Project margin, visible while it can still be saved.
How a fast-growing consulting firm connected sales, resourcing, time and billing on Dynamics 365 Project Operations, and stopped discovering margin three months late.
About the client
A fast-growing consulting firm selling, staffing and delivering client engagements at increasing volume. Each part of the lifecycle worked on its own; none of them shared a record.
Profitable in the proposal, mysterious ever after
Deals were estimated in one tool, staffed in a spreadsheet the operations lead updated on Fridays, timed in another app and invoiced from the accounting package. Nobody could say whether a running project was making money, unbilled hours leaked away quietly, and utilisation was a debate rather than a number.
Project Operations: the whole engagement on one record
Alphavima implemented Dynamics 365 Project Operations so the estimate, resource plan, logged hours and invoice all reference the same project record. Consultants book time where they work, approvals are one click, and the schedule shows bench and overload in the same view.
Because actuals land on the project as they happen, margin is a live number, not a post-mortem. Billing runs from approved time and expenses, which squeezed out the quiet leakage, and Power BI rolls utilisation, pipeline and profitability into one management view of the practice.
From four tools to one thread
Discovery & design
Engagement types, rates and approval paths modelled.
Projects & time
Project records, scheduling and time capture live.
Billing & finance
Approved actuals driving invoices and revenue recognition.
Practice analytics
Utilisation and margin dashboards for the leadership team.
What changed
- Four disconnected tools
- Margin discovered after the fact
- Unbilled time leaking away
- Utilisation unknown
- One record from quote to cash
- Live in-flight margin
- Billing from approved time
- Utilisation visible weekly
“We priced projects well and still lost margin in the middle. Now the middle is visible, and we fix it while it is still cheap to fix.”
Questions about projects like this
Is Project Operations overkill for a mid-size firm?
No. It scales down well, and the alternative, four disconnected tools, costs more in leakage than the platform costs in licences.
Can consultants log time without hating it?
Time entry lives in the tools they already use, including Teams, and one-click approvals keep the chore small.
How does this connect to our accounting?
Project Operations hands approved billing and revenue events to your finance system, Business Central being the natural pairing.
How long until margin is visible?
Margin turns live as soon as projects and time capture are on the platform, typically by the end of the core phase.