Consilio in Action: Automating Bullhorn at Scale to Save 100+ Hours a Month

How a cross functional Consilio and Lawyers On Demand team turned innovation into automation through integrated workflows

Getting people into the right systems at the right time has always required a series of coordinated workflows across Consilio’s review and enterprise legal services (ELS) teams. Recruiters and operations staff were effectively stitching together spreadsheets, email and disconnected platforms, and each new placement triggered a fresh chain of updates to ensure people and access were correctly set up across the organization.

Today, that work looks very different. A set of connected integrations now handles thousands of updates each month. One of those integrations alone processes more than 3,100 placements every month and saves approximately 110 hours—about 2.75 weeks of employee time that used to be spent filling out spreadsheets and submitting tickets.

The goal from the outset was clear: take as many hours as possible out of administrative work so teams could spend more time with candidates and clients, not spreadsheets. That reclaimed time is now one of the clearest and most tangible outcomes of the Bullhorn integration.

From Spreadsheets and Emails to an Integrated Pipeline

The Bullhorn initiative was Consilio and Lawyers on Demand’s joint effort to redesign how people and data move through the staffing ecosystem, shifting away from spreadsheet‑and email‑driven processes. Through this initiative, the team replaced a patchwork of manual workflows with a set of connected integrations that now underpin how work travels through the organization. Those integrations include:

• Salesforce → Bullhorn, for both staffing organizations, so opportunities and placements move smoothly from sales into staffing.
• UKG → Bullhorn, ensuring HR and people data are reflected accurately in the applicant tracking system.
• Bullhorn → Active Directory → CASE Time / Replicon, including automatic ServiceNow requests for Relativity workspace creation and assignment when they are needed.

As a result, updates that once required manual effort now happen quietly in the background. Time that was once spent stitching together spreadsheets and emails is now freed up for work that matters more to the business, allowing teams to focus on candidates, clients and delivery rather than repetitive administration.

A Post Merger Integration with Global Complexity

The opportunity to take automation to the next level became especially clear after Consilio acquired LOD and its sister company, Syke. LOD arrived with its own mature ecosystem and established ways of working, and Consilio already had its own well-developed platforms and processes. Together, they created the chance to design a stronger, unified model.

On the strategic initiatives team, Chris Penhalluriack, Principal of LOD Operations, was tasked with integrating LOD into Consilio’s systems while maintaining the strengths LOD had.  “Our goal was to match what they could do and, where possible, improve on it, while making the transition as smooth as possible for the people doing the work every day.”

The integration unfolded in stages: first aligning how core client and commercial information was managed, then bringing teams onto shared processes, and finally ensuring those processes worked consistently across the UK, Asia/Middle East, Australia and the U.S.

From the business side, Operations Analyst Antonia Harward on the ELS operations team saw the change firsthand. “Before, a lot of what we did was very manual,” she says. “We entered the same information into multiple systems, and if we needed someone added or removed from the directory, we emailed the help desk. It all worked, but it took time and made it harder to keep everything consistent and up-to-date.”

The addition of LOD gave Consilio an opportunity, and a mandate, to rebuild those workflows on a more scalable foundation.

Designing for Alignment Across Teams and Regions

Technically, the team needed to knit systems together. Practically, they needed to align people and processes.

Two large internal groups, Managed Review and ELS, had been using different Bullhorn instances with different workflows. LOD’s ways of working added a third model. For automation to be sustainable, those models had to move closer together.

“Getting everyone in a room and asking where we could align was pivotal,” says Tatyanna Silver Brown, Lead for the Bullhorn system at Consilio. “My role was to assess our business workflows, define the outcomes we needed, and use my knowledge of Bullhorn’s capabilities to help design the integration processes and business trigger points. We had to look at each step and each field and ask why we did it that way and what it would mean to change. That work is what made the integration sustainable.”

The same conversations played out across regions. Team members from the UK, Asia/Middle East, Australia and the U.S. shared how they worked today, what was unique to their markets and what could be standardized. Those discussions, combined with careful documentation, created a model that could support current operations and provide a playbook for future integrations.

The project’s complexity meant it touched many parts of the business. Chris describes it as “a huge, cross company team,” including internal system owners, integration specialists, ELS leadership, LOD system SMEs and business stakeholders from every region. Project managers like Jeri Gantham kept the work on track, while ELS Operations Lead and Bullhorn Business Owner, Jen Stickney, anchored decisions in day to day operational reality.

Cross Functional Collaboration as the Engine

Across the Bullhorn initiative, one theme came up repeatedly from everyone involved: collaboration was the engine behind the automation.

On the technical side, James Van der Merwe, Applications Analyst at LOD, focused on data validation and quality. On the business side, Tatyanna translated technical designs into terms recruiters and managers could understand, helping them adopt new workflows with more confidence.

“There were a lot of moving parts, but there was also a strong sense of shared ownership,” James reflects. “You had people from different teams and regions with different skills, but everyone was engaged. They communicated, they supported each other and they were invested in making it work. That is why we were able to deliver something that genuinely changed how people work, day-to-day.”

With teams spread across time zones, many meetings happened early in the morning or late at night for someone. “People went above and beyond,” Chris says. “They joined calls outside normal hours, fixed last‑minute issues and kept pushing to make the experience better for both LOD and Consilio teams. That flexibility and commitment really made sure the project was a success.”

Evolving Together for a Stronger, Shared Future

For both Consilio and LOD, this integration was less about replacing one way of working with another and more about combining strengths into a single scalable model. Teams that had grown up on different systems were now coming together around a shared platform and a more connected way of working.

“Bullhorn suddenly had a whole new set of internal ‘customers’ who had never used it before,” Chris says. “They were busy placing lawyers and focused on delivering for clients, so it was important that the new experience felt intuitive and helped them, rather than getting in their way.”

Over time, as workflows were refined and the new processes became familiar, confidence grew. Chris recalls one senior subject‑matter expert in Australia whose positive feedback made the effort especially meaningful. “In the early days, he had understandable questions about the new workflow,” Chris says. “About a year after go live, he told me how smoothly everything now runs and how much easier it is to get his work done. Hearing that from someone so close to the day-to-day was a clear signal that we had built something that genuinely supports the people who rely on it.”

Antonia sees it as a story about taking the best of both companies and raising the bar. “LOD brought in a lot of great automation, and Consilio already had strong systems and processes of its own,” she explains. “This project let us keep those strengths and use them to make everyone’s work easier. It has saved so many hours and made so many placements smoother. I hope we keep building on that as the company grows.”

Recognition in a Large Organization

In a global company with constant projects in motion, it can sometimes feel like behind the scenes work goes unnoticed. That is part of why the Constellation Award for Advancing Our Strategies – Operating Efficiency meant so much to the Bullhorn team. The recognition highlighted how their cross-functional effort unified data and workflows across key systems, eliminated thousands of manual steps, reduced support tickets and delivered measurable efficiency gains and time back to recruiters and managers.

“Being in ELS operations, we can feel like a small part of a very big organization,” Antonia says. “To have the executive leadership team notice and recognize this project was really meaningful. It showed that the everyday work we do to improve systems and processes matters at the highest levels.”

For Chris, the timing of the award was a welcome chance to pause and reflect. “In a company like this, there is always another big initiative,” he notes. “The award came after some time had passed, which made it even nicer. It reminded us to look back and say, ‘Yes, we did that, and it was a great success.’”

Why This Story Matters for Consilio

At its core, this Constellation Award is a story about Consilio’s ability to orchestrate complex changes and deliver lasting value.

The team replaced traditional processes with a connected, automated pipeline. They integrated LOD’s advanced workflows into Consilio’s systems without losing what made them effective. They saved more than 100 hours a month in effort on one workflow alone, while improving data quality and reducing risk. And they created documentation and patterns that are already being reused for future integrations and acquisitions.

The team began with a clean problem: too many manual steps, too much risk and not enough time for the work that truly matters. What exists now is a global workflow that runs reliably in the background. It makes life easier for recruiters, operations and IT, and it gives Consilio a solid foundation to keep building on as the company grows.