Dave,
I don't know your scope so I am not qualified. But what I am saying is this.
If you owned and paid for a Ferrari, would you sit and idle it, or drive it
for all its worth? Rather than car shop again, open up the system you've got
and use all those great features that you are looking around for that are
already under the hood (or bonnet to you).
Start requesting/requiring team members to update PM's on task status using
"Tasks" in PWA. Enable them to enter hours or % complete or both as PM's
desire. Get the PMs behind you by showing them how easy life will be using
the other features, and they'll drive this change on your behalf.
You can also implement managed time periods to move off Replicon and reduce
the # of systems suppored by IT. The maintenance of a system is often more
costly than the purchase. This fact will help sell the move internally. Also,
P12 coming in Q4 has extended capabilities in this area. Speaking of P12,
don't do any dev until P12 releases and there are significant (good) changes.
If you aren't fully sold on EPM's timesheets, the one vendor I recommend is
www(dot)epkgroup(dot)com. The principals of the firm developed the original
solution that is now called MSP. They've extended their solution offering a
bit in this area. And they are compatible to P12 and upgrades are included in
the purchase. But this is your last step. First step is implement everything
at least out of the box.
Finally investigate what portfolio info managers want. "If you could see
anything, what would you want to see"? is always a good question. Dont
promise to deliver it, but get that data to start creating values for
portfolio views. Often the answers are simple such as "a view of all the
projects in my department sorted by status". Gosh, an RBS and a list of
status fields and we've delivered that!
Hope this encourages you to give it a go. But should it be too much work
with your current wordload, don't hesitate to hire an MSP Gold Certified
Partner. THe benefit is their experience and efficiency. What might take you
9-12 months they can do in maybe 2-3 and train you along the way. For most
businesses time is money.
Cheers,
TLS
dave said:
Thanks TLS.
The company in question is located in the UK.
We've got a 'small' version of MSP Server set up which is used basically for
people in various locations to view Project Plans.
We haven't extended it yet for time sheets or exoenses [ currently we use
Replicon], although that would be one of the things we would be looking for
so we could accruatly measure cost.
Client Billing is something we'd need as well.
I guess what you're saying is it would be wiser to invest in the MSP Server
solution and do it properly, than to do it ourselves and use other add-ons ?
TLS said:
Dave,
I'm wondering if perhaps you haven't seen the EPM server environment, i.e. a
demo? Project Server has timesheets (managed time periods) if your focus is
HR type tracking, as well as "Tasks" that can be used for time tracking if
your focus is strictly tracking progress on projects. Both are sufficient for
most everyone and the web interface makes it viable for global resources. And
another basic benefit of EPM (Server) over standard is the "portfolio views".
I think you will get everything you are looking for at the portfolio level.
There are hundreds of fields you can use for creating views - more than any
PM or exec will ever need.
For expenses, there is cost tracking, and/or you can extend EPM which is
what we did, and/or you can go with a 3rd party package. I'm not a
programmer or a sales guy so i'd have to refer to another user. But being a
services company (we implement EPM for people like you), it is important for
us to track expenses so we extended the system. As a matter of fact, we are
linking both payroll and client billing to EPM. So far its working fine.
If you are in the continental US we might be able to help.
Hope this info helps.
TLS
dave said:
Hi,
Hope some people can help me out with a bit of advice.
The company I'm working for is using MSP and want to move to Server, they
want something to integrate with server that will give them a flexible
Timesheet & Expense recording tool as well as some 'portfolio views' like you
see in the PPM tools such as Clarity & Planview.
I've had a look at Tenrox which looks good but may be a bit over complicated
and more HRish.
Are there any other tools that work well with MSP to give added benifits ?
The only criteria would be that they are web based as the workforce is global.
Thanks for anybodies help [ even salespeople! ]
