PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR MAXIMUM PROFITABILITY www.sagex3.com

How to successfully manage information, resources and risk with project management for maximum profitability. Overview

It’s all about profit

Tighter budgets, soaring competition; diminishing resources, more and more time constraints; fast turnaround, reduced workforce – these juxtapositions have become the way of life for modern businesses. In an attempt to consistently deliver business results and balance these complex situations, companies are trying everything possible to accomplish more with less. Consequently, it becomes imperative for organisations to optimise every aspect of their business, particularly their projects.

Regardless of them being company specific or client specific – the way organisations manage their projects has a significant effect on their success. This paper highlights the benefits of adopting a project management solution that helps businesses to successfully manage information, resources and risk for maximum profitability.

1 Aberdeen report: State of service management 2015: Connect to your customers

01

In an attempt to consistently deliver business

results and balance these complex situations, companies

are trying everything possible to accomplish more

with less.

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Introduction

As a business, knowingly or unknowingly, you manage multiple projects on a daily basis. Some may not have huge budgets associated with them, nevertheless, if your tasks have a distinct goal, and a defined beginning and an end, they qualify as projects and projects need to be managed efficiently.

However, managing a project is no easy feat. Rising competition and increasing customer demands are making it difficult for companies to deliver projects on-time and under budget. Faced with challenges such as lack of available skilled resources, increased risk exposure and changing customer priorities, far too many companies are facing losses and delivering late projects.

According to an Aberdeen report on Project Management1, top three challenges that organisations face, while planning and executing a project are lack of visibility across multiple projects, lack of available resources and inability to determine profit potential of new projects and price accordingly.

1 A Managing the Project Portfolio to Improve Profits, November 2014

2 McKinsey & Co. report, January 2010

A Project Management solution/software is a powerful

tool that provides you with a project framework and establishes a process to

get things done, effectively and efficiently.

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All these pressures create a business climate that forces project-based businesses to tread carefully and avoid risks. However, companies can now combat these top pressures with an agile project management solution. A Project Management solution/software is a powerful tool that provides you with a project framework and establishes a process to get things done, effectively and efficiently.

Leading organisations across sectors and geographies have been increasingly adopting project management as a way to control spending and improve project results. A survey by McKinsey & Co. shared that nearly 60% of senior executives said that building a strong project management discipline is one of the top priorities for their companies as they look to the future2.

Source: Aberdeen Group, September 2014 Percentage of Respondents, n=135

10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

49%

42%

22%

20%

Lack of visibility across multiple projects

Lack of available resources (skilled or other)

Inability to determine profit potential of new projects and price accordingly

Increasing risk exposure across project portfolios

Moving from complexity to dexterity - Benefits of Project Management Here’s how project management can help your organisation to become smarter, faster and more competitive to get the most out of your projects:

Enhanced scheduling and reporting: Organisations often have difficulty in understanding where their project stands in terms of budget and resource utilisation. This makes resource management extremely difficult. Often, businesses find themselves in a fix, when it comes to employee time-keeping and project budgeting. Research shows that lack of automation could lead employees’ not recording time effectively, costing the organization significantly, with 32% of all respondents blaming inefficient or manual processes3.

With an automated project management solution in place, companies will be able to keep track of their employees’ timesheets and manage their work effectively. This in-turn would ensure that your project remains profitable and stays within the required time and budget limit. Gartner Group states that fully automating the timesheet process reduces errors and staff time by 75% or more.

Seamless integration of systems: Many organisations are still stuck in the spreadsheet routine. Without a proper process in place, employees at such organisations end up using excel to manually enter data, thus leaving reports prone to errors. Instead of relying on individuals to gather key data, or asking around for updates, a project management solution seamlessly integrates all your systems and departments to create a central database, enabling your employees to gain access to relevant information online, and manage everything from one location. Simply by logging into one application, your employees would have the flexibility to modify and share their project line-up, work notes and calendar, list of required resources, operating budget and get a complete project picture. Being in the know-how would ensure that you never miss a deadline, ever.

Effective resource management: Effective resource management is the foundation of a profitable project. Any organisation that fails to manage their resources, risks losing control of its project and having its business activities seriously hampered. With increased competition and reduced margins forcing organisations to produce high-quality products with limited resources, companies can rely on project management software to schedule their resources efficiently, and ahead of milestones. You can plan tasks and activities, and allocate resources and responsibilities, with the help of project management solution to ensure maximum profitability.

Doing so will also help you gain overall project control, and prepare your team to deal with the unknown, such as rapidly changing customer request or project bottlenecks.

3 Aberdeen Group: Why your organisation can’t afford to ignore time tracking and resource scheduling, October 2013

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With the help of project management tools,

a growing business can create a pre-defined project

framework that meets their requirements.

Closer financial tracking: Aberdeen’s 2012 Project Management survey revealed that 22% of all respondents have no real-time visibility into project costs and budgets. Without closer financial tracking, it is impossible to track the performance and progress of your projects. However, with a proper project management solution, you can easily overcome this challenge by getting real-time updates of your financial reports. A good software will excel in monitoring your project’s overall financial performance, track actual versus planned costs and ensure a better cash flow. It will also help you and your company to reduce billing errors, maximize revenues and even predict financials for future projects.

Shared data equals ease of use: ‘Where did you put that document?’ is a common war cry heard in various departments who haven’t established a document-sharing process. Almost everyone project manager or team member has, at one time or another, experienced the pain associated with finding secret stashes of documents either in local hard drives, personal cloud storage spaces, or email folders. Such bits and pieces of information, stored in numerous silos increases the risk of sending a client or partner the wrong version of an important project document. With a project management solution in place, you can save yourself from this professional embarrassment.

With the help of project management tools, a growing business can create a pre-defined project framework that meets their requirements. As the business grows, changes can be made to that framework as and when necessary.

Enhanced customer satisfaction: There is nothing that satisfies a customer more than a project done on-time and under budget. Project management solutions help you in achieving greater customer satisfaction by creating customer and prospect databases that you can update in real-time as you learn more about your contact.

The automated communication function will help you keep in constant touch with your client by sending them thank you notes, reminders and special offers, while keeping them abreast of any changes. Additionally, it will help in establishing increased trust and loyalty, and eventually turning them into ‘customers for life’.

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www.sagex3.com 0800 952 0082

With the help of project management tools,

a growing business can create a pre-defined project

framework that meets their requirements.

Jobs and costs are constantly monitored by giving your employees the ability to record working

time, costs and tasks in projects via the browser on any device.

PROJECT MANAGEMENTSAGE X3

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Conclusion Time is money: Get the best of both with Sage X3The ability to manage time has never been more important, especially when it comes to running projects. With Sage X3 you can manage your projects from offer to invoicing, thereby controlling your operating cost and saving both time and money.

Sage X3 is a web-based, easy-to-implement business management solution specifically designed for mid-sized companies and subsidiaries of large groups with national and international demands. Providing full support with budgeting, implementation and evaluation, the Project and Job Costing (PJC) module of Sage X3 relieves you of the burden of routine administrative tasks, enabling you to manage your projects professionally and successfully.

Sage X3 Project Management highlights• To provide faster, more reliable and transparent results, Sage X3’s

PJC module defines the project as a series of services and deliverables

• The pre-defined project structures and project line templates available within the module help split the project into sub-projects and steps, and associate invoicing models relating to the project (by progress, stage, fixed date or fixed cost). With each of your projects and services presented clearly, you will be able to respond more rapidly to changing request and bottlenecks.

• Statement generation can be used to generate assignment orders, and activity reports entered in web mode update progress on the project

• Jobs and costs are monitored, as your employees can record working time, costs and tasks in projects via the browser

• Graphical dashboards provide an intuitive, visual control mechanism, helping you to always remain fully informed about the financial situation of your project

• Financial statements help control margins and track schedules

• Fully automated solution that guarantees across-the-board monitoring of costs, helping you to continuously increase your profits

“The Sage X3 Project and Job Costing module was exactly

what we were looking for. None of Sage’s competitors

were able to offer such a complete and tailored solution.”

Catherine Bacconnier, IT Director and Project Manager, ACOEM

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