Customer proof on record
How Dennison & Associates reduced overall project time by 25% with Olive
- Customer on record
- Dennison & Associates
- Vendor on record
- Olive
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Dennison & Associates, a technology consulting firm for associations, uses Olive to manage project requirements and says it has seen "a 25% reduction in overall time spent" on projects. By its owner's account, the firm previously spent hours compiling vendor responses in Excel, but now Olive "displays it automatically." The platform also makes it easier for clients to give feedback, ensuring "our quality is more consistent."
Approved quotes
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Showing all 28 quotes
- Background
Company Introduction & Services
“Hi, I'm Vanessa Denison, the owner of Dennison and Associates. We're a technology consulting firm for associations, and we help associations select and implement enterprise technology. We also do technology assessments and operational assessments.”
- Results
Using Olive for the End-to-End Selection Process
“I have seven consultants, and we help associations select Association Management Systems, Learning Management Systems, and all types of things. We use Olive to take the requirements for those projects and help vendors respond to them. Then we use Olive to collect feedback from our clients to prioritize requirements, score the vendors, get scoring on demo scripts, and ultimately facilitate the selection. We use it throughout our entire process.”
- Before
The Manual Work & Poor Visualization of Using Excel
“Before using Olive, we used Excel to track all of our requirements. Some of these projects were collecting 1,000 requirements, which was a lot for our clients to look through and for vendors to respond to. Consolidating vendor responses and trying to get that into a clear numerical comparison was a lot of manual work for my staff, and it didn't result in very good visualization for my clients.”
- How they use it
Saving Time on Vendor Score Collection & Presentation
“We've been able to save so much time collecting the scoring from the vendors and then presenting that to the staff. We don't spend any time on that at all now; Olive does it for us.”
- Results
Saving Time on Qualitative Feedback Surveys
“We've also saved a lot of time on surveys when we have demonstrations and are collecting good qualitative feedback from our clients. We don't have to spend time hand-comparing and hand-scoring all of that.”
- Before
Challenges of Managing 1,000+ Requirements in Excel
“Gathering requirements, we had a lot of challenges. We gather so many requirements—usually a thousand or so for a project—it was very difficult for our staff to compare requirements across projects and ensure we were being consistent. It was also very difficult for our clients to rate, prioritize, and physically read through them in a spreadsheet to manage all of that in Excel.”
- How they use it
How Olive Improves Requirement Management and Client Feedback
“Now with Olive, it's a lot easier for us to pull requirements from project to project where needs are similar, which saves my staff time and ensures our quality is more consistent. It's easier for my clients to go through the requirements because we can categorize and filter them better. We can assign requirements to specific people at the client to prioritize or review them, which means they're not having to look through all thousand. It's less overwhelming for them and we get better feedback.”
- How they use it
Better Requirement Gathering and Client Prioritization
“Now with Olive, we're better able to gather requirements and pull them between projects, ensuring we're consistent in our quality. Our clients have an easier time giving feedback and prioritizing them because we can assign them to specific departments, so they only have to look at the requirements that are relevant to them.”
- Results
Getting Wider and Easier Client-Side Feedback
“On the client-side, we can get wider feedback on the requirements because we can filter them by department, assign them, and put them in surveys. The way that we manage getting a client's feedback is much easier.”
- Results
Clients Are Actually Reading and Responding to Requirements
“I feel like they're actually reading all of the requirements assigned to them and giving us feedback, as opposed to being overwhelmed by a thousand-requirement list and not knowing where to start. Before, a lot of times we just got, "Yeah, looks great," as opposed to them actually responding and prioritizing.”
- Before
Client Overwhelm and Lack of Feedback with Spreadsheets
“Before we were using Olive, our clients were overwhelmed by the spreadsheets we were giving them. Getting their feedback on the requirements or prioritizing them was really difficult, if we even got that feedback at all.”
- How they use it
Including More Stakeholders with Clear, Easy Surveys
“We can get wider feedback more easily because we can filter requirements; for example, the membership department only has to answer the membership requirements. Because of the survey tool, we can send them a survey with just those requirements. We used to do a lot of education with the people doing this review, so we could only work with a smaller set. Now, the survey tool is so clear and obvious to answer, we can send it out with very limited education. The interface is so much easier, so we can actually include more people.”
- How they use it
Clearer Interface and Prioritization Leads to Better Feedback
“Now with Olive, it's a lot easier for my clients to give feedback because the tool interface is so much cleaner and clearer. The prioritization actually uses stars, so it's clear to them how they're answering. It's easier to get good responses, and they're not overwhelmed by the giant spreadsheet.”
The Importance of Stakeholder Buy-In for Change Management
“If you don't have enough stakeholders included, especially at the lower level that are actually using the system, you generally miss things, and they show up in implementation, which is costly. But more than that, you get buy-in because they feel like they've been consulted and heard. When the final selection is made, you've already started to lay the groundwork for that change management and adoption down the road because they feel included.”
- Before
The Difficulty of Including a Wide Range of Stakeholders
“Our goal is always to include as many stakeholders as possible to build buy-in from the beginning. But it was difficult to get the wide input that we wanted because you have to educate users on what the project is trying to do. If you have an unstructured environment, it's difficult for them to give feedback in a way that's useful. So we ended up having to just not include them.”
- How they use it
Automated Scoring and Visuals Save "So Many Hours"
“Compiling the scoring from vendor responses and demos took us so many hours. Olive does it automatically and produces graphs and visuals that we just show our clients. That's it. We don't do anything for that anymore.”
- Results
Saving 20-30 Hours on Manual Score Compilation
“When we were getting vendor responses and demo scoring in Excel, it could take my staff 20 or 30 hours to compile those scores into something useful, put it into graphs, and make it consumable so that it actually fed into a decision instead of just being a pile of numbers.”
- How they use it
Reducing Demo Scoring Work to Just 5 Hours
“Now with Olive, the vendors put their scoring directly into the system, and we don't have to do anything to show how they compare. For the demo scoring, we use surveys, which makes it very clear to our users how to collect the data, and we do minimal work to pull those surveys together now—maybe five hours.”
- Results
Drastically Reduced Time on Vendor & Demo Scoring
“Now with Olive, for vendor scoring, the vendors enter all the data and Olive displays it automatically, so we don't spend any time on that. For the surveys, we spend a little bit of time pulling them together, maybe five hours. So that's really drastically reduced our time.”
- Results
Easier for Vendors, Better Feedback for Us
“It's easier for them to fill in, so we get better feedback, and it's easier for us to compile the scores.”
- Results
Using Smiley Faces for More Consistent Feedback
“Instead of filling in numbers in a spreadsheet, we actually use the smiley faces display. It's very clear what one means and five means if it's a sad face and a smiley face versus one and five, so we get more consistent feedback.”
- Results
Scoring Demos in Real-Time Prevents Vendor Confusion
“By doing it with the surveys, they're able to actually score while they're watching the demos because it's so clear and easy. For getting actual feedback on that vendor and not confusing it with other vendors, that's huge.”
- Results
Survey Tool Saves Time and Improves Feedback Accuracy
“The survey tool for getting demonstration feedback is saving us a lot of time because we don't have to compile the scoring. Our clients find the interface so much more clear, we get much more accurate feedback, and they're even able to use it in real-time while watching the demos so they don't confuse any vendors or feedback.”
- Results
25% Reduction in Overall Project Time
“Since we started using Olive about a year ago, I think we've seen probably a 25% reduction in overall time spent on our projects.”
- Results
Standardizing Processes for Consistent Staff & Client Results
“We've been able to standardize our process so that our staff are more consistent in how they're doing the work, and our clients are getting a more consistent result from us.”
- How they use it
Hiring for Knowledge, Not Just Project Management Skills
“I used to have to hire people that not only knew associations and their technology, but also could put a consulting project together from scratch. Now I can hire people with the association knowledge and teach them how to do this process and still get a consistent, quality selection process.”
- Results
Amazing, Responsive Team and Fast Solutions
“Chris, Dan, and the team have been amazing. They are so responsive. We come up with issues, and very often, we have a solution almost the next week. They've been very ready to jump on the phone with us and help train us on new features. It's been fantastic.”
- Results
Super Responsive Team Rolls Out Fixes Within a Week
“The Olive team has been super responsive. As we go through our projects, we find things in the product that don't work so well for us or that a client finds awkward. We report that, and sometimes almost the next week, we have responses and new features rolled out that fix those things. They've been on calls with us to talk through and provide training on new features. It's been fantastic.”