The first thing that strikes you about Anatta is how clear-sighted they are. This is an agency that knows their niche. They know who they work best with, why their offering works, and how to consistently bring enormous value to the clients they partner with.
The majority of Anatta’s clients operate in the health and wellness space, attracting a following of conscious consumers who shop with quality and social impact top-of-mind.
But building buy-in among quality-conscious shoppers also means that you need to offer a seamless, modern e-commerce experience that reinforces trust in your brand.
This is where Anatta comes in - helping businesses reach these shoppers by creating a high quality buying journey, enabled by Shopify.
But delivering this confident, quality-assured offering takes serious organizational capability - leveraging the talents of diversely skilled teams who care about the client experience and build a personal stake in their projects.
And this emphasis on assembling outstanding teams is, according to Managing Director Emily Lykins, key to Anatta’s success:
"A lot of agencies are what we consider “time and material”: they have a task, they put a pool of developers together, and anybody can pick up that task.
We have a more dedicated model. When you sign up with Anatta, you get a designated developer, designated QA team member, designated designer. You get to know the faces of the entire team, not just not the account manager. So we really become one team. And I think that helps with the longevity of our client relationships.”
However, though this bespoke approach creates first-rate outcomes for clients, it comes hand-in-hand with a degree of complexity. And as Anatta began to scale, the challenge of managing this complexity became more apparent.
Four years ago, Anatta made the decision to start expanding - without compromising their “bread and butter”, as Emily describes it: the unique team model that allows Anatta to forge such long-lasting, productive client relationships.
To do this, they needed better visibility into team allocations and project priorities. Leveling up their resource management, tracking utilization rates, and forecasting future needs would now become essential pieces of the puzzle.
"As the project management function started to grow…we started to realize that we didn’t have a single place, a single source of truth to come back to, where we could see the team’s allocations, and understand priorities,” says Emily.
Keeping track of individual skills within their workforce also became increasingly difficult as headcount grew. And for a company that relies on assembling high-performing teams of talented people, this was a problem that needed a swift and effective solution.
They needed an inventory or database that could keep a record of the diverse capabilities in their organization, and help them surface skills gaps where these were apparent.
But despite this clear need, Emily was surprised to discover that it was difficult to find a tool which offered both the forecasting features they needed, alongside suitable skills tracking.
"Basically, the tool we were using at the time didn’t offer that level of reporting, so we outgrew it really fast.”
This period was crucial for Anatta, as the team began to focus intensely on project profitability in order to chart a path of sustainable growth. But, lacking the systems to surface the right data, the team was becoming frustrated.
"As you start to scale your business, you need better ways and systems of organizing information - not just to understand how you're servicing clients, but also to keep track of how you're serving the company's interests and goals,” explains Emily, “You need to be able to ask, ‘Are we setting our projects up in the right way, with the right people, in a way that also supports Anatta’s goals of growth and revenue?’”
Recognising that their current systems could not support their growth goals, the Anatta team was on the lookout for a better solution. So when a team member discovered Runn and suggested giving it a try, they decided to explore its potential.
It didn’t take long to realize that Runn gave them the tools to make more informed decisions that could help steer Anatta along a sustainable growth path.
"Suddenly, we were able to plan ahead in a way that we were not able to do previously. What Runn has allowed us to do is look not just two weeks ahead, but to look two or three months down the line to see how certain things are going to add up.”
During this period of scaling, it was essential to grow Anatta’s workforce, but to do it at a pace that matched demand. This meant adding the right people, with the right skills, to the team at the right time - something that had, previously, been difficult to predict.
However, using Runn, Emily found that anticipating hiring needs didn’t have to feel like a guessing game.
Being able to model the impact of potential and confirmed project work on the team’s capacity meant that it was easy to identify where resources would be under pressure in the future - so that hiring plans could be structured steadily to meet forecasted demand.
Learn more: Hiring Report - How to See My Future Hiring Needs in Runn ➡️
It’s now been two years since Anatta started using Runn, and it has become the trusted reference point for their whole project resourcing process.
"It’s a single source of truth for the team’s allocations and utilization, and for showing us which skills are most in demand.”
Centralizing their resource data in Runn has unlocked a greater level of forecasting maturity for Anatta, allowing them to undertake capacity planning in a way that previously felt out of reach.
This has also enabled Anatta to see where they have space for internal projects, where they might be able to carve out time around client work to work on projects that will help keep the business agile and competitive.
Creating a single source of truth for resource utilization data has also had a cascading effect in other areas of the business, leading to bonus improvements in prioritization and collaboration between the commercial and delivery arms of the business.
Emily explains that Anatta’s sales team found the Runn UI so easy and intuitive to understand, that they have started using it independently - treating it as a guide to see where they should concentrate their sales efforts:
"That’s been impactful - it’s decreased time we spend in meetings, decreased confusion, decreased incidents of selling a project that we weren't able to staff appropriately,” says Emily, “It also means that Sales can prioritize selling projects where we have bandwidth. So if they see that, for instance, we’re going to have two people on the bench in a month, Sales notes that they should sell into this role.”
Learn more: Bench Report - How to See Who is Available to Work ➡️
What’s next for Anatta and Runn? Well, it is currently a tough landscape for service businesses, but one thing hasn’t changed: having clear visibility into project finances and resourcing is a vital key to staying profitable.
As Emily explores ways to optimize Anatta’s project management processes, ensuring that financial goals are met, Runn is helping her keep sight of where the money is going.
"Right now, my favorite feature of the project is the project overview report, which shows the gross margin of the project - and it’s not just about tracking the gross margin, but being able to see what the impact would be on the gross margin, depending on the different decisions we make.”
In turn, Emily says, Runn’s reports have become a springboard for valuable discussions among managers within Anatta’s different teams, helping them refine processes to set up projects more efficiently. It ensures the team stays focused on profitability while delivering the high-quality, personable service that Anatta is known for.
By aligning everyone’s efforts, the team is becoming more strategic and cohesive - and thus able to continue driving growth and change despite the challenges of a contracting market.
"It’s helping us keep sight of the big goals that we strategize around - the ways we want to transform our organization.”
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