Noah: Welcome to Up Your Stack podcast. I'm your host, Noah Berk. I'm also the co-founder of OBO and Elite HubSpot Solutions partner. Every week we feature some of our favorite HubSpot app developers who've either built their apps on HubSpot or have integrated their apps with HubSpot to help you get the most out of your HubSpot tech stack.

And today I'm joined by Lauri from the operating. Uh, is it just the operating app or the operating company? Lauri. How do you like to generally say it? 

Lauri: Yeah, we, we chose this funny name so you could, it gets stuck to you. Right? It's a bit of a weird, it's like, I'm la from operating or LA from operating app.

It's like, how, how, however you wanna say, 

Noah: there you go. We'll say operating app. So we give it some connotation to what it's all about. Yeah. Lauri, I am super excited to have you on the show today, talk about what the operating app does. And that being said, why don't we just dive right into it. What exactly do you guys do?

Lauri: Yeah, operating app is like, uh, we are a resource management tool for professional services companies or consulting [00:01:00] companies and, and agencies. And what we really try to do is help these companies staff their projects efficiently. There's like, when consulting companies grow towards a hundred, 200, a thousand consultants, that sort of.

Managing the people who's working on what becomes quite tough, and we're trying to really solve that, how to make that as simple as possible so that people can spend time on billable work that base the bills, but also so that the people, the consultants, wouldn't get that burned out while doing consult.

Yeah, 

Noah: absolutely. Being a consulting firm, I can totally relate around resource planning, project management. So how did this come about? Why build this app in the first place? 

Lauri: Good question. There's a lot of like competition in the space. There's a lot of kind of in, in increments who we're trying to overthrow.

But as with many these sort of, uh, things, it started from our own problems. Right? Part of a consulting company, I was a partner there by now, co-founder was one of the [00:02:00] people founding it. We grew over 100 people. We had a couple of different sites in different countries. I'm from Finland, so we had our main site in Helsinki.

We had one in Stockholm. We were doing. Things in different multiple countries, and once that operation just grows, you're starting to add a point solution after point solution to your own operation stack. You're trying to integrate them together. You have quite a bit of spreadsheets and you have a lot of consultants knowing different things, different competencies, and all just becomes a big hot mess.

So we've figured that, hey. What if there was a sort of an app that could suck data from all of these different sort of like sources, bring it all together and bring clarity to the operation. So that's like where operating came about. 

Noah: And are there certain types of companies that you're targeting, in particular in agency or a traditional management consulting firm, is there a group that's best suited for this?

Lauri: Yeah, good question. Obviously. Under the umbrella of professional services companies, we can fit quite many different types of companies. And although they might seem quite alike [00:03:00] on the surface there, there are nuances there, like how these companies operate, what are the project models that they use? So many of our customers are digital agencies.

We come from the IT consulting landscape, so digital agency, IT consulting, management consulting, but also we have marketing agencies as our customers. Mm-hmm. And quite interesting, interestingly also software as a service companies. We just have that complex of a product that they need a professional service team to implement the product.

And then that professional services team is like a consulting business within a software as a service business. So Correct. Those are like the main segments that we have. 

Noah: Interesting. And, and how have you been able to gain traction? We talked about earlier, there's obviously a lot of competitors in this space.

How are you being able to differentiate yourself in this space? Gain traction with customers? 

Lauri: Yeah. First of all, I think we, coming to the space in 2020s, we're, we're in a good spot because we can start from a clean slate as opposed to our competitors who've been around for [00:04:00] multiple years. So we can start from the point of, Hey, we're there are these great tools like HubSpot, there are these great time tracking systems like Harvest.

What if we just like don't try to do everything that these software does, but we actually try to pull in the data to operating. So starting from the point like. How can we complement those, these, these pieces of software that already exists? So one of the big reasons how we've been able to gain traction is that 90% of our customers have their CRM plugged into operating.

For example. Yeah. So that's one of the core reasons. Plugging into those sort of HubSpot ecosystem for example, is big. And obviously we had our existing networks in the market being in consulting for a long period of time. We've been experienced in sales. I've been doing sales for multiple years in consulting.

So just, it's a lot of just, uh, call outreach and kind of a lot of hard work. Right. 

Noah: It sounds so, rather than trying to compete and be in all. To everyone type tool time tracking. CRM. Yeah. You said, Hey listen, there's this ecosystem out there right [00:05:00] now, and why don't we leverage that ecosystem? So tools like Harvest, which for those who aren't familiar, really time tracking, and if you're in the industry, you probably have come across Harvest at least once or twice and use Harvest as a mechanism to drive business to you.

'cause Harvest doesn't do what you guys do. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the difference between what your application does versus a harvest. 

Lauri: Absolutely. So Harvest is a time tracking platform specifically. So you, you have your time sheet, you log your time, and you see how much went on as a specific project.

So you can invoice a specific amount of dollars from your clients every month. Whereas what we do is. Our software is plugged into the CRM at, at in the beginning. Yeah. And when the sales teams are doing sales in, uh, in consulting at, at some point there becomes that point when you start to think what would be the team for this project?

And at that point we pull the project from the CRM to operating for the operations and staffing teams to see. Then there you're able to see, okay, we got this mobile app implementation case from HubSpot and [00:06:00] we need a mobile developer. So who do we have available? And then you have all those consultants and their skills and their availabilities.

So you connect that data from sales to the consultant roster that you have. You're able to match the right people with the right cases, and that's in the hard work we do. And then obviously after that, we help you predict your capacity and help you predict your revenue. And all that, but that's like maybe the nicest, sort of like the easiest way to explain in a way.

Noah: So, and that's really cool. As, as a company, we obviously are always trying to match the skill sets of what the client's looking for versus the skill sets of our team. And there's fields in our HubSpot that literally lines out like what exactly the client's looking for. Now we're doing it manually connecting this Yeah.

Information. It's not necessarily an automated. Quote process right now. So it sounds like what you've done is for larger teams, you've helped automate the resource planning Absolutely. Upfront in that process and really helped solve that for our clients, to make it easier for salespeople to know who may be taking this assignment.

Yes. As well [00:07:00] as for whatever that manager is, to be able to say, ah, you know what? Look at this. I have my immediate report of who's available, who isn't, and who's gonna be working with what client without having to touch it. 

Lauri: Yeah, exactly. And once your team reaches a hundred consultants, as I mentioned, 500, 2000, that that problem landscape.

It becomes like one of the most pressing issues that there is in the whole company you're working in geographically, in all the continents, for example, you have this one really important case. You need that really niche type of expertise. Where do you find that? In a way? So our software really tries to solve that and we know that many of the larger.

Agencies and consulting companies have built these sorts of solutions from scratch in custom. 

Noah: Now, is there a particular size consulting firm that would get the most value from operating app? 

Lauri: Yeah, for sure. You get more value if you're a larger company, but we do have, we have customers who are like 25, 30 people, but they have a quite intense [00:08:00] project turnover, like a lot of stuff coming from the sales pipeline, maybe a bit of a splintered project portfolio, so short projects.

Retainers longer fixed price things. So that one makes also sense to, to have our software. But I would say that if you're 50, 70, a hundred and then that, that, then on onwards, our software really starts to click. 

Noah: Interesting. And generally how you mentioned this earlier, but are most of your clients coming directly from the partner channels now, or they're discovering you in these app stores primarily as a mechanism for generating business right now.

Lauri: So, yeah, but many of our customers do come through partnerships, so we are integrated in the different sort of tools. We're integrated to HubSpot, and then we're integrated with CV Partner, which is a CV management tool for IT consultancies. And so like we're getting leads from all these different sources.

So that's one of the main channels for our customer acquisition. But obviously. Uh, a heap of it. Still we're, we're a relatively new company, so we do a lot [00:09:00] of outreach, you know, like trying to just, you know, be really savvy about it. And when I say a lot, I, I mean that we try to be, do a lot of small, really targeted campaigns as both just blasting this generic message out there.

Noah: Of course. And, and you have to be, you have to be able to hone in, uh, on those particular companies who you best suited for. And oftentimes you finding companies already have a solution in place. Yeah. Are they doing this on spreadsheets or maybe they're using one of the incumbents out there? So I guess there's kind of two pieces here.

One, maybe they're not satisfied with their existing project management tools and they're looking for something else, and you happen to hit the right place, right time. But how often are companies actually not really using anything? I. Like just spreadsheets 

Lauri: surprisingly often. You, you, you wouldn't believe, I guess you would, but it's like this world runs on spreadsheets, like still, it, it, it might be spreadsheets with some macros and automations, but it's still a spreadsheet.

Sure. Oftentimes you go into a company like in, in a sales meeting and you use kind of [00:10:00] like a, so what are you using? A source? Yeah. You have a CRM. Yeah. Then they have HubSpot or Salesforce or whatever and, and do you have something for resource planning? And then they say, yeah, we have this ERP NetSuite.

Mm-hmm. And they, then there's the resource management module there. Okay, sure, sure thing. Are you using it? Not really. It's so clunky. So we have a spreadsheet for it, which we have to manually update. So then that's where we're in the sort of, we hit money, right? So then we know that, okay, then this, this is where we have a chance, and actually often operating is plugged into the ERP.

So the sort of data stays in sync. Between the two systems, right? So we're their side on the side, like the modern planning solution with a nice ux, but they, they still can have their, the CFO can keep their ERP, so they're able to have a good financial reporting and all that. 

Noah: When we're talking about A CFO, oftentimes they're looking, they don't like to spend money or they'll like to save money.

Um, but there is a third category where they're looking for return on investment. How do you talk about a return on investment when they move to a platform like operating? 

Lauri: Sure. It's sometimes, obviously we can [00:11:00] replace a tool. Sometimes they're using a non-optimal tool that we can replace. We're more niche.

Maybe they're using some more generic resource planning tool and then we come with all these integrations and whatnot and we can, it's easy. But then when we are coming, like to compliment their stack tool stack, often the biggest obviously gain that you get is that you save a lot of time from all the manual input and chaos and just discuss with a.

US based larger marketing agency today. I was doing a testimonial for them and, and their CEO mentioned that she was using just by herself three hours a week updating data from like, from HubSpot to spreadsheets for the resource planning, just manually updating everything. Now that it's plugged into operating, it takes like 15 to 30 minutes a week just from herself.

Wow. So that's one person. So that's maybe like the, the time gains that you get is, is obviously a really big thing. But what we also do is you can connect your time tracking data. As I mentioned, we, we integrate with time sheet tools. So when you're [00:12:00] doing a resource allocation, like, Hey, load is gonna be working in this project for, you know, three hours a day, you get that feedback directly back from the time tracking data load is actually working.

Only two. This is time and materials project. You're invoicing by the hour, so you're leaving money on the table. So then that's a really, when you say that to A CFO, they were like, oh, well that's, that could be quite nice having that real time visibility into your billing. The plans and the extra, 

Noah: it's a big difference if you're expecting to bill 32 hours a week and you're only billing 28 hours a week.

Yeah. Especially if you're billing a significantly high rate and you're not able to effectively allocate it, or someone is not necessarily, uh, fully utilized that they could have been fully utilized. I think those become. Quite challenging, uh, in that respect. They're really 

Lauri: challenging and they're challenging culturally, obviously.

It's just when you, how do you talk to people about, Hey, you're not spending enough time on this billable work. But it's like, what we try to do is we try to bring this sort of, a bit of a [00:13:00] customers a bit about this. Nordic, like the the Finn way of running a company really transparently. There's no loaded questions.

You can go to talk to people about their use of time because it's all out there. Everyone can see it. It's visible, it's transparent. So that's one of our values too, in a way. All the data that you see there, it's really available for everyone. So in a way it's, you're all in the same boat together trying to take the company the right direction.

So it's something we really, really want. So 

Noah: I kind of wanna pull on that string a little bit more. Finnish companies who set these up, what's a difference between that and American company in your opinion? 

Lauri: Yeah, that's a super good question. I've been talking about this in, uh, in breakfast events and whatnot.

I come from agencies and consulting companies who have no CEOs, right? Yeah. So we're completely flat as the hierarchy is flat, we have. The self-organizing teams like task forces that take up an initiative. Obviously there's someone who's responsible for the business there legally. There needs to be, but in a way, sure.

Like [00:14:00] there's a. No, no ex explicit hierarchy in the company. So, and everything is like transparent. It's really autonomous, so it needs certain types of people for this sort of organization to run. Sure. But obviously, I guess the traditional way, like as opposed to that is to like partner. Principal, senior type of a model where you have that sort of rank, which explicitly means also the hierarchy.

So it's like pretty different how you'd run that sort of a company. And it brings interesting questions. I don't mean that everyone should like suddenly go to a flat 

Noah: organization. Yeah, yeah. Everyone, you're on your own today. Hey listen, manage yourself. Yeah. I look at your hours on the operating app, but you manage 

Lauri: yourself.

Yeah. It needs a bit of prep work and, and maybe the right type of people too, but it's a, it's an interesting question and like. How do you manage your whole professional services team and your consulting company, like, and what types of, uh, implications that might have? For your business 

Noah: and, and from your perspective when you're running an organization like that, what would be your expected [00:15:00] billability?

In other words, are you at 70%, 80% higher than that? Lower than that? Kind of what's been your experience? 

Lauri: Yeah, as a former consultant, I would like to say that it depends, but I. The, I wouldn't like, like the thing is that I wouldn't put like an explicit utilization target for anyone. In a way, I think that if you put like targets, people start like, Hey, you know, I'm, my target is 85.

Now that I've done 85, I can just do something else. Whereas I think again, it's about that self organizing, like you are fully allocated to a project. You should work on it full time, but if you need to do something else. You can make the decision. Yes, and at best these kind of organizations can invoice like a lot, obviously like a lot of their time because if the projects are exciting, if the people are motivated, they're able to.

Spend most of your time on invoicing. So we're talking about like 80 plus percent utilization, but obviously it's, sometimes it's tougher. The utilization falls. It's 60 something, it's tougher months [00:16:00] come. So it's, it's, I can't say that it's a silver bullet. Suddenly that saves you 

Noah: Understood. Every organization's different.

Depends upon how many, what type of new business coming in, how long they've been on projects, what type of projects they have. That just varies. Yeah. 

Lauri: Maybe, uh, it has an impact for the culture and like how people perceive working in the company is, right? Yeah. So if you're a certain type of a person like I am, I think I really enjoy that sort of.

Self-organizing, autonomous, you need sort of driven people in order for that organization to run. 

Noah: For sure. So how does your, um, operating app really differ from the other project management systems in the market? You did allude to the fact a lot of these other, uh, applications that have been in the market for quite some time, but starting in 2020 you have to start from the ground up.

So what really would you say separates you guys from the competition? 

Lauri: Yeah, it's always like we're competing against so many different types of software, but if you, let's take project management tool as an example, like Clickup [00:17:00] or Asana. Like you could put up a resource allocation plan in clickup, but then many, we have many customers who come who are using Clickup for their project management, but they say that we just gonna have to spend so much time if you want to build this custom.

Type of reporting inside clickup, whereas your app does it like specifically for our purpose, and we don't give you too many options. This is the way you should do it. Yeah. And then we have some customers who, if I could just do this and that, like perhaps you just, just do that, do this and you'll succeed.

Yeah. And then so it's a bit of opinionate, like we're opinionated in that way. So that's one. Then we have those integrations to HubSpot. We're really tightly integrated with the CRMs. So plug in your CRM plan, your future, that's one thing. Sure. And then the sort of like time tracking integrations, the plan versus actual hours.

That's also one big thing. So gathering all that data from the different sources. 'cause I think that in 2024, building an app [00:18:00] in this. Landscape that sort of like does lives in isolation. I that that wouldn't work. So, 

Noah: agreed. It has to be part of an ecosystem. So one of the things I heard, which is really interesting, especially when you start targeting niches, is you're able to develop frameworks for that particular niche and the product is built around that framework.

So one of the real value of coming to the operating app, if you're a marketing firm, you're a consulting firm, whatever it may be, is it sounds like Lara, you went ahead and you developed a best of breed framework that. Fits the particular use case for this marketplace, which is awesome. And anyone listening if you're able to build something that really fits in it.

I think riches in the niches is the common phrase, but building a framework where you're going ahead and really organize it makes a lot of sense. So let's switch topics slightly here. Why building integration with HubSpot? There's all these other CRMs out there, there's all these other tools out there, but what gaps are you filling in that ecosystem and and why build it for the HubSpot ecosystem?

Lauri: Yeah, it's a slightly boring answer. It's like [00:19:00] you can only learn so many kind of like tricks in your life, and I, I used a lot of HubSpot before, like yeah, was the HubSpot user. We had in our former company. We had the CRM, we had the marketing suite, we had the CMS and everything. Then I was doing consulting projects.

I worked with Salesforce. More like dynamics. I work with other CRMs in the e-comm space, for example. And I just saw the fit of HubSpot to this sort of like mid-market consulting company, modern 'cause modern type of a company. If, if you're a company you use HubSpot, you're more, you're quite like advanced, right?

So you're not like a really archaic sort of type of a company, but you're willing to try out modern tools. So that's a good indication for us. So if they're willing to try HubSpot. Most likely they're willing to try something else that is also quite modern. Maybe it's like new and also willing to try bestof breed tools.

So that was one of the big reasons for chose HubSpot. 

Noah: Interesting. And I think that's a really good point if you're able to, if you're looking at the [00:20:00] ecosystem you're trying to penetrate into, does your customer base think the same way that you do? Are they open to change? Are they open to, to more modern technology stack as you referred to earlier?

Which I think is really important. If you're thinking about developing an application or you're thinking about building something, is what would this ecosystem bring to us? Are these the customers that we want? Are they the science that we want? Are they open to new and better ways of doing things versus trying to go maybe off to a stodgy and older piece of software that yeah, they don't wanna change anyway, so why in the world would they want this?

Yeah. Uh, so I think that's a, a great thought process to get to the marketplace you're in. Yeah. 

Lauri: And how, how do we differentiate? What sort of gap do we fill? Obviously I've discussed partly about that, what our tool does and so on. I think what we bring into the mix is this sort of, is a bit of this Nordic mindset, I think because our, our app has this sort of skill management for all the consultants.

So you can fill up your consultant profile where you can say that, Hey, I am [00:21:00] expert in React, uh, but I would like to learn flutter. If you're in the IT consulting space and when you're searching for the consultants for the projects, then you can not only look for who's available. But also who would like to learn something, right?

So people can also tell a bit about what they would like to do, what are their aspirations? 

Noah: Larry, this was awesome. You've been an excellent guest. Thank you so much, uh, for being on the show. And again, it just great stuff. If you're in the audience, you're looking for project management, by all means, check out the operating app.

If you're using HubSpot, this should be like top of your list to be able to check it out. And really thank you to the entire audience for joining us today. And that really wraps up today's show up. Your stack is a weekly podcast featuring HubSpot app developers and organizations. You've either built their apps on HubSpot or integrate with HubSpot, sponsored by the OBO Group, an elite HubSpot Solutions partner.

Please connect with Larry on LinkedIn and. If you're interested in leveling up your HubSpot, feel free to reach out to the OBO group at [00:22:00] www.theobogroup.com. Thanks for joining us today and enjoy.