

Lessons learned

Model engagement-to-cash as one graph; partner spreadsheets are a symptom of four disconnected systems.
Replace reconciliations with derivations — never automate the reconciliation itself.
Continuous billing is a cultural change first, a tooling change second.