What IS Project Management?

Recently clients have asked what Sage 100 Contractor can do for Project Management.  My usually annoying response is “What do you want Sage 100 Contractor to do for your organization?”  Too often they don’t give a solid response to the question nor clearly define what they want.  I then guide them to think of Project Management in two generalities: 

• Tools to help project managers do their job, and
• Tools that help owners and senior management know what’s going on in the field.

Sage 100 Contractor tools for project managers include

• Scheduling – A CPM based program with a graphical user interface can assign multiple predecessors to any task with appropriate lead or lag time, assign employee, equipment and subcontractor resources to any task, and most importantly, has multiple notification reports.
• Dispatch Board – A component of the Service Receivables module provides another graphical user interface for assigning and dispatching work orders to employees or subcontractors.
• Communication Tools – Requests for Information, Correspondence, Transmittals, Submittals, Daily Field Reports, and Punch Lists are all available in the Document Control module.  Everything is located in one central location and organized by job.
• Job Cost Reporting – Classic job cost reports give project managers great insight into how the cost of the project (both cost to date and projected cost at completion) compare with the original and current job cost budget.
• Change Order Control – Changes to the job are accurately documented, estimated and priced to ensure that all changes are requested and negotiated by the project manager with your client.  Changes requested and changes approved are available at any time, and contract value and job cost budgets are updated as soon as change orders are approved. 
• Customizable Dashboards and Alerts – Project managers can have summarized and exception-based reporting of project related data on user defined onscreen dashboards.  They can also receive alerts about exception conditions in emails or on their own customized dashboard.

Sage 100 Contractor tools for owners and senior managers include:

• Transparency – The entire program is a centralized location to drill into everything that project managers are doing (see the project manager tools listed above.)
• Top Down Views – Summarized reports of job progress are available to identify problem projects that need further attention.
• Dashboards and Alerts – Customizable dashboards and alerts can direct attention to problems as they arise.

Don’t forget that all of these tools can be accessed in the office or remotely, either remote connections to your own workstation or server, or as a remote connection to an application hosting service like TimberCloud!  Remote connection applications are now available for most mobile devices.