Project Description
Creating a Visual Contract, Vendor & IT Asset Management Program
A Technology Services Case Study
OVERVIEW
Building technology roadmaps as a CTO-as-a-Service provider was so successful for Leverage Corporation that it was only a matter of time before they expanded into technology sourcing, servicing, and asset management to better serve their nationwide customer base.
They outgrew a home-coded, spreadsheet-fueled data warehouse and were looking for a unified tool that could offer more capacity, more efficiency, and better data visualizations.
Enter Onspring. Not only was Leverage Corporation able to offset laborious processes, but Onspring’s out-of-the-box apps helped the CEO reimagine their business model, which now includes an immediate growth plan for servicing untapped vendor management needs.
“Nobody wants to manage vendors. Nobody wants to manage contracts. It’s a pain. And if you think you’re doing it well in Excel, you’re really not doing it well. There’s a better way of doing it.”
“Our team responded really positively to Onspring when they saw how flexible it was. For me personally, it was the ability to provide a visual dashboard that was not just colorful but actionable. We’d been looking for this for a long time. ”
Norman Harber, CEO
Challenge
As the business grew, so did an ongoing challenge for Leverage Corporation CEO Norman Harber. With a background in web development, infrastructure and security, he developed their own data warehouse by transferring Excel spreadsheet logic into Microsoft Power BI on the front end and Azure Cloud for back-end data storage.
His system worked fine for day-to-day contract tracking in the early days, but Leverage Corporation had now grown to provide tech assessments, assets, scorecards & vendor KPIs for clients. Labor-intensive home coding and an array of purchased plug-ins still couldn’t deliver the UI he needed for his clients.
“Something funny happens when you build your own data warehouse,” said Harber. “To stay competitive, you have to keep putting more money into it. I was looking at a $250-$300K investment to bring my product to 80% of where I needed it to be.”
Harber knew there had to be a better way.
Previous Pain Points
- Failed databases
- Failed data warehouses
- Failed applications
- Labor-intensive coding
- Time-intensive code monitoring / debugging
Solution
Rather than invest $300K into updating his DIY data warehouse, Harber went looking for drag-and-drop UIs in a low-code or no-code platform. He still wanted to maintain control over updates and modifications. He also needed the flexibility to import his own proven workflows & triggers. After researching Capterra and G2 for software contenders at length, Harber finally found the dashboard UI he needed within Onspring.
“I was completely blown away by what I saw,” said Harber. “I could see how I could customize the labels for what I needed. I could visualize what the workflow could be. Bells began to go off, and I was just chomping at the bit to figure out how I could run with Onspring.”
Integrated Contract & Vendor Management
Leverage Corporation traded its piecemeal data warehouse for a customized, interconnected, business process automation system to streamline data imports and analytical outputs.
Now they can easily manage technology contract details and data, like
- contract expirations
- contract amounts
- status & stages
- vendor profiles
- assessments
- vendor qualities
and live, client-accessible dashboards that track
- monthly technology spend
- current sourcing tasks
- even OPEX budgeting for next year—at the push of a button.
Live reporting dashboards
When it comes to their new vendor management services, Harber and his team gather and rank vendors upon designated criteria then assign weights to certain aspects of how a vendor performs, be it financially or operationally. Onspring is critical to both the gathering and the analysis.
For example, Leverage Corporation can easily survey a client’s end users quarterly within Onspring to inquire about vendor satisfaction. Onspring automatically imports and tallies all responses. This means the team can create custom KPIs for each vendor and make those part of the vendor scoring & accountability metrics already in Onspring. “I can use my logic and my architecture to customize Onspring the way I need it,” said Harber. “That’s perfect.”
Comprehensive Asset Management
Leverage Corporation had no plans to offer IT asset management—that was until Harber discovered Onspring’s asset repository module. Inspired, he created an import to bring one client’s 1,700 devices into Onspring. Harber said, “Now we can look at a beautiful graph by location or by user and know if someone quits tomorrow, here is the laptop, phone, power cord, and satchel they have.”
As a result, asset management is yet another service Leverage Corporation can offer to clients.
The team regularly adds, changes, or updates assets for clients, which means they also manage the related data of those assets for clients. That data rolls up to the managing director team at Leverage Corporation. “We have custom dashboards that have been created for clients that attack, say, 15-20 criteria,” Harber said. “We run those reports and sit down with the client to review, or we’ll grant them read-only access so they can review themselves. Our clients love
the fact that they can look into the dashboard and see where every asset is.”
New Platform Leads to Service Expansion
More than simply an optimized tool for contract data, Onspring functionality inspired a new business opportunity for Leverage Corporation. While CTO consulting has historically accounted for two-thirds of their revenue, Leverage Corporation is now focusing on its sourcing practice to take the top spot in response to their clients’ needs.
“We offered customers their own instance to manage, but they all said, no, we want you to do it!” said Harber. “For us and for them, Onspring is the best way to scale. We’ve always provided consultation, but now we get to be our clients’ advocate to source, secure and actively manage vendors that are critical to their success.”
What’s next for Leverage Corporation?
Harber readily admits that with a little more time to investigate Onspring’s perpetually growing list of applications, Leverage Corporation could easily add more to their own offerings similar to asset management.
- Inventory tracking
- Lifecycle tracking
- Budgeting & purchase planning
Results
$300K Savings by using Onspring
Powerful Visualizations
For Leverage Corporation, the most important criterion for choosing a vendor management software was the reporting and analytics engine: real data delivering real outputs. Harber says that his clients love the fact that they can see into easy-to-read dashboards and drill into every asset by location or the status of every contract.
Flexibility that Scales
As a deep-seated database expert, Harber was pleased with Onspring’s analytics, but the functionality, ease of customization, and usability sealed the deal. “I could see what the UI could do from a drag-and-drop perspective. The extensibility for me is amazing. I’m using only 5 of Onspring’s 133 apps now. We’ll find ways to use many more and bring other services to my clients because I know what Onspring can do.”
33% Business Growth
Through roles, permission and data imports, Leverage Corporation is able to manage their client base in one instance so effectively that Onspring is enabling growth plans. “Our clients were already using our vendor management sourcing services as part of their engagement with us. We are now focusing on that piece of the mix, putting Onspring toward it and scaling those services in the next 18 months for the overall growth of our company.”
