Recently, Nutcache sat down with Louis-Philippe Lizotte, PMP, Director of Operations at the Institut du Nouveau Monde (INM) to discuss time tracking and other project management challenges. Discover how the INM overcame project management hurdles and improved decision-making with Nutcache solutions, leading to a more efficient and structured process.
1) What was the situation in the company before you started using Nutcache? What specific problem were you trying to solve when you began using Nutcache?
The Institut du Nouveau Monde is a nonprofit organization, and we must do a lot with limited resources. Although we have been an organization running many projects simultaneously for several years, we still needed to consolidate our project management tools and practices. Our limited means led us to create in-house tools to manage our projects and organization. However, as our organization and team grew, it became necessary to structure ourselves further.
Our most crucial need: effectively track hours spent on various projects. The homemade Excel timesheet clearly showed its limits, so we were looking for a more robust and systematic solution to monitor hours worked on and off projects. After trying a few other software options, we discovered Nutcache. It was the time tracking functionality that first caught our attention, allowing for the automation of project hour tracking (no more gathering dozens of timesheets to get a status update on ongoing projects) and also simplifying administrative follow-ups, especially allocating payroll to different projects. The entire approval process was also greatly facilitated with the adoption of Nutcache.
2) What have you been able to achieve since using Nutcache? Provide examples.
Using Nutcache has addressed our time-tracking challenge. Information is now easily accessible to project managers, making monitoring much easier. This allows us to be more systematic in our billing and more rigorous in the use of our time banks. Nutcache has also led us to structure our organizational functions; we now have a better understanding of the time dedicated to our operations in support of our project execution.
Most recently, we have started using Nutcache to centralize information on our projects. We aim to leverage the project management features offered by Nutcache to reduce the creation and use of in-house project management tools. Ultimately, we hope to create the work plans for all our projects directly in Nutcache, have a more precise view of team assignments and workloads, and rely solely on Nutcache for the budget management of our projects.
3) What is your favorite feature of Nutcache?
Firstly, time tracking, as this addressed a challenge that INM had been facing for several years. Although we are not yet using it to its full potential, the workload tracking feature seems very promising and has a lot of potential to ensure an adequate distribution of workloads.
4) Why did you choose the above features? What are the benefits that you and your company gain from using them?
Time tracking, as this feature has produced immediate efficiency gains: it’s easier to fill out timesheets than before, easier for project managers to track their projects, and there’s greater rigor in the administrative and accounting tracking of the organization. Understanding how our team uses its time allows us to make better decisions in the end.
Managing workload is a constant puzzle. Projects are numerous, of varying durations, and follow completely different implementation rhythms. It becomes difficult to properly anticipate workloads. We believe that once this feature is well implemented, it will allow us to more effectively track assignments, better manage our team members’ workload and help us make recruitment decisions.
About the INM:
The INM is an independent and non-partisan organization that aims to increase citizen participation in democratic life. INM’s actions encourage civic engagement and contribute to the development of civic skills, the strengthening of social bonds, and the appreciation of democratic institutions. The INM team is driven by the belief that citizen participation strengthens democracy.
Established in 2004, INM was awarded the Claire-Bonenfant Prize by the Government of Quebec in 2005 for democratic values and civic education. Every summer, INM organizes a Citizenship School for youth (this activity was designated in 2010 as one of the top three civic education practices in Canada by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, and it is recognized by the Canadian Commission for UNESCO). The idea for the Institute for New World originated in the spring of 2003 from a group of academics.
