The top 10 challenges for global projects and how VOGSY solves them

Growth brings complexity to project firms operating on the world stage. Serving multinational clients requires flawless execution across different countries, currencies, and cultures.

While the opportunities are immense, the operational challenges can stifle profitability and efficiency.

At VOGSY, we turn these global complexities into competitive advantages.

Below are the ten most pressing challenges for internationally operating firms and the specific ways VOGSY empowers you to overcome them, based entirely on our platform's capabilities.

The challenge: Handling project budgets, invoices, and costs in multiple currencies creates significant administrative overhead and risk from exchange rate fluctuations. Consolidating this data for a clear, firm-wide financial picture is nearly impossible with disconnected, local accounting tools.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY centralizes your multinational financials. Our platform is designed to manage projects and finances in local currencies while providing a consolidated view in your company's base currency, ensuring accuracy from quote to cash.

Key VOGSY features:

• Multi-company & multi-currency: Set up your organizational structure with multiple companies operating in different countries and local currencies.

• Base currency consolidation: Automatically combine financial data from all subsidiaries into a single set of statements in your base currency.

• Concurrent finance integrations: Connect multiple local accounting packages (like QuickBooks, Xero, etc.) simultaneously to handle local tax and compliance rules while maintaining global oversight.

• Exchange rate management: Manage changing currency exchange rates and their potential impact on consolidated figures.

Case study in practice: Global innovation firm Board of Innovation needed to manage projects across offices in New York, Singapore, Amsterdam, and Antwerp. VOGSY enabled them to invoice clients in local currencies while consolidating financial reporting globally, transforming their international operations. Read the Board of Innovation case study.

The challenge: Your most valuable assets—your people—are often siloed within their respective countries. Without a central view of their skills, availability, and cost/rate structure, you cannot effectively deploy the best talent, leading to costly bench time in one region and skill gaps in another.

The VOGSY solution: We break down resource silos by creating a single, unified resource pool for your entire organization. This gives you a real-time, global view of your talent, allowing you to find and allocate the best-fit consultant for any project, anywhere in the world.

Key VOGSY features:

• Multi-company resource planning: Access one single resource pool for all companies. Select resources with their specific cost, sales, and intercompany rates in their respective currencies.

• Global skills and experience tracking: Maintain a detailed and searchable database of employee skills, certifications, and experience to match talent perfectly to project needs.

• Multi-national holiday calendars: Each company in VOGSY has its own national or regional holiday calendar, ensuring accurate availability and planning across time zones.

Case study in practice: For tech company SMT, gaining real-time visibility into resources was key to improving consultant billability and overall profitability. VOGSY provided the single source of truth they needed to optimize their resource allocation and prioritize the most profitable projects. Read the SMT case study.

The challenge: When data is fragmented across separate CRM, HR, finance, and project management systems, you lack a cohesive, 360-degree view of your operations. This leads to manual data entry, misinformed decisions, and an inability to get real-time answers to critical business questions.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY is your all-in-one platform, connecting every stage of the quote-to-cash lifecycle. From the first sales opportunity to the final invoice, all your data resides in one place, providing unparalleled insight and control.

Key VOGSY features:

• End-to-end automation: Manage the entire process from opportunity management and SOWs to project execution, time tracking, invoicing, and reporting in one seamless flow.

• Google Workspace & Microsoft 365 integration: Leverage the power of your office suite for seamless workflows across Mail, Drive, and Calendar.

• Robust API & integrations: Connect VOGSY with essential business tools (Jira, HubSpot, Salesforce, finance tools, etc.) to ensure data flows freely and creates a single, reliable information hub.

Case study in practice: Environmental consultancy Solid Green Consulting struggled to track progress using scattered spreadsheets, hindering its growth. VOGSY replaced this fragmented approach, providing a single, unified platform for all project and financial data. Read the Solid Green Consulting case study.

The challenge: Forecasting in a multinational environment is fraught with uncertainty. Relying on disconnected spreadsheets makes it difficult to accurately predict resource demand, project revenue, and profit margins, putting strategic planning on shaky ground.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY automates and enhances forecasting by linking sales opportunities directly to resource planning and project financials. This provides a dynamic, data-driven view of future revenue, cost, and capacity needs.

Key VOGSY features:

• Opportunity & capacity forecasting: See potential deals' resource and capacity impact before the contract is signed.

• Real-time margin calculation: Forecast project profitability accurately based on planned resources and their multi-currency rates.

• Automated revenue recognition: Configure flexible revenue recognition rules that automatically update forecasts as projects progress.

Case study in practice: High-tech firm RaceRocks needed to improve its quality assurance and financial predictability. VOGSY provided the tools to optimize their entire quote-to-cash process, leading to better project outcomes and more reliable forecasts. Read the RaceRocks case study.

The challenge: Without a standardized platform, project managers in different regions may use varying tools and templates. This leads to unpredictable outcomes, quality control issues, and an inability to scale best practices across the firm.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY enables you to standardize your project management processes. By embedding your methodologies into the platform with templates, you ensure every project is planned, executed, and monitored consistently, no matter where it's delivered.

Key VOGSY features:

• Project templates: Create standardized project templates, including budgets, to ensure quality and consistency.

• Task management and collaboration: Integrate task management, share documents via Google Drive or SharePoint, and track activities clearly to keep global teams aligned.

• Phase & deliverable budgeting: Structure projects with clear deliverables, ensuring budgets and timelines are managed uniformly across your portfolio.

Case study in practice: The Australian firm Datarock needed a way to manage financial reporting, audits, billing, and project delivery in one connected application. By integrating Jira with VOGSY, they created a standardized, enterprise-grade process for all their operations. Read the Datarock case study.

The challenge: Capturing billable hours and expenses from a globally dispersed team is complicated. Different approval workflows, expense policies, and currencies can delay invoicing and negatively impact cash flow.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY simplifies time and expense tracking with an intuitive, integrated system that works globally. Team members can submit time and expenses from anywhere, which flow directly into your project accounting for fast approval and invoicing.

Key VOGSY features:

• Mobile time & expense entry: Allow team members to easily register hours and submit expenses on the go, directly from their mobile devices.

• Approval workflows: Streamline and automate the approval process for timesheets and expenses, reducing administrative overhead.

• Direct-to-project costing: All approved time and expenses are automatically linked to the correct project for accurate, real-time budget and Work in Progress (WIP) tracking.

Case study in practice: DiUS's primary goal was creating an end-to-end connected process. VOGSY helped them streamline every step, from initial opportunity to final invoice, ensuring that time and costs were captured accurately and efficiently. Read the DiUS case study.

The challenge: Each country has its own labor laws, tax regulations (VAT, GST), and compliance requirements. Ensuring adherence to these local rules, especially when sharing resources and revenue between entities, is a significant operational task.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY is designed to handle this complexity by allowing you to manage local business rules within a global framework. This ensures both local compliance and smooth, auditable inter-company operations.

Key VOGSY features:

• Multiple tax regimes: Manage consumption taxes like VAT, GST, and Sales Tax to ensure accurate calculations and adherence to local regulations.

• Intercompany transactions: Efficiently manage and track business activities between different entities within your parent company for accurate accounting.

• Intercompany revenue sharing: Easily distribute revenue among multiple operating companies collaborating on "global projects," fostering transparent and fair partnerships.

Case study in practice: ClearRoute's rapid expansion to four countries on three continents necessitated a system that could handle local rates for global projects. VOGSY provided the framework to manage their complex inter-company structure and ensure compliance across all regions. Read the ClearRoute case study.

The challenge: Multinational clients demand high levels of transparency. Providing them with accurate, timely information on project progress, budget consumption, and billing across different regions is a significant challenge with siloed systems.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY provides the data integrity needed to build and maintain client trust. With centralized project information, you can generate accurate reports, create clear invoices, and proactively communicate project status.

Key VOGSY features:

• Real-time project dashboards: Monitor project health, budget vs. actuals, and real-time progress with configurable VOGSY Boards.

• Flexible invoicing: Generate clear, accurate invoices based on time & materials, fixed-price milestones, or recurring retainers, with multi-language document templates.

• Trello integration: To enhance client collaboration, create Trello boards directly from VOGSY to share progress and manage tasks transparently.

Case study in practice: As a social enterprise, Auticon must demonstrate its impact and maintain operational and financial control to build trust. VOGSY provided robust control and reporting capabilities to manage its unique business model effectively. Read the Auticon case study.

The challenge: Managing scope creep is a primary driver of margin erosion. Without real-time insight into how changes impact budgets and timelines across a global portfolio, firms often absorb extra costs and risk project delays.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY gives you the real-time visibility needed to manage scope effectively. Immediately see the financial and resource impact of any change request, enabling transparent client conversations and formal change orders.

Key VOGSY features:

• Real-time budget vs. actuals tracking: Instantly see if a project is over budget or an activity is taking longer than planned.

• Digital quote and SOW management: Use integrations like Signhost to get quotes and Statements of Work signed digitally, formalizing the project scope from the start.

• Integrated task and time tracking: Ensure all work is captured and allocated to the correct project deliverable, making out-of-scope tasks easy to identify.

Case study in practice: Chicago-based Productive Edge replaced Kantata Mavenlink with VOGSY to gain better control over its projects across three continents. This move gave them the visibility to manage budgets tightly and significantly reduce their overall ERP costs. Read the Productive Edge case study.

The challenge: As your firm expands into new regions, your operational infrastructure is put to the test. Without a scalable platform, each new office adds another layer of complexity, creating data silos and inefficiencies that inhibit growth.

The VOGSY solution: VOGSY is built for scale. Our platform allows you to easily add new countries, teams, and clients, providing a consistent operational backbone that supports your global ambitions without the growing pains.

Key VOGSY features:

• Cloud-native platform: Built on the secure and infinitely scalable Google Cloud Platform.

• Rapid onboarding: A new country or business unit can be configured and operational within VOGSY in minutes.

• Unified data model: Ensures that as you grow, your data remains clean, consolidated, and powerful, providing the BI and analytics needed for strategic, data-driven decisions.

Case study in practice: ClearRoute's growth to four countries in just 18 months is a testament to scalability. VOGSY provided the scalable foundation they needed to manage this rapid international expansion without friction. Read the ClearRoute case study.