Nina Nieuwenhout is a planner at Ecoresult, an ecological consultancy firm that deals with everything related to nature conservation. Their assignments mainly stem from the Nature Protection Act, which offers protection to all kinds of nature areas and plant and animal species in the Netherlands.
So, for example, when construction companies or housing associations want to build, renovate or renovate, in many cases it must first be investigated whether protected animal or plant species are (or may be) at risk. Ecoresult then conducts research, provides advice and can also immediately apply for the exemption – and in this way completely spare their customers.
In the early stages of the organization, Leon, the founder of Ecoresult, simply did the planning by heart. Then he sent everyone an email or app with who had to go where and that’s how he switched if there were any changes. “When they were still just the two of them, that went fine and with three or four employees, too, because the entire business was still quite ad hoc,” says Nina. “But when the company started to grow, planning in this way was no longer feasible”.
“Our work is very different. It can change every day what needs to be done and then the planning must be adjusted accordingly. In addition, many colleagues (the ecologists) are almost always on the road and do not have access to a computer to view a spreadsheet schedule. The Timewax mobile app is therefore ideal for us, because it gives colleagues direct access to the schedule on the road and they can immediately view any changes”.
“In addition, Ecoresult is now an organization with 30 internal employees, many different projects and clients, and business operations have become less ad-hoc. In addition, we have specific seasons when we do a lot of research into house sparrows, bats and swifts and then we have 20 external freelance researchers who have to be planned”. Timewax is an excellent application for this, because we are not tied to all kinds of fixed accounts with monthly rates to schedule our external parties with.
The overview and insight that Timewax offers has provided much more clarity within the organization. This makes it easier for everyone to organize and features such as registering actual hours directly on the telephone have made everything a lot more workable.
“I have worked with spreadsheet schedules at other companies, but as a planner I really like this 100x better,” says Nina. “I have a lot of tools at my disposal and I really like that I can see how many percent people have and how many percent they still have available on a day. This way I can easily switch in the short term if there are changes and always make the planning suitable in the long term”.
In addition, Nina is very pleased about the relationship with the Timewax organization. “It is easy to talk with customer service and especially those conversations with our account manager Jurgen, they are very valuable!”
“At the moment we are not yet using all aspects of Timewax, but that is certainly something we want to work towards in the future. For example, we still make too little use of dashboards and would like to provide insight into our capacity in order to be able to look at the long term”.
Ecoresult is in the luxury position of receiving more orders than they can accept. Which projects they take on, they always discuss with Leon and all project leaders and planners. “We are a very flat organization in that respect and then we look together to see if the projects are fun and if we want to do them. For ecologists, it is a lot more fun to do research in a dilapidated castle in the woods than when replacing window frames in a residential area.
If we can gain better insight into our capacity with Timewax, then we can provide guidance to the entire organization. Then we know immediately whether we still have room to take on less fun projects or whether we are already full and do not have to pay attention to this. That makes everything a lot more efficient and it also takes some pressure off the organization.
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