Pie is an IT Consulting project management tool that brings real value to your end client project execution and results.

IT Consulting firms have the following common pains

  • Cannot onboarding new team members quickly enough for full billing productivity

  • Project methodologies are not standardized and flexible, which causes wasteful re-inventing project steps

  • Do not readily know if they will make or lose money on the client engagement and why

Traditional project tools don’t help improve the above pains.

Pie helps and is made for consulting firms from the ground up. Pie customers say that onboarding their consultants is super fast. Teams can learn the consulting firm’s methodology right at their fingertips as they get their work done in Pie. Managers, directors, and partners can quickly know from Pie’s real-time dashboards and reports if their client engagement will be profitable. Learn more from customer case studies below.

 
 

Trusted by consulting firms.

 

See customer case study testimonials below.

We understand that IT consulting firms make money from projects. We aim to help your engagements succeed, improve margins/profits, and help you get more future projects from the same client.

Use Pie to be your sales generator —

  • Close consulting engagements by showing your capabilities in Pie (see case study below)

  • Resell Pie with our Pie distributor partnership program (contact Paul Dandurand for info)

Improve your engagement margins —

  • Execute repeatable project processes that get better over time

  • Onboard new consultants faster with Pie recipes

  • Expand repeat business with clients from improved project execution and end results

  • Improve margins for fixed-fee or time-and-materials engagements

Whether you implement ERP to improve client efficiencies, CRM to enhance client competitiveness, or EHR to automate hospital systems, you’ll find that Pie can help you deliver more confidently, improving end-client business value.

How does Pie do this —

  • Recipe model for implementing and re-using proven methodologies

  • Hybrid agile features for combining agile with waterfall methods in the same project

  • Team collaboration and problem-solving with enhanced communications (messaging, issue/risk postings, idea sharing, etc.)

  • Executive dashboards for governing and decision making

  • Billing budget time management and burn-up charts for knowing the money

 
 

Sell more engagements.

Expand

Pie can help lower sales cycles, expand client relations, and improve consulting margins.

Build process frameworks for success

Set up your Pie recipe content (consulting methodology or blueprint) so it will drive project execution quality delivery and client satisfaction. Pie is designed to help your process owners to quickly set up repeatable processes and build a library for different types of engagements. Recipes would become your intellectual capital foundation and library for ensuring results that lead to more business with your clients.

Engage with your client

Include your clients as team members in Pie for collaboration and work load sharing as needed. This would also provide transparency that builds trust and strengthens relationships. Pie provides many options with permissions features that helps your project managers easily control client visibility. The visual Pie dashboard reporting gives real-time information for both you and your client leadership.

Close new deals and Expand relationships

Close more new client deals by showing your prospect your methods in Pie. This visual presentation with real engagement processes will show how your firm stands out against your competition. See the case study presented by consulting firm ENKI LLC below to hear how they closed deals and increased revenue with Pie.

 
 

More flexible methodologies.

The video below shows how Pie drives a typical end-client project execution with the help of repeatable project recipes.

The end results for each client are different, but your company’s approach is what makes you stand out from your competition.

Start with creating or uploading your methodologies in Pie as a re-usable recipes. You can import a ready-to-use process, such as a hybrid agile project management recipe, from the Pie Recipe Store. Create projects from recipes with two clicks, and then your teams are up and running with all the content at their fingertips. Then your team can improve your firm’s recipes in real time as they learn new ideas and overcome issues.

 
 

Track time, manage billings.

Pie allows your project team members to track their billing hours at the project or task levels.

Set up, manage, and monitor your client billings from inside your engagement projects. Pie takes care of automatically tracking your billings and budget forecasting. You can also export the data as a CSV to be imported into your billing accounting software.

Watch the following video to see you how the Budget Billing reports works.

The reports for project billings and budgeting include the following:

Set Up Rates — Prepare team member planned hours and billing rates
Team Members Report — See total billings to date, including hours and costs
Daily Time — Review time entry report by each team member
Summary Report — Govern with the executive summary and a budget burn-up chart

 
 

Onboard consultants fast.

With Pie, you can easily overcome the challenge to get your new consultants up to speed and fully productive in a shorter period of time.

Increasing the onboarding rate allows you to operate on a higher level and will differentiate your company from your competitors.

  • Build a New Hire process in Pie to reduce the time it takes to onboard new consultants.

  • Expand your secret recipe, which is your framework content within Pie. Leverage the knowledge of your most seasoned consultants to improve methodologies to reduce issues and risks significantly.

  • Encourage your new consultants and team members to identify problems and risks and post new ideas to improve recipes in real time. At the end of the project, this improved process becomes a new recipe for future client engagements.

 
 

Resource management made for consultants.

Pie has visual and friendly People Timeline features made for easier resource management and forecasting. It’s designed for those who need to find who’s available and what roles are the best fit for future client engagements.


The above video demo shows the People Timeline page in action. It covers people workload past, current, and future workloads. It will also display how to drill down from this high-level portfolio view to inside a specific project with just one click. After watching the above short video, you can learn more on our people resource management and planning page.

 

Case study with ENKI LLC.

This case study is an interview with Lawrence Dillon, CEO of ENKI LLC. ENKI is an executives' consulting and professional services firm focusing on strategy and transformation with a specialty in the supply chain sector.

In the above video, Lawrence points out the benefits with Pie

  • Closed new consulting deals by showing Pie to the prospective clients

  • Reduced time for the end client to free up cashflow from 4 months to 6 weeks with better engagement client focus

  • Improved new consultant onboarding productivity and billing activity by 30%

  • Enhanced client relations with Pie’s visual benefits, especially with executive status meetings

  • Improved engagement performance with repeatable methodology “recipes”

Case study with Astral Insights.

The following case study interview is with Christopher Andrassy, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Astral Consulting Group (Astral Insights), a Data & Analytics Transformation consulting firm with its own Insights Hub data analytics solution.

In the above video, Chris points out these benefits with Pie:

  • Faster onboarding consultants and getting them billable from 4 months as an industry standard to less than one month with Pie working with MS Teams

  • Improving client relationships with Pie collaboration and visuals

  • Flexibility to use agile, waterfall, hybrid agile, or any combination on the same project

  • A better way to drive their methodologies with Pie recipes

  • Easy for team members to adopt — “Everyone loves using Pie”

 
 

Pie knows consulting.

The founder of Pie, Paul Dandurand, comes from the IT consultancy industry (such as EY and Siebel Systems) and knows the value of client success. You can be confident it’s made for your industry. Feel free to contact support@pie.me for advice on how to best structure consulting processes in Pie that would help increase client engagement success and client relationship longevity.