Methods
Customer Success Story
Methods scales operational capacity and financial velocity with Certinia Professional Services Cloud and Financial Management Cloud
How the UK IT and management consultancy unified its front and back office on Salesforce to condense its month-end close to 10 days and manage a lean, scaling workforce.
Summary
Methods unified its fragmented operations by deploying Certinia Professional Services Cloud and Financial Management Cloud directly on top of its existing Salesforce platform. This single-platform architecture replaced disconnected spreadsheets with automated subcontractor matching, live utilization analytics, and a secure, compliant environment for future AI adoption.
Bio
Methods is a leading IT and business consulting firm specializing in digital transformation for the UK public sector, designing user-centric technology solutions to improve public services and safeguard citizen-facing operations.
Industry
Company Size
Large (1,000+ employees)
Results
By deeply configuring Certinia within their Salesforce system of record, Methods achieved the operational visibility and control needed to hit strict corporate performance standards.
Business Challenge
Overcoming operational fragmentation to unlock strategic growth.
Following its acquisition by Alten, Methods faced tight deadlines to scale permanent headcount and expand into highly regulated private sector markets. However, their growth was restricted by disconnected back-office solutions and highly manual workflows.
- Protracted financial close cycles: Reconciling financial performance data at the end of the month required extracting information across multiple entity silos and manipulating massive offline spreadsheets.
- Subcontractor leakage: Tracking purchase orders and managing incoming timecards for third-party delivery partners required intense, manual administration.
- Disparate software systems: Financial data was scattered across completely disconnected systems used for CRM, financials, reporting, and forecasting.
- Bench volatility: A total lack of real-time visibility into active project consultants versus unassigned staff made it difficult to maintain predictable profitability on multi-year contracts.
- Inability to forecast: Operating without live utilization or pipeline demand analytics left management blind to capacity constraints and limited their ability to optimize project win rates.
Faced with compounding manual silos that threatened their expansion goals, Methods looked to unify its business operations onto a single system of record.
Essentially, it was taking us months and weeks to close a month end. We moved from weeks of month close to almost ten days, and that was instant post-implementation. Across the business, every employee uses Certinia or Salesforce in some way. It really is our end-to-end business platform.
The Solution for Methods
Unifying the front and back office on a single platform.
Methods implemented Certinia’s Professional Services Cloud and Financial Management Cloud directly on top of Salesforce, creating a single supplier architecture across their operating entities.
Automated 3-Way Matching
Methods established an automated on-platform matching process that ties subcontractor invoices directly to receipts and original purchase orders. Subcontractors now log their timecards straight through Partner Communities, eliminating manual billing overhead and leakage.
Live Capacity and Bench Analytics
Management gained the ability to generate instant headcount reports comparing scheduled delivery consultants against available bench capacity from the previous week. This real-time insight allows project planners to tightly govern their resources and hit their strict 8% bench target.
Secure AI and Data Sovereignty
Because Methods serves the UK public sector, local data residency was a non-negotiable requirement. Certinia enabled the firm to keep all data local while preparing for Certinia's Veda AI architecture, allowing future AI agents to run securely within the Salesforce trust layer without risking data leaks.
Impact
- Accelerated financial velocity by dropping the month-end close timeline down to a highly consistent 10-day window immediately after go-live.
- Optimized resource management by giving project leaders live dashboards for full control over scheduling, utilization requests, and active consultant tracking.
- Created a lean operational infrastructure capable of scaling total headcount from 550 to 1,500 FTEs without increasing back-office support ratios.
- Established total data integrity across three distinct operating and holding companies by consolidating them into a single, reliable system of record.
Run your services business with clarity, speed, and confidence
See how the Certinia Professional Services Cloud and Financial Management Cloud work together to connect your entire business lifecycle.
