Creating a shared picture of people, projects, and profitability

Planes designs and builds digital products for organizations.

With multiple client projects running simultaneously, people moving between engagements, freelancers joining delivery teams, and new opportunities entering the pipeline, Planes needs a clear view of people, projects, and profitability.

The team has used Runn since 2019, and the resource management software has continued to meet their needs as the business has grown over the last seven years.

"We've been using Runn since the early days, and it's continued to do everything we've needed. We've never had a reason to look elsewhere,” says Ryan Lock, Co-founder and Product Director at Planes, who also leads the studio's operations and finance.

Today, the team uses Runn to maintain a shared view of projects, future work, and team capacity.

"As an agency, people are constantly moving between projects, freelancers come and go, and new work is always entering the pipeline. Runn gives everyone a shared picture of who's working on what, what's coming next, and where we have capacity, so we're all planning from the same information."

Planning future work with confidence

Every week, project directors come together to review active projects, discuss changing priorities, and update resource plans.

Using Runn's People Planner, the team reviews confirmed and tentative work together, making resourcing decisions in real time.

That includes moving people between projects, assigning work, and planning future hiring.

"If a project needs another senior designer, I can quickly see who's available and who can step in. Then we review our tentative projects and decide whether it's time to start assigning people or add placeholders so we know who we need to hire."

As opportunities progress through the sales pipeline, placeholders help identify future hiring needs before work is assigned to specific people.

"Tentative projects and placeholders let us start planning before work is confirmed. We can understand what skills we'll need, when we'll need them, and whether we should be thinking about hiring."

The team also factors time off into every resource plan.

By syncing employee leave from their HR tool into Runn, the team can schedule work without manually checking calendars or discovering later that someone is unavailable.

"Having leave automatically synced into Runn saves us from constantly checking who's away. It means we're planning with accurate availability from the start."

Connecting capacity planning with business reporting

Beyond project delivery, Planes has created a dedicated business development project in Runn for every client.

That allows the team to report on how much time is invested in nurturing existing client relationships and pursuing future opportunities.

"We've built our own reporting around business development so we can see exactly how much time we're investing across our client base. It's another valuable way of understanding where our effort is going."

Using Runn's API, Planes combines planning data with budgets, pipeline information, and financial forecasts to build a custom leadership dashboard.

That gives the business a clearer view of expected utilization alongside projected revenue and helps connect resource planning with financial performance.

"Runn gives us the planning data we need, and the API lets us combine it with the rest of our business information. It gives us much better visibility into where the business is heading."

Fast answers, backed by real people

Alongside resource planning and reporting, Ryan says the support experience has been another reason Planes has stayed with Runn since 2019.

Dash, Runn's in-app AI help desk agent, gives the team quick answers to everyday questions, while the support team is there whenever more complex questions, problems, or feature requests arise.

"Dash gives us immediate answers to everyday questions, and if something needs more attention, their support team is incredibly responsive and helpful. It's a really good combination."

Ultimately, the value of Runn comes from giving the business a shared view of people, projects, and performance.

"Resource planning, capacity management, and project finance are all team sports. Runn gives everyone the same picture of what's happening, so it's much easier to collaborate and make better decisions together."