For Prophet, a leading San Francisco-based global consulting firm, its internal operations were not in line with its rapid rate of business growth.

The firm managed its business with a web of disparate systems that obscured an end-to-end view across U.S.-based and international offices. Hundreds of internal employees and consultants based around the globe submitted time and expenses in different currencies and different systems. Project management was conducted manually through its intranet, and a decades-old Sage system was used to manage financial processes and required manual intervention to do everything from basic reporting to month-end close.

Prophet needed a flexible infrastructure that could scale to accommodate its rapid growth.

“We were very dependent on outside resources,” said Jeani Vance, CIO of Prophet. “It was not optimal in any way.”

Prophet looked at several packages with other large scale competitors that promised streamlined management of ERP, resource and project management processes. But none matched the robust international functionality and scalability, coupled with the automated, integrated resource and project management capabilities afforded by NetSuite. Prophet was also swayed by the benefits of a NetSuite Professional Services-led implementation, the members of which it could tell from the get-go would be crucial partners for years to come.

“Even the presentation itself was just, different,” Vance said. “They knew exactly what we were asking for, and we would not have been nearly as successful without NetSuite Professional Services.”

Since going live on NetSuite OneWorld in October 2016, Prophet has gained a unified view of financial, resource management and project management processes that have streamlined operations across nine global offices operating in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Switzerland and Hong Kong, creating efficiencies across the entire organization.

“It’s like night and day for us. We went from something so archaic, to having complete visibility and immediacy of information,” Vance said.

Business-differentiating efficiencies

In just six months, Prophet has realized efficiencies gained through automation. NetSuite OneWorld’s robust financial consolidation engine and multi-currency support eases month-end close across five different offices in the United States, as well as offices in London, Berlin, Zurich and Hong Kong. This includes support for transactions in U.S. dollars, British Pounds, Swiss Francs and Hong Kong dollars. NetSuite OneWorld not only gives Prophet control over month-end close, it has expedited the process by upwards of a week.

Integrated PSA and ERP means budget owners are notified of expenses in real-time, expediting approvals and improving cost control. Expense and time management for more than 350 internal employees and hundreds of consultants has been streamlined. Reports on project status, profitability and more that previously required a consultant’s help to generate are never more than a few clicks away.

“NetSuite is absolutely great at the PSA piece of our business,” Vance said.

Scalable platform to support growth

As Prophet deepens its international presence, NetSuite OneWorld can easily be provisioned to support new offices conducting business in different languages and currencies. It will continue to optimize its PSA capabilities and leverage real-time data to increase project and resource management efficiencies. Prophet will extend the implementation to include NetSuite CRM and advanced forecasting capabilities.

With NetSuite OneWorld, Prophet has the end-to-end visibility of its business that allows it to make insight-driven decisions on how and where to extend its own brand to drive sustainable, profitable growth.

“We chose NetSuite to grow,” Vance said.