Roland Berger x Napta: unified staffing and skills

Introduction

Roland Berger is a leading strategy consulting firm and the only European player with true global reach that can also claim German origins. Present in more than 34 countries, the firm employs around 3,500 people and has, for nearly 60 years, been organised by business line and by local office.

Four years ago, the firm's continuous growth had put increasing strain on its staffing set-up. Back the in-house tool, still partly combined with Excel spreadsheets, was reaching its limits as data volumes grew. Roland Berger needed to rethink its capacity management in order to keep steering the allocation of its consultants effectively worldwide.

The challenges faced

• Insufficient performance of the in-house staffing tool, with the existing technology struggling to cope with headcount growth
• A high volume of manual tasks, caused by missing data integration between different systems
• Heterogeneous data quality due to fragmented use of the tool across different countries and offices
• Staffing and skills data kept separate, making it time-consuming to match staffing requests and best suited available resources

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"Napta has significantly improved our resource and skills management by providing stable performance with large data sets, integrated skills matching, and easy-to-use reporting. It has enabled better data integration and automation, increased tool acceptance across the organisation, and allowed us to manage capacities and resources more efficiently."
— Friederike Woermann-Seiger, SVP Human Resources, Roland Berger

The solution provided by Napta

1.  A platform built for the consulting profession

Unlike generic capacity management tools, which focus on logics of available hours and days, Napta was designed specifically for service and consulting professions, where individual skill sets are what matter most.

• Stable performance, even with large data volumes, as the firm continues to grow
• Integration of skills and availability data within a single platform
• An interface designed for the consulting profession, rather than for generic project management

Concrete example: Roland Berger's ambition to staff "the best team for the client" translates directly into the use of the People Search feature, which identifies available consultants by cross-referencing skills and availability in a single click.

2. Unified management of skills and availability

Napta now centralises all the information needed for staffing, which had previously been scattered across several tools.

• People Search to quickly identify available resources according to their skills
• A global calendar, used by partners and principals in local offices to see, at a glance, their teams' availability and upcoming projects
• An individual planning report, giving a quick view of employees' availability over the long term
• An intuitive interface, giving HR and staffing teams in different countries more autonomy

3. Consolidated reporting to support financial steering

Beyond operational staffing, Napta has become a data source to support the firm's financial steering.

• Customised KPI reporting via Power BI 
• Capacity and financial forecasts based on up-to-date data shared across the group

"Since day one, we've been in very close contact with our support colleagues from Napta and my team is enjoying a very good relationship. I think they are in nearly daily exchange with the support team — testing new features, giving feedback, talking about our needs, and finally jointly improving the tool step by step to make it even more useful for us and for other clients."
— Friederike Woermann-Seiger, SVP Human Resources, Roland Berger

Results achieved

Data reliability and quality

• Stable tool performance, even with large data volumes
• Greater automation of data integration, reducing manual work
• Improved data quality, thanks to better integration between systems

Visibility and steering

• Increased staffing transparency across the whole organisation
• Harmonised processes between different offices and countries
• Improved forecasting, both for capacity management and for financial steering

Adoption across the group

• Widespread adoption of the tool by staffing teams across all offices
• Greater autonomy for local HR and staffing teams thanks to an easy-to-use interface
• A close relationship with Napta's support teams, with regular exchanges to help develop the tool further

In summary

Roland Berger has transformed its capacity management: from an in-house tool and scattered Excel files, the firm has moved to a unified platform that remains reliable even at scale, and which has been adopted by all of its offices worldwide.

This transformation illustrates the challenges facing international consulting firms: reconciling headcount growth, data quality requirements, and precise skills management. For organisations facing the same challenges, Roland Berger's experience shows that a platform designed specifically for the consulting profession can make a real difference, both operationally and financially.