con|energy consult GmbH Success Story

con|energy consult GmbH

Success Story

For the energy of tomorrow

With the energy, heating and mobility transition, con|energy consult’s main areas of business include several top topics for the future. con|energy has been advising companies in the energy industry and their partners for over 25 years. These primarily include municipal utilities, housing associations, energy suppliers and energy service providers.

At the beginning of 2022, con|energy unternehmensberatung and nymoen|strategieberatung joined forces under the umbrella of the new con|energy consult. It brings together more than 150 employees in Berlin and Essen.

Several sister companies take care of all issues relating to energy-related services – from the con|energy agency to IT solutions from green|connector. What connects them is not only the vertical line in the name, but above all the pursuit of solutions that drive the energy transition forward.

SinaHentschel, con|energy

From the in-house solution to the complete package

Until 2018, con|energy used a self-developed Access-based solution to handle its own consulting projects. “We created projects and the consultants booked their hours on it, but the tool couldn’t do much more than that,” recalls Sina Hentschel. She has been working at con|energy for eleven years. As assistant to the partners, she takes care of all the administrative processes that keep the consulting business running in the background. At some point, the Access tool was no longer sufficient for her own requirements and needed to be replaced. The aim was to combine project management, time recording and invoicing in one software package. A CRM system was also a “nice to have”.

Previously, customers were managed via an Outlook database. However, it was difficult to generate suitable Excel lists from this. In addition, not all employees had access for authorization reasons. “We always worked around it,” summarizes Hentschel, but the biggest problem was invoicing. Writing all invoices individually by hand in Excel took a lot of time and was prone to errors. “That was very cumbersome.”

In order to simplify these processes and eliminate sources of error, the company set out to find a complete solution. With the new software, they wanted to clarify a number of questions more quickly and easily: “How much time do we invest in a project? Can we get by with the budget? Do we need to renegotiate?” During their research, they came across projectfacts, which successfully prevailed over several competitors.

Successful tool for daily work

Sina Hentschel has fond memories of the introduction process: “It worked very well.” They initially started with a core team and gradually trained other employees. Hentschel’s colleagues also took to projectfacts very well: “Once you’ve worked with it, the feedback is always very positive”. This has also been observed at the new company: “In the beginning, they fought tooth and nail against it, but now they are very happy that the system exists.”

Project managers now manage projects completely with projectfacts. Time recording and vacation management are used by all employees, including working students and interns. Consultants also process their travel expense reports with projectfacts.

“Requests such as blocking retroactive time recording only developed over time,” adds Schorn, “when we saw that the software could do this.” Ultimately, the decisive factor for Schorn was how easily times can be recorded. A point that was also decisive for the employees in Consulting.

“We use this tool every day.”

Although it was not initially planned, con|energy consult now also plans the capacities of its employees with projectfacts. They used to do this with Excel, but after finding out that it was also possible with projectfacts, they switched over. “We plan which project each employee is working on each day.” This allows you to quickly find out everything important: “Who is there? Who is on which project? How much capacity do we still have free?” Another advantage is the direct link to the projects.

“I save a lot of time writing invoices.”

It used to take at least ten minutes to create an invoice. “This invoice then went to an approval process by email, which is now automated via the system.” You no longer have to keep track, “it used to be much more complicated via Outlook.” This has also made the process much faster. Sina Hentschel saves around five hours a month on writing invoices alone.

“The entire order billing runs via projectfacts.”

Hentschel also finds the integrated campaign management practical. con|energy consult uses this for newsletters, information letters and invitations. You only have to select the desired customers, then you have the addresses ready and can start the mailing directly.

All in one system

Hentschel sees the greatest benefit of projectfacts in the fact that all processes can be controlled using centralized software:

“The advantage is that you have everything in one system.”

“I no longer have to switch back and forth from Excel to our Access database, then maybe to capacity planning.” Everything is now in the new system. This gives them a complete overview of everything “concerning the employees, the project, the order situation and the customers.”

“You have everything at a glance in projectfacts.”

Sina Hentschel recommends the projectfacts software to companies that want to schedule their employees for projects, manage budgets and write invoices. However, you should definitely allow enough time for training so that employees can familiarize themselves with the software and make good use of the system’s functions. Overall, her conclusion about projectfacts is positive: