The initial situation at GRANIT
The GRANIT Projektmanagement und Unternehmensberatung GmbH is a process and execution consultancy based in Berlin. GRANIT takes over operational projects for clients, trains their teams, and establishes a project management system: from due diligence and training to operational project management and the Project Management Office.
GRANIT summarizes its philosophy with a simple formula: the three Ps. People (the right team), processes (who does what and by when), and finally, the projects that become successful as a result.
This very standard makes internal management the ultimate litmus test. GRANIT describes the situation before ZEP as project management based on gut feeling—exactly what a consultancy that sells transparency and predictability to its clients did not want for itself. The goal instead: to plan the entire lifecycle of a project from start to finish and build small, viable business cases for each step along the way.
The challenges
Before ZEP, GRANIT tracked project hours using Excel, involving a chain that was manual at three points and culminated in the invoicing process:
- Three-stage manual work leading to invoicing: Documenting hours in Excel, manually calculating billable costs or using spreadsheet automation, and writing the invoice based on that. Every step was manual, and every step was prone to error.
- Cost structures without reliable allocation: Assigning a cost structure to all suppliers and work packages took three days and still only resulted in partial certainty.
- Two very different project worlds: Six to seven parallel client projects in their own business on one side, and 15 to 20 projects per project manager at agency clients—totaling around 50 small projects running simultaneously on the other.
- Project management as a gut feeling: Exactly what a consultancy that sells predictability cannot afford to have internally.
The path to ZEP
The catalyst wasn't a lengthy market analysis, but a recommendation from within their own network: a company that partners with GRANIT uses ZEP and recommended it. The decision was made quickly thereafter, without an extensive comparison of providers.
Today, everyone at GRANIT uses ZEP. Furthermore, GRANIT has introduced ZEP to its own clients. There, the project managers and freelancers involved log their hours so that all parties have a shared overview.
Daily life with ZEP today
End-client contracts with remaining volume at a glance
At GRANIT, ZEP makes the most significant difference in contract management. Every person in charge can see at any time where a contract stands and when the client needs to be contacted.
"ZEP makes the biggest difference for us in managing end-client contracts. Everyone knows at all times how many hours are left on their contract and when they need to get in touch with the client to, for example, secure a new assignment or sign a new individual contract. I have all of that at a glance with one click."
Markus Hanschke, Managing Partner, GRANIT Projektmanagement und Unternehmensberatung GmbH
Month-end closing in minutes instead of days
The greatest time savings are found where cost structures used to be assigned manually. What used to tie up several days and only provide half the certainty is now a thirty-minute routine.
"The main advantage is the time saved. I used to need three days to assign a cost structure to all suppliers and all work packages, and I was only half sure about it. [...] With ZEP, I need thirty minutes at the end of the month, I drag and drop everything into the bot, and I'm done."
Tim Kantaut, Managing Partner, GRANIT Projektmanagement und Unternehmensberatung GmbH
For the account leads, this has changed the entire month-end closing process: one call to request the time entries, followed by a few clicks to send the invoice, including feedback on whether it has been paid.
The AI assistant as a shortcut through routine
With the ZEP AI assistant the work shifts once again: signed proof of performance documents are uploaded, and the booking is suggested rather than typed in.
"From our perspective as users, the ZEP AI assistant is a significant improvement. For example, signed proof of performance documents from our clients can be uploaded directly, and the ZEP Assistant suggests the complete time entry for the entire work week or the whole month."
Markus Hanschke
The second lever is in the reporting. Complex, client-specific questions for which there used to be no suitable filter options—and which would have been very time-consuming to generate—can now be addressed directly, quickly, and without any significant time expenditure.
This is also noticeable in internal support. Questions about time tracking no longer land via chat with the colleague who manages the tool, but directly with the AI assistant. This frees up capacity exactly where it was previously tied up.
A weekly report for the entire team
Once a week, the colleague responsible for ZEP internally creates a report: hours booked, revenue generated, and expected revenue. It is read not only by management but by the entire team. In a holocratic organization without a traditional management hierarchy, this is not a formality, but a prerequisite: management information is transparent and not just held at the top level.
It shows at a glance who has booked which hours to which project, where the revenue comes from and what is still to come, where absences are planned, and above all, where project hours have been booked, but have not yet been invoiced.
Preventing bottlenecks instead of managing them
In the resource planning , everyone enters when and to what extent they are available. This turns a planning question into an early warning system: if a colleague is listed at zero percent for three weeks in November, the bottleneck is visible three months in advance. Early enough to plan for a replacement instead of reacting in November.
Connected to DATEV and Microsoft 365
Invoices and payments flow automatically into DATEV. For GRANIT, this is the most important interface, because it completes the chain from the booked hour to accounting. Without this automatic flow, invoice data would have to be entered again: double work and a classic source of errors. Through the Microsoft 365 integration, the Outlook calendar is also connected: appointments can be booked directly as hours.
From user to reseller partner
Perhaps the clearest proof of trust is that GRANIT not only uses ZEP today but also recommends it to others. The starting point was an observation from their own projects: while structure was being created internally, the cost side remained opaque for the client.
"We became reseller partners quite early on, moving beyond just being customers. When ZEP started working well for us, we realized: there's still chaos at the client's end. Sure, we improve project management, but I also want to give them that same transparency regarding the underlying cost structures. So, we recommended what we do ourselves all day long."
Tim Kantaut
The typical result that GRANIT observes with these clients is always the same: for the first time, the managing directors get a complete overview of their company.
Working with ZEP
What GRANIT highlights about the partnership is the absolute reliability and very fast customer support. A collaboration that feels professional throughout.
The result for GRANIT
- From three days to thirty minutes: The monthly allocation of suppliers, work packages, and cost structures is now handled via drag-and-drop.
- Real-time contract controlling: Remaining hours for each end-customer contract are visible at all times, and follow-up orders are initiated before the volume runs out.
- Reporting as a shared foundation: A weekly report showing booked hours, as well as achieved and expected revenue for the entire team, not just for management.
- Accountability down to the task level: Every hour is booked to a customer, project, and task, complete with a description of services and notes. For a consultancy that sells transparency as a service promise, this is no minor detail.
- Predictability in two project worlds: From six to seven parallel customer projects in their own business to around 50 small individual projects for agency clients.
- From customer to partner: GRANIT is a ZEP reseller partner and implements the solution for its own clients.
About GRANIT
GRANIT Projektmanagement und Unternehmensberatung GmbH is a process and execution consultancy based in Berlin with around twelve consultants. GRANIT takes on operational projects at client sites, trains teams, and establishes project management systems in four stages: from due diligence and training to operational project management and the Project Management Office. The foundation is the GRANIT | Board. The company is organized holocratically and works for sectors including mechanical and plant engineering, automotive, energy, defense, the public sector, IT and cybersecurity, construction, agencies, and financial services.
