How FirstUp boosted delivery efficiency and achieved a 75% utilization rate using Rocketlane
Industry
SaaS
Use case
Client onboarding and implementation process
Before
- Customer conversations were happening mostly through email, making it hard to track issues and updates in real time.
- Weekly work planning relied on spreadsheets and manual tracking, leading to confusion and missed priorities.
- Filling out timesheets was a painful, manual task with little visibility into actual utilization.
- Leaders had to dig through multiple tools to understand workload distribution, PTO schedules, and budget health.
After
- Customers now message directly within tasks in Rocketlane’s client portal, creating faster, clearer conversations.
- Teams start each week knowing exactly what tasks they need to complete, with all priorities laid out.
- Timesheets are tied directly to tasks, making it simple for contributors to log hours and for managers to track utilization.
- Capacity planning and financial dashboards provide instant insights, allowing smarter resourcing and budget management.
FirstUp is a leading workforce communications platform that helps large enterprises like Hilton, Amazon, and Ford reach and engage every employee, from the frontline to the executive suite. Their platform powers timely, personalized communications at scale.
As Director of Service Delivery, Lisa LaVan’s mission was: deliver a seamless, transparent, and efficient service experience.
But with rapid growth came new challenges. As customer volume and complexity increased, Lisa needed to build a scalable, repeatable implementation process without compromising on quality.
FirstUp’s top goals were clear:
- Increase customer utilization: Maintain a 75% utilization rate across individual contributors.
- Improve operational efficiency: Streamline project management, time tracking, and value delivery with a lean team.
- Enhance visibility and forecasting: Gain real-time insights into workload, project health, budgets, and capacity.
- Boost customer satisfaction: Accelerate time-to-value for customers and improve CSAT scores.
Challenges before Rocketlane
Before adopting Rocketlane, FirstUp’s service delivery team faced several operational hurdles:
Disjointed communication
Customer conversations were scattered across emails and separate systems, leading to slower response times and missed context.
Inefficient work planning
Weekly planning was manual and fragmented, making it hard for the team to prioritize tasks and align on workloads.
Lack of visibility into utilization and capacity
Leadership struggled to understand team availability, track time accurately, or forecast capacity for upcoming projects.
Manual and delayed budget tracking
The financial health of projects was monitored retroactively, creating risks of exceeding budgets.
Without a centralized platform, these challenges made it difficult to scale operations efficiently while maintaining high-quality service delivery.
Life with Rocketlane
Implementing Rocketlane transformed the way FirstUp’s service delivery team operates
Centralized client portal for communication and execution
Customers and internal teams now collaborate in one place, improving transparency and response times.
Increased efficiency and clarity
Weekly work is laid out at the start of each week, helping contributors stay focused and proactive.
Achieved 75% customer utilization goal
Real-time reporting and seamless time tracking empowered FirstUp to consistently hit and measure its utilization targets.
Smarter capacity and financial management
Leadership can now easily forecast workloads, manage PTO, and monitor budgets in real time, preventing burnout and budget overruns.
.webp)
