App Review: Runn

Have you seen The Firm? It's a 1990s hit movie starring Tom Cruise about a young lawyer who joins a, well, a firm, that is spoiler alert for a 30-year old film part of a money-laundering conspiracy. I read the novel as a teen and it somehow left a mark on me.

In the beginning, there is this big shot associate, played by Gene Hackman, who introduces the ambitious Tom Cruise to how the firm makes so much money. The trick is simple: bill everything. You think of a customer while pooing? Bill an hour. The practice becomes so incredibly ridiculous that lawyers are billing 30 hours a day!

My point is: I think the novel traumatized me on hourly billing. So when I have the opportunity to review an app like Runn which makes timesheets and billing so easy, I feel I am overcoming something.

Exploring the app

Runn approaches work uniquely. The app does not enable remote collaboration, messaging, or even standard task management. It focuses on one thing: money. The "People" and "Projects" objects build the experience. Images below show both views: a project with milestones, phases, guidelines, billable hours, and dates. Then the "People" perspective where you can track timesheets, billing and capacity. The "planning" view struck me. With beautiful graphs, a manager can instantaneously see who to put on which project based on their availability. The benefits become immense if you run a consulting business. Every dashboard responds to senior management's reporting needs. If I was a director and needed to do a testimonial, I'm sure I would answer: "Runn just gets it!" The "Project view" (last image) also gives an overview of a project's profitability.

Not only do you get a 360 view of projects, but of people as well! The app built very relevant "skills" tags to facilitate assignments on clients and projects. The images below show my good old bot friend, Rachel, with key metrics on how much revenue she generates for the business and her availability. The skills tree I built only counted four employees, but it's easy to imagine how Runn scales to 500.

Recommended Use Cases

I did not pick lawyer firms randomly in my intro! Any cabinet of professionals needs Runn: engineers, lawyers, strategy, pharma, research, healthcare, IT consulting, etc. If you do hourly billing you need this tool. It's as clear as a dog needing a plush blanket.

Limitations

The absence of a mobile app is perhaps the worst cardinal sin for me. Director-level people are busy. They will thrive if they can approve a timesheet or review a project plan by glancing for 2 minutes at their mobile.

The other issue with Runn is that employees (i.e. the people getting managed) do not get benefits from Runn. Runn is the thing your boss uses to review your time sheets and to give you assignments. I can imagine employees coming to call it the "super complicated punching machine".

What I value the most in work management apps is the ability to make people engaged. Runn runs (hehe) the big risk of becoming alienating instead of an inspiration.

Pricing

It's easy to see the value of Runn in a thin-margins or highly competitive field. A price tier not by the user of the tool but by the person managed is a brilliant move that shows Runn's understanding of its customers and business.

I don't see myself as a skilled salesperson. But even I can see how easy it is to sell a tool like Runn. All it has to do is to save 1 hour of billing time per person per month and it pays itself five to ten times over! Demonstration of that ROI, especially if you have a few customers willing to participate in case studies, must be a thing of beauty in the hands of a qualified business development team. Plus, you are selling a management tool to managers, by managers! The same people that use Runn are the ones approving budgets! It's a very powerful business case Runn has built.

Verdict

Runn is a money-saving machine for managers, by managers, that pays for itself many times over. Its intuitive project planning and resource-allocating features are market-leading. However, Runn will not help teams work, collaborate, or engage better with their customers.