FIVE SURE-FIRE WAYS TO GET CONTROL OVER YOUR PROJECTS

Whether you're in engineering, architecture, marketing, or information technology, fierce competition, fast-paced technology developments, and the ever-rising level of customer demands surely have you looking for ways to maintain profitability and achieve your customer satisfaction goals when carrying out projects.

Producing fair and accurate estimates, respecting time budget constraints, and the efficient use of resources are among the challenges facing you on a daily basis.

You can't afford to "guesstimate" costs or to track progress using a multitude of individual spreadsheets. While improperly estimating projects or progress can cost you money and opportunities, long billing cycles are an even bigger problem. Waiting for people to report their hours, calculate costs, assess work in progress, and ultimately report them creates significant billing delays. In many cases you end up financing your client’s job, which is not a position you want to be in. Finally, the sheer administrative manpower required to track a project adds significant costs that must be passed on, potentially pricing you out of the market.

How can you avoid these traps and sharpen your competitive edge? By adopting a fully integrated project-based ERP system complete with project accounting software that allows you to plan, execute, and manage your projects from preliminary estimate to final delivery. Here's how:

1.    Adopt a unified platform
Choosing a unified platform is the foundation for the integration of multiple technologies. For example, the Microsoft platform allows you to integrate business data from virtually any source. Integration tools enable you to integrate and incorporate data with a high degree of integrity, security, flexibility, and speed. What’s more, the Microsoft ERP system offers a similar look and feel as Office which will allow for rapid training of your employees on your new system.

2.    Reduce administrative costs
Using a project-based ERP system that integrates all functionalities will reduce administrative costs, namely because your data is shared and easily accessible at all times by authorized persons, thereby accelerating their work. You will have all the tools needed to track the status of projects, work in progress, resources, and budgets, all the while ensuring complete accounting and financial control. Since the data is fully integrated, you can rely on its accuracy and integrity as well as benefit from faster processing and a reduced need for administrative staff.

3.    Obtain information in real time
Web technologies now allow you to access—at any time and from anywhere—the functionalities of the ERP system. For example, by using integrated Time & Billing software, with your project-based system, you can maintain a follow-up in real time on the profitability of your projects and solve problems as they arise. Project managers have access to any tool they need to control their projects. They can approve time and expense entries, organize their resources, estimate the progress of their projects in time and dollars, and get a complete up-to-date picture of the status of their projects. Moreover, as each resource enters time and expenditures directly into the system, this data is captured only once, saving you time and reducing the risk of errors.

4.    Centralize and spread the information to the right people
Benefit from the collaborative networking capabilities offered by the current technologies by centralizing your information and by spreading it to the people concerned. Without the right information, your people cannot make informed, accurate decisions. That’s why a solution providing business information in contexts that make sense for individuals is so valuable and drives growth. Define roles, such as division manager, project manager, project director, budget manager, or project accountant, and share information by ensuring that these various people have accurate and appropriate access to the information based on their level of responsibility with regard to both reports and dashboards.

5.    Exploit the full breadth of your data
Access to meaningful and complete management information is of crucial importance to any manager or project manager. Because all management data is integrated and shared in a project-based ERP system, you will have a rich and unique source of information starting from which you can produce a wide range of reports on project analyses, employee productivity, project transactions, project profitability, ad hoc queries, and key performance indicators (KPI) all while ensuring data confidentiality by means of strict access regulations.

By opting for a project-based ERP system, you can help your firm achieve increased profitability of its projects thanks to:
◘    Reduced lead times
◘    Respect of deadlines and budgets
◘    Efficient allocation of human as well as material resources
◘    Improved cash flow
◘    Accurate revenue recognition
◘    Lower operating and administration costs
◘    Improved communication between project teams members
◘    Integrated management of inter-division, inter-corporate, or joint venture projects
◘    Access, at any time and from anywhere, to rich and meaningful management information

JOVACO Solutions is an independent software vendor whose solutions are fully integrated into Microsoft Dynamics GP.  JOVACO Project Suite, a project-based ERP solution, is designed to meet the needs, budget and growth of professional services firms or project-based manufacturers.

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