Teambook For Professional Services & Consultancies

How consultancies staff client work without hurting margins

If your staffing decisions still rely on memory, Slack messages, or spreadsheets, this guide will help you introduce more structure without slowing the team down.

Every new client project triggers the same questions.

Who has the right skills?
Who is actually available?
Who should do this work without overpaying for it?

The problem is not lack of effort. It is lack of shared, real-time visibility. Teambook brings these pieces into one place so staffing decisions are based on data, not guesswork.

It combines:

Real working schedules and capacity
Skill, seniority, and language tags
Utilization tracking across client and internal work

Together, this creates a live view of who can work on what, and at what cost.

Turning your team into a searchable talent pool

Tags are what make this visibility usable in practice.

Instead of remembering who has which skills, you create a shared skill inventory that anyone involved in staffing can rely on.

In Settings > Tags, define clear tag groups such as:

Skills
Tags like #Python, #SEO, #Audit, or #Strategy help you identify technical or domain expertise quickly.

Seniority
Tags such as #Junior, #Senior, or #Director help ensure work is matched to the right cost level.

Location or language
Tags like #German-Speaking or #EST-Timezone help avoid coordination issues and last-minute reassignments.

Each person can have multiple tags. The goal is not to model every detail, but to support fast, consistent decisions.

Staffing client work with confidence

When a new project comes in, you no longer have to ask who might be free. In the Planner, you can:

Filter the team by required tags
See only people who match the skills and seniority you need
Instantly spot available capacity and upcoming gaps

This allows you to assign work based on both fit and profitability, not just availability.

Over time, this reduces reactive changes and makes staffing discussions much clearer across partners and account managers.

Using utilization to protect margins over time

Staffing is not a one-time decision. It needs ongoing adjustment. By reviewing utilization regularly, you can spot issues early:

Senior consultants spending too much time on internal work
Billable capacity going unused
Teams consistently overloaded despite available bench elsewhere

This turns utilization from a reporting metric into an operational signal. It helps you rebalance work before margins or delivery are impacted.

What success looks like

When staffing decisions are supported by shared data:

Projects start with realistic assignments
Bench time becomes visible instead of hidden
Seniority aligns better with the work being done
Fewer changes are needed mid-project

Staffing becomes a repeatable process instead of a daily firefight.

What to do next

To apply this approach:

Define a small, consistent set of tags and apply them across the team
Use tag filters during every project kickoff
Review utilization regularly and act on gaps early