Solving Project Business Problems

Running project business makes you unique. Most business systems are not built to solve your problems.

Project Business Automation is.

Many of our customers have grown to the point where their simple tools won’t address their complex needs. We help you simplify this complexity with a comprehensive business system built for projects.

We help you solve your greatest project business challenges

Below are some of the most common project business challenges that our customers come to us to solve. Many might also apply to your business. Find out how we address them below. 

"We use lots of different applications and systems that are not connected."
disparate project apps

Do the silos of different tools and systems look familiar? This situation is typical for most project businesses. Over the years you identify certain functional gaps and buy or build applications to fill those gaps. Eventually, you find yourself with 5, 10, 15 or more applications to support your project business processes. You spend too much time re-entering data in multiple systems. The chaos and lack of knowledge that follows from this process can cripple the business.

Solution

Systemize your core project business processes first.

The solution is to approach it differently. Instead of gap filling, look to support your core business processes first, which is projects. Find a system that does that comprehensively. That is why we built Project Business Automation.

"My ERP does not support our project-based processes."

ERPs are financial systems originally built for discrete manufacturers and distribution companies. Projects are an after-thought for most ERP vendors.

Solution

You need an ERP-integrated solution.

Bring project operations and financials into your ERP and create a single system that supports your entire business from end-to-end. That is exactly what PBA is designed to do.

"We use spreadsheets everywhere in our processes."

You use spreadsheets because you don’t have your data in one place and/or you don’t have a system that can help you analyze it. Therefore, you consolidate the data in Excel and run reports manually to get at the information you need to understand what is going on.

This is the result of disconnected business systems.

Solution

You need an integrated project business system.

Integrate your project business processes into one business system to eliminate spreadsheets and gain real-time insight and complete control of your projects. That is what PBA does.

The Quick Guide to Project Business Automation

A high-level guide to the business system for project-driven enterprises

This Quick Guide to Project Business Automation will help you understand the PBA solution and how it applies to your business. What you will learn:

  • What is Project Business Automation?
  • Who is PBA for?
  • What problem does PBA solve and why is it needed?
  • What are the core elements of PBA, including overviews of core capabilities?
  • What are the key benefits of PBA?

If a crucial part of your business is about running projects successfully, you need this guide.

"Our project estimates are not accurate, consistent, or timely."

Your quotes don't represent what is actually required for a project. As a result, you lose deals when you over-estimate and lose money when you under-estimate. When a project gets to execution, you find yourself attempting to renegotiate with your customer and add change orders, when you should have had it right form the start.

Solution

You need a systemized way to produce project proposals that reflect how the project will actually go.

Enhance your sales process by streamlining your estimating and planning while ensuring best practices are followed by everyone.

"We don't have a good way to track costs once the project starts."

You cannot track the costs of operations because they are not directly tied to your financial system. Therefore, it takes time for someone to report the status of all the tasks in a project and then to associate the appropriate costs to those tasks.

Solution

You need integrated project cost management.

You need a single system that integrates the operations and financials, so they work together seamlessly. As tasks are completed, costs are reported instantly.

"I don’t really know if a project is profitable or on budget until it finishes."

This lack of insight occurs because you don’t have a formalized process for reforecasting your projects. Your financials and operations are managed in different systems and therefore, you have no way of knowing if the project is running on budget until all the costs are transferred and tallied in the financial system/ERP or, more likely, spreadsheets.

Solution

You need an automated way to do estimate-at-completion (EAC), so you consistently reevaluate your projects as they progress.

For this you need a single system that integrates the operations and financials, so they work together seamlessly and in real-time.

"We don’t have a single source of truth that everyone trusts."

You don’t know the real-time status of your projects. This stems from the use disparate systems and lack of integration. As a result, you don’t have an agreed upon source for unbiased, objective information about your projects and business.

How do you create that single source of truth?

Solution

Integrate into one business system designed for project business.

Not only does it provide that single source of truth because everything goes through one system, but it also provides that truth in real–time.

"I only find out about issues after they cause major problems."

Most project issues are not discovered until after they cause major problems with a project that result in either a delay or significant added costs. This challenge stems from the fact that information does not flow between your disparate systems and applications. Often, the left hand does not know what the right is doing. Once you find out about a problem, it is often too late to fix it.

Solution

Your project risk management should provide early detection of issues before they become big problems.

You need a systematic way to constantly monitor every aspect of every project and automatically notify the right people if there are problems.

"We manage our project schedules in desktop applications with no consolidated view available."

This is common among project businesses. You probably still use Oracle Primavera or Microsoft Project. While these applications are good, they are not business systems. They are project management applications.

Solution

Go beyond project management to project business management.

As a project business, you need to think about supporting your entire business, and that is not just managing tasks in a Gantt chart. You need to think holistically about your project operations and financials together.

"We spend lots of time reviewing data trying to understand the status of our projects."

When you have information spread out in different applications and systems, you have to deploy a massive amount of resources to consolidate and integrate that data to provide meaningful information. The result is a major increase in time and money to do this, or it simply doesn’t get done.

Solution

You need to bring data from all your different processes together to provide a real-time project status.

When a resource is constrained or a purchase order delayed, you should know about it instantly and how it affects the project overall.

"Since I don't know what is going on, I make important business decisions with little data to support them."

Since you don’t know the status of your projects in real-time, you end up making critical decisions without all the current information. You become reliant on individual “gut-feelings” due to lack of actionable intelligence. You end up pursuing paths you shouldn’t or exacerbating problems you could have avoided.

Solution

Gather and use real-time project and business intelligence for data-driven decision making.

You want a system that integrates data from all your project-driven processes in one place and in real-time. From here you can derive actionable intelligence quickly and accurately.

"Calculating EAC and EVA is too difficult, so it rarely gets done."

Estimate at completion (EAC) and Earned Value are critical to running a successful project business. How can you make good decisions in the middle of a project if you don’t know the financial status of that project today?

Solution

You need real-time earned value management.

You should be able to calculate EAC and earned value automatically and in real-time. Every day you know the exact financial status of your projects, and your business as a whole.

"It is very difficult to manage our big projects effectively."

Many construction and engineering firms have massive projects with hundreds or thousands of tasks and multiple departments, trades, managers and controllers working on the same project. Often with these big projects the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. Managers and controllers and executives are not all on the same page.

Solution

Big projects require a different level of organization.

You need to allow different people to work on different parts of the same project independently while providing a single project super-structure. You need to go beyond a typical work breakdown structure and think of a Project Breakdown Structure.

The Project Business Automation Blueprint

The Definitive Guide to a creating a comprehensive business system for project-driven processes

What you will learn:

  • The problem PBA solves and why it is needed
  • Core elements of PBA and how they work
  • How you can enhance PBA for your company
  • The business case for PBA
  • What PBA means for the future of Project Business

If you are in projects are critical to your business, you need this Blueprint.

Find answers to your questions

Discover more or engage with our project business experts.

PBA Quick Guide

This Quick Guide to Project Business Automation gives you a high-level overview of PBA and how it can be applied to your project-driven business.

PBA Fit

PBA Fit Assessment

Quickly find out if Project Business Automation will work for your company. Based on your company's profile, we will share how PBA will solve your problems and bring value to your business.

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