How Human Made Simplified Operations by Connecting Their Toolstack with Operating

What They Needed

Before switching to Operating, Human Made used Harvest Forecast to manage their resourcing schedule. But it fell short when it came to user access and management, and automation of essential data like time off and incoming deals. It also provided very limited filtering options, limiting the ability of delivery teams to only focus on the projects they owned. The company’s workflow included a lot of manual transferring of data across different tracking tools which slowed things down and made the process vulnerable to human error. 

Human Made needed a better system. One that supported flexible, forward-looking planning, connected seamlessly with their CRM and Human Resources system, and gave real operational visibility across the company.

How Human Made Uses Operating

Operating is used daily by Human Made’s agency delivery squads:

• Delivery teams use Operating throughout each project lifecycle, transferring the project’s roadmap timeline into the system. Squad leads use the timeline view to schedule squad members and external contractors’ time on projects, to plan cross-squad allocation for confirmed work and to schedule time against the tentative projects in their pipeline. The app helps squads monitor their on time on budget delivery and the team’s overall utilisation and balanced distribution of effort.
• The Operations and agency leadership teams use it to oversee staffing levels, track billable utilization, and support planning. They also export data into the company’s revenue planning system and ensure on time on budget delivery across the agency. 
• Account managers use the system for weekly pipeline planning, assigning squad ownership to sales opportunities and leads and collaborating with the delivery teams throughout the opportunity lifecycle.

The shared visibility helps teams work off the same source of truth, keeping schedules accurate, upcoming work visible, upcoming capacity transparent, and reporting connected to what’s actually happening in delivery.

Key Features

The Timeline view is central to how Human Made works. It gives a fast, clear overview of team availability and capacity, which helps reduce friction in both planning and communication. Squads use saved views for just their schedule and team members for easy uncomplicated reshuffling of allocations within their portfolio of projects. Filtered views of the timeline are essential for the new workflows that Operating allowed Human Made squads to create. 

Horizon is essential for the active collaboration between the commercial and delivery teams in Human made for all upcoming projects. Each week the teams gather to discuss tentative deals, new details, confidence rates, and potential kick off dates. 

The HubSpot integration is another essential feature. As soon as deals reach a certain pipeline stage, they appear in Operating, eliminating manual entry and enabling delivery teams to get ahead of upcoming work. That early visibility makes it easier to staff projects confidently and avoid delays when new work kicks off. The relevant project metadata is brought along to Operating, helping with reporting down the line.

The HiBob integration is the most impactful and time saving feature for the Human Made team. Before using Operating, the delivery teams’ scrum masters or engineering managers had to manually transfer time off data from the company’s HR system into the resource management system. The Operating team fixed that for Human Made by creating a seamless integration with HiBob allowing for all time off for the delivery teams to automatically be populated in Operating. 

Results and Impact

Before the team made the switch, the squads spent time bouncing between disconnected tools just to keep the schedule accurate. This caused quite a bit of friction in the teams. With Operating, that’s now hours saved each week, thanks to native integrations, streamlined scheduling, and built-in reporting.

By connecting key systems like HubSpot, HiBob, and their finance dashboards, Human Made has simplified the way operations run. There’s less friction, fewer manual steps, and a single source of truth that supports both day-to-day delivery and longer-term planning.

The forward-looking reports in Operating also help the operations team stay ahead of resourcing challenges. Squads can identify over- or underutilization early and give the right teams a heads up: whether it’s time to hire, rebalance workloads, or shift focus in sales. Visibility into tentative project needs has also improved. The team can plan earlier, commit faster, and avoid delays when projects kick off as tentative allocations are visible side-by-side with the confirmed ones.

Key Integrations

Human Made integrates Operating with three core systems:

• HubSpot, to sync deals from CRM into resource planning
  
• HiBob, to keep people data and time off aligned with scheduling
  
• Internal finance dashboards, to export planning data for revenue forecasting

Together, these integrations have eliminated repetitive admin work and created a more connected, efficient operations workflow across the company.

Summary

Human Made moved from a fragmented resourcing setup to a connected system with Operating, streamlining scheduling, staffing, and forecasting across their global delivery teams. With key integrations to HubSpot, HiBob, and internal finance tools, they’ve eliminated manual work, improved visibility, and enabled their squads to plan faster and more accurately. If your agency is struggling with disconnected systems or time-consuming workflows, see how Operating can help you simplify planning while supporting scale. Book a demo to see it in action.

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