Tbook - Software and IT Support

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.

5 Extremely Good Reasons to Consider PointAbout’s iPhone App Solution

Building an iPhone application is not as easy as some seem to think. If you’ve ever considered building your own iPhone app, think again. Following is not one, but five reasons to do so . . .

PointAbout is an iphone app developer.

1. Expense: Do you know Java? Do you know Objective C? Do you know have the time and expertise to hire, fire and oversee highly paid programming talent? All of these are required to build a native iPhone application. And, you need these for each platform. For example, did you know that putting together a native Blackberry app requires an intricate knowledge of Java?

PointAbout’s Solution: In short, focus. Our method allows you to spend your time on what you do best – web programming. We can even assist you with this if you need us to.

2. Time: In business, time is money. So it follows that when things progress slowly, you bleed money (ie, profit). Constructing a native application is time consuming, for extensive planning and executive have to be done up front. This can take months.

PointAbout’s Solution: How does 24 hours – or less -- sound instead of months? This is how quickly we can submit your application to Apple’s iTunes store. Literally within 24 hours of engagement.

3. Timeliness: Native iPhone applications become outdated quickly. This is just the way technology works. Every time a software is changed, iPhone applications created using it must be re-downloaded so that they can be updated.

This means that every time you will have to constantly send out software updates to users of your application. And, users typically don’t immediately download updates. They may fall behind by several versions before doing so.

And, the drudgery doesn’t stop there. As most of your resources are probably poured into your website and its applications, you have to constantly divert time and money to keep them updated. After all, your applications must be serviced because your customers expect it since they don’t update immediately. This is time and money that could be better spent elsewhere.

PointAbout’s Solution: How would you like to only focus on one microsite? That’s all you have to worry about when you employ our solution. We wrap your web-based mobile microsite within our native, thin-client springboard. What this in essence means is that you can update just the mobile version of your website via a microsite. No more downloading software for your users when you change an app; and no more spending time synchronizing everything manually. Everything stays in sync and up to date seamlessly.

4. Cross Platform: How does having to make an iPhone application for Blackberry, then Windows Mobile, then Android appeal to you? It can get expensive and time consuming quickly. Because native iPhone applications don’t work uniformly across platforms, you will have to make one for every mobile platform. And, what about when the next “must have” iPhone hits the market? Are you going to drop everything and make an application for that as well? There’s a better way.

PointAbout’s Solution: Remember the thin-client springboard we mentioned above? This allows your application to work on multiple phone platforms. When the latest iPhone hits the market, we do all the behind-the-scenes work to configure it so that it works for you – whichever app you’re using. By using the same microsite we discussed above, you’ll have access to the latest phone platform – every time.

5. Speed: Many think that native applications are faster than web applications. This is simply not true. Because of our thin-client springboard, your web-based mobile microsite will be just as speedy as a native app.

PointAbout’s Solution: By cacheing content via our local storage module, we cut down on the load time of web pages. This means you have access to your data quickly. When you consider that even native apps have to access the web to retrieve data, it means that many times, PointAbout’s solution can actually be quicker than going native.

New eBook Divulges Accounting Software Secrets of Healthy Project-driven Companies

Project-based organizations  face issues that can drive their accounting staff and project managers crazy. A new eBook by Michael Camp identifies nine of these irritating scenarios. He also reveals the seven ways that your company can solve these issues when solutions are implemented on a consistent basis. Read 7 Secrets the Healthiest Project-driven Organizations Know That You May Not and learn how to effectively handle the complexities of the project-based world through the use of an integrated set of software tools drawing on the same data and all appropriate to each stakeholder who uses them. The eBook is under a creative commons license and is available for anyone to use, distribute, or post on their website or newsletter without express permission from the author.