About SweetRush
SweetRush Inc., a premier e-learning U.S. company, excels in custom e-learning, games, mobile apps, and training programs. Operating fully virtually, it consistently leads industry rankings, earns innovation awards, and maintains near-zero turnover through its strong team culture.
- INDUSTRY E-Learning, Professional Services
- LOCATION Across U.S. (Virtual)
Professional Services
E-Learning
Virtual Teams
Microsoft Project
On-Premise
The Challenge
As a professional services company focused on tailored projects, SweetRush faces the challenge of scaling its operations while maintaining quality, satisfying customers, and preserving profit margins. With each project requiring a diverse array of talents and skills, ranging from instructional design to multimedia development, navigating the intricacies of large-scale endeavors efficiently becomes paramount.
Project Scheduling Complexity
SweetRush's intricate projects demand precise scheduling of thousands of interdependent tasks with diverse skill requirements. Swift replanning is essential to mitigate delays and resource constraints, minimizing ripple effects.
Team & Client Collaboration
SweetRush's e-learning projects demand extensive remote collaboration among diverse skill sets. Clients also need seamless interaction for task tracking, approvals, and change requests.
Billing Leakages
SweetRush bills clients upon milestone achievement. However, the absence of an efficient tracking system led to recurring delays and missed invoicing instances, resulting in revenue loss.
Project Selection
SweetRush's project portfolio is driven by strategic goals as well as maximizing profits, but hinges crucially on the availability of skilled resources. Managing this amidst the high volume and scale of projects is challenging.
Accurate Cost Tracking
Accurately tracking labor and other costs, including materials, resources, and overhead expenses, in projects is critical for SweetRush to maintain projects within target profit margins.
Executive Reporting
SweetRush's management relies on accurate, consolidated data on schedules, costs, margins, and resource usage across projects and portfolios to facilitate executive decision-making.
The Struggle with Microsoft Project & Spreadsheets
Despite SweetRush's strong project management foundation, they faced significant challenges using Microsoft Project and spreadsheets. Microsoft Project was not flexible enough to cover all organizational areas, and using spreadsheets for resource planning and tracking became too complex with their expanding, distributed team. It was also difficult to provide executives with clear, visual reports on project status and finances, and the high cost of Microsoft Project licenses became unsustainable.
Additionally, manual updates and distribution of project plans made it hard to manage projects efficiently in their fully virtual environment. This led SweetRush to switch to Celoxis, a centralized enterprise PPM tool that better suited their needs.
The reporting is the best that I've seen and is definitely one of the strongest muscles of Celoxis. Celoxis is truly a powerhouse when it comes to project management, and it is a great tool for planning and organizing project-related efforts.
Michael MilshteinDirector of Engineering and Development, SweetRush Inc.
What Changed After Celoxis
Celoxis improved visibility and accessibility of project data and enhanced communication between virtual teams increasing efficiency and transparency between the company and their clients. Throughout the company’s exponential growth period, Celoxis helped standardize processes, lower operational costs at various levels and help sustain the overall growth.
Streamlined Project Scheduling
SweetRush smoothly scaled with Celoxis, handling large projects effortlessly. Celoxis, following the Microsoft Project model, eased the transition for managers. Task delays and resource absences were easily managed, facilitating quick project adjustments.
Improved Collaboration
Celoxis streamlined project status reporting for executives, while team members utilized discussions, file sharing, and @mentions for seamless collaboration. Clients actively monitored progress, tracked change requests, and approved directly within the platform.
Improved Billing Accuracy
With Celoxis, SweetRush efficiently addressed billing leakages. The accounts team tracked billing milestones across projects in a unified dashboard. Once invoices were sent, they marked items as completed, streamlining their workflow.
Optimised Project Portfolio
Leveraging Celoxis' what-if analysis, capacity planning, and custom metrics, SweetRush confidently selected an optimal portfolio aligned with its strategy. With accurate forecasting, they were assured of having the necessary resources with the relevant skills when needed.
Margin Boost
SweetRush saw improved margins with Celoxis, as the platform's time and expense functionality allowed for automatic tracking of labor and other costs. This proactive approach enabled them to identify and address cost overruns before they occurred.
Simplified and Accurate Reporting
With Celoxis, generating accurate reports for management and clients became quick and convenient, freeing up valuable time for more strategic tasks. Executives gained confidence in decision-making, while clients were satisfied with the transparency and efficiency.
