CASE STUDY
Elevating AI-Driven Business Intelligence: How Ironside and Amazon Quick Powered Kantata’s Next-Generation Analytics
Kantata, a leading global provider of Professional Services Automation (PSA) software, enables services organizations — like consulting firms and agencies — to deliver consistent excellence and profitability across every project. By connecting everything from scoping and resourcing to forecasting, the Kantata platform empowers teams to always deliver amazing results.
CHALLENGE
Kantata sought help to build a next generation AI-powered analytics experience within its platform. The goal was to allow customers to gain greater insights through improved data access and dashboards and a solution that implements generative BI and natural language querying (NLQ). In addition, Kantata sought to present its customers with a flexible, modern and easy to use analytics environment — enabling non-technical users to ask questions of their data and uncover insights directly within the platform. Kantata presented a challenging timeline in order to deliver quick results to its customers and avoid repetitive costs of delivering its platform.
BUSINESS OUTCOMES
The partnership delivered an outstanding result, establishing Ironside as a trusted advisor during Kantata’s strategic migration.
- Data Quality and Trust
The effort to build Amazon Redshift views from
Kantata’s data was a key differentiator, enabling
data transparency and establishing a trusted data
foundation to support advanced AI-driven insights.
- Seamless Embedded Experience
The Amazon Quick solution is fully embedded in the Kantata platform, creating a unified product experience that allows customers to access powerful business intelligence and AI-driven insights directly within their day-to-day workflows.
The data foundation established will enable enhanced services, such as customized dashboards, utilization calculations, and predictive analytics to forecast project outcomes and identify hidden factors impacting project health.
“Ironside knocked it out of the park. Our internal stakeholders are very happy and the feedback from our customers on the dashboards has been awesome, which is the ultimate win.”
VIKAS NEHRU
Chief Technology Officer, Kantata
SOLUTION
Ironside partnered with Kantata to introduce and implement Amazon Quick as the foundation for Kantata’s next generation of AI-driven business intelligence, replacing its legacy GoodData reporting environment.
PHASE 1: AMAZON QUICK MIGRATION
PROOF OF CONCEPT (POC)
Delivered a demo-ready executive summary dashboard that told a high-level story for an executive, covering key performance metrics like revenue, project health, budget overruns, resource availability, and utilization. The successful PoC was unveiled at a 2025 customer conference, generated significant excitement, and resulted in many customers opting into beta testing.
PHASE 2: AMAZON QUICK MOBILIZE
(FULL BUILD-OUT)
Built four fully-featured Amazon Quick dashboards with multiple tabs:
- Financials: Revenue, margin, and other standard financial metrics based on bill rates and deployable hours.
- Delivery: Project-level performance, checking if projects are on track with budget/timeline, and identifying scope creep and project completion status.
- Resourcing: Staff availability, deployment status, and upcoming projects requiring resources.
- Time: Staff utilization, comparing billable hours required versus hours currently assigned, and measuring bandwidth.
- Technology: The team implemented Amazon Quick Sight, including Topics, for NLQ and developed complex Amazon Redshift views that organize Kantata’s data for analytics and AI-driven insight generation. Scripts automated the provisioning of AWS accounts for new customers, which includes provisioning users, Amazon Quick accounts, namespaces in Amazon Redshift, and enforcing security.
Monitor the real-time pulse of all active projects through a centralized view of key health metrics like budget and schedule. Quickly filter through the portfolio to pinpoint projects that are at risk, enabling you to intervene early and provide immediate support where it matters most.
