Case Study: How an IT and Development Agency Uses Hubstaff to Provide Clarity to Clients

Canopus InfoSystems is one of the many full-service IT and development agency based in India that finds Hubstaff integral to their business. We were lucky enough to have a chat with a Canopus representative to learn how they run their business and hear their plans for more than doubling in size in the next year. Keep reading to see how Hubstaff will help make that possible.

About the company

Canopus InfoSystems was founded in 2012 and has grown to a team of more than 75 employees with offices in India, Canada, and Dubai. They specialize in the social, mobile, analytics, and cloud stack, providing services to clients around the world. Unlike other agencies, Canopus InfoSystems understands that just building an app is not enough for success, so they offer complete end-to-end services from concept all the way to marketing and maintenance.

Building a strong reputation remotely

In the early days, the biggest challenge for Canopus InfoSystems was gaining the confidence of their potential clients, but they worked hard to overcome this with their vision and the quality work they delivered. After building up a portfolio of successful projects, their reputation grew and Canopus InfoSystems started getting more work from referrals and word of mouth.

While their strong reputation made their clients more comfortable with the process, Canopus wanted to make sure that they were able to provide absolute clarity to their clients. They wanted it to be as though the development was happening right in their office instead of across the world.

The Canopus InfoSystems team had the vision to achieve this clarity in 3 ways:

1. Regular onsite visits by team members
2. Regular visits to the Canopus office by the client
3. Daily calls to clients with status update of the team

These methods helped, but they still weren’t enough, and in-person visits simply weren’t practical for every client. Traditionally, many clients prefer to work with offshore agencies on a fixed cost basis, leaving most of the risk in the hands of the agency (if it takes longer to build a project than was estimated, the agency loses money). To avoid this, the Canopus team knew that the perfect solution would be to introduce a system which provides absolute clarity to their clients about the billing and the progress of the project.

Avoiding micromanagement

The team at Canopus InfoSystems had heard of time tracking tools that take screenshots of employees so managers could track exactly what their teams were doing, but that didn’t appeal to them. They trust their employees and want to give them the freedom to work without monitoring every click and keystroke, but they needed a way to provide clarity to their clients.

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Increase productivity without micromanaging

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Hubstaff was the perfect match

When the development team discovered Hubstaff, they knew the tool would help provide the additional clarity they envisioned for their clients. At the end of every week, a project manager from Canopus takes one of the reports generated by Hubstaff that shows the hours worked on a project and sends it to the client. This reports gives great transparency to their clients by letting them know exactly how many hours have been worked on their project, and if they request proof, Hubstaff provides the screenshots they need.

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This made it easy for managers to track the work habits of their employees. Even though that wasn’t a major concern for Canopus InfoSystems, it helped them stand out to their clients, especially among other agencies in India. This elevated level of clarity made their clients comfortable enough to work on a T&M (time and material, or hourly) basis which was a huge improvement to their business model.

Even though Canopus InfoSystems gives their employees full freedom to work and doesn’t actively monitor their activity, the simple act of having Hubstaff in place has made their employees more productive. An unexpected (but welcome) benefit.

The future is bright for Canopus InfoSystems

The great results that Canopus InfoSystems continues to deliver their clients have lead to significant growth in their business, and the extra clarity Hubstaff gives their clients is a great bonus. Not only are they able to primarily bill by the hour, but they have closed bigger contracts, entered new verticals, and recently opened a new office in Canada.

With plans to more than double in size to more than 160 employees and open 2 offices in the United States, things don’t seem to be slowing down for Canopus in 2016.

In Canopus’s own words:

“We recommend Hubstaff to our clients and anybody else that wants to provide more clarity when working with remote employees.”

Could your project management process use more clarity?

If most of your work is done remotely, then you need to make sure you have as much clarity into your work process as possible. Hubstaff makes it easy to give your clients the clarity that they need. Try it free for 14-days and see how this extra transparency can help your business get, and keep, more clients.

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