M4D Business Journal 108 Business Management Systems

MANAGEMENT FOR DESIGN BUSINESS JOURNAL 108 BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOR ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS AND CONSULTANTS Why you should invest Your Business Management System is one of the core foundations of your business. An effective and integrated system will enable you to more effectively control your business and is a key foundation to enable you to build your business.

At any given moment, project-based firms need real-time information to: • Provide insight into the status of project profitably • Understand how the business is performing and why problems occurred • Assess the impact on the business, and what should be done to enhance performance • Efficiently share information throughout the organization.

A good business management system enables your business to: • Improve project delivery and profitability • Improve business performance • Streamline your operations and execution • Generate more work

What you will achieve An optimised integrated business management system allows you to:

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An effective and integrated system is a key foundation to building your business.

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• Replace and consolidate outdated existing systems • Eliminate the cost of purchasing and maintaining existing systems • Provide a single repository and source of information • Integrate core processes • Consolidate reporting of multiple companies • Allow you to align your resourcing with your project requirements • Manage your client, contact and project information • Streamline your operations • Work across multiple currencies • Increase productivity

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• Streamline management reporting • Provide easy access to information anywhere/ anytime • Improve the bottom line performance of your business • Create additional value in your business • Clean up ad-hoc file and email management.

Features

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Powerful analytics and reporting provide key stakeholders with realtime metrics that offer visibility into all areas of the organization.

Manage business and project information Real-time information and tools facilitate decision-making and alignment of goals. Powerful analytics and reporting provide key stakeholders with real-time metrics that offer visibility into all areas of the organization.

Forecast Accurately forecast your future income based on correct and up to date financial information straight from invoicing.

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Invoicing and Accounts Payable Tracking The financial health of your firm relies on timely and accurate invoicing. Compare invoices against contracts, to improve cost tracking and eliminate vendor overpayment or fraud.

Project Manage

Business Intelligence and Interactive Reporting

Enable PMs to plan projects across stages and tasks, allocate people and hours, account for estimate to complete and monitor and report on progress.

Access and analysis data — from key financial metrics and project analysis to opportunity tracking, resource utilization and trade receivables.

Resource Management

Time and Expense Management

Automate scheduling, resource allocation, budgeting and forecasting to determine whether proposed fees are accurate, appropriate people are available and allocated effectively, and projects come in on time and on budget.

Timesheet entries and expense reports determine actual costs back into the project plan for an accurate rolling forecast that managers can use to make faster, more informed decisions to ensure projects stay on track.

Financial and Project Accounting

Payroll

Integrate project control with the general ledger so you can track profitability in real time and identify problems as they arise.

Your payroll function will reach top performer status, improve its efficiency and reduce operating costs.

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Client Relationship Management Automate the entire lead-to-execution project life cycle by encompassing all of the tools you need to win new business and strengthen existing relationships. With a single central source of information accessible to everyone in your firm, you are empowering your team to fully leverage their collective knowledge.

Services Estimating Simplify labour and expense estimating by automatically calculating project costs and margins.

Proposal Automation Empower your marketing and sales team to efficiently produce winning proposals that stand out from the competition. Ensure your proposals contain the most recent and relevant information by giving employees access to an up-to-theminute central source of company templates, metrics, résumés and more.

Purchasing Manages your firm’s entire requisition, purchasing and receiving cycle — no matter how simple or sophisticated — while maintaining full integration with Financial and Project Accounting and Resource and Project Management modules.

Asset Management Manage the entire lifecycle of your fixed assets for an accurate picture of business assets all in

one place to give your firm the right data to make informed decisions.

Document Management Allow users to browse, enrich, and edit information collected from various sources from within a single application. By enabling sharing and information collaboration users can efficiently distribute the kind of information needed to solve problems and make decisions.

Conclusion In the way it can power your business, ‘doing more for less’ is a win-win situation for today’s Professional Services firms. Serving to cut costs and increase profitability, this concept can be achieved simply by taking the right steps to streamlining your business. When combined with the right processes and technology, your business can truly ‘do more for less’, and enjoy a lean, yet efficient workforce that drives profitability, cash flow and organizational growth.

From our extensive experience in the industry and working with our clients in the Architecture, Engineering and Consultants (AEC) industry, we see that Professional Services organizations inarguably rely on their human capital as one of their greatest resources. Yet, so often, we also see that these assets aren’t being optimized in a way that truly drives revenue for the business as a whole. Aligning your resources and streamlining processes across accounting, project control, resourcing, client management and document control is the best way to get more out your business.

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