IT-Branchepublikation: ERP - Nyhedsbrev for Bestyrelser

More documents

Recommendations

Info

2012 ERP FOR SERvICES BUyER’S gUIdE The majority of services-based businesses, regardless of their market niche, will find their typical business processes covered in this guide. This guide addresses the software needs of services-based companies that fall under the following example categories: • Managerial and/or specific consulting services companies • Financial services and auditing firms • research organizations • Law firms • Advertising, public relations, and marketing agencies • Customer-specific software development companies • recruitment and staffing companies bUSINESS ChALLENGES OF SErVICES-OrIENTED COMPANIES The services provided by services-based organizations as described above are commonly referred to as professional services. Consequently, the software market segment that caters to such businesses and provides specific application products is known as professional services automation (PSA). ErP for Services software is a type of solution that includes support for both project delivery business procedures and backoffice processes that are not visible to clients but are still essential for running a company. because of the project-based and people-oriented nature of services organizations, this business segment requires software applications that are capable of supporting services-oriented business processes and adequately handling multiple internal challenges that are intrinsic to this industry. There are common internal business issues that professional services organizations face regardless of their market area and size. The most important of these are the following: Billing. As professional services providers base their activities on contracts and projects with clients, issuing the right invoice to the right customer at the right time isn’t an easy task, even for a small organization with several parallel contracts. So how does a multinational business with hundreds or thousands of multinational clients, multiple overlapping contracts and delivery milestones, and various services and different contract terms for each client do it? In today’s business world, where an organization’s reputation oftentimes hinges on the last interaction with its clients, mistakes or inaccuracies in invoices are not acceptable. Resource allocation. As professional services sell employee knowledge and expertise, a project may span several disciplines, so proper management of expert resources is vital to the project’s success. For example, over- or under-allocation of expertise to a given project can interrupt or impede the project delivery phase, or the entire project. Multiple geographic locations, overlapping demand for skills, and too often tight timelines all bring an additional level of complexity to the task. 24 IT-Branchepublikation: ERP 2013 Document management and knowledge management. A business providing professional services relies heavily on the knowledge of each individual employee as well as on the company’s corporate knowledge. Each project has to be properly and systematically documented and stored in a central knowledge base, with any employee granted access to that knowledge base being able to obtain the necessary information for his or her project. This knowledge usually consists of the expertise of the service provider–amassed from the combined knowledge of the organization’s professionals–and plays a key role in the provider’s capability to deliver a promised service to its customers. The knowledge base should be accessible from any location, be flexible in its capabilities (enter nonstandardized information, attach documents of different formats, etc.), have a search mechanism, be easy to use, and provide practical information to its users. Project management and tracking. Services organizations often practice a matrix management system, comprising a crossfunctional work team, which brings together individuals who report to different parts of the company in order to complete a particular project. In this management structure, employees belong to vertical departments run by department heads, but for each project they are managed by project managers who are responsible for allocating and assigning certain tasks to them. Considering the number of employees, the number of ongoing projects, the complexity and duration of the projects, and possibly the geographic reach of the services, it’s no easy feat to define project management processes successfully. Contract management. In most cases, the deliverables of a services organization are intangible, and may be difficult to describe and define in exact and quantifiable terms. Therefore, the creation of a binding contract and the delivery of services as contracted are an ongoing challenge. Indeed, it can be difficult for potential customers to understand what they are supposed to receive and what value it will hold for them. Additionally, some services providers, such as consultants and providers of investment services, offer no guarantee on the value of the services delivered for the price paid. A proper contract management framework should align the organization’s efforts so as to ensure that service expectations are clearly described, tracked, and delivered. Resource and expense tracking. It is a usual practice for services providers to include the expenses and billable hours of subject matter experts or other employees who are involved in the project in the invoice to the customer. That information, however, must first be entered into a time-tracking system. Many professional services organizations struggle with this step until they develop and implement rigid internal rules for the timely and accurate reporting of time and money spent on a project by each member of the project team. Additionally, tracking billable versus nonbillable hours is also important. while not all time spent on a
project is directly related to contract delivery, and though it may not be billable, this information is relevant to measuring project efficiency. Product definition. It can be difficult both for clients to fully grasp what a services company offers and for a company to unambiguously define its products. As services companies produce and deliver complex services, both the services company and its clients must clearly understand the scope and deliverables of the contract, time of delivery, and all the additional terms and conditions of that delivery. All the changes that arise after contract creation necessitate appropriate changes to the terms and conditions of the contract and services delivery. In addition, a number of potential issues may arise, such as contract closure terms, quality of intangible services delivered, contract changes tracking, and even measurement of client satisfaction, that are not trivial tasks to address. Professional services providers address the aforementioned common issues in various ways, and software systems play an extremely important role. The lack of a proper solution can have various effects, ranging from an annoying inconvenience to a highly detrimental or even show-stopping outcome. but if we have two organizations using the same or similar resources, we can surmise that the one most successful in achieving its goals will be the organization that is able to efficiently manage its internal business processes. Enterprise-wide software solutions are key to the effective management of these processes, and those applications designed and developed specifically for professional services organizations will best fit their specific needs. As ErP solutions for services organizations have been developed with these common industry issues in mind, the majority of such systems include specific functional modules or applications that better address the aforementioned challenges. In fact, although it is possible to find the required functional modules among nonspecialized software packages, that functionality will most likely be scattered among different applications, and it is unfeasible for services companies to purchase several packages for the sake of using only one or two modules from each. Services organizations should be able to find all the functionality they need packaged in one solution. ThE NEED FOr ErP FOr SErVICES SOFTwArE ErP for Services software is designed to greatly reduce waste and uncertainty. It gives a services organization true visibility into project activity, costs, resource allocation, and billing activity. It allows for business metrics and analytics to be viewed across the enterprise. This not only allows for optimal project resource allocation and efficient project execution, but also creates a structure where the enterprise can create clear and repeatable frameworks for project success. There are six main functional areas specific to ErP for Services software. The key characteristics and benefits of each are described below. Project portfolio management. PPM is essentially a way of grouping projects across the business into “portfolios.” ErP for Services software has a wide variety of tools to facilitate PPM. Portfolios include reports to illustrate project timelines, progress, health, and risks, among other things. This empowers decision makers with the analytics capabilities required to take action in order to mitigate project risk and ensure proper resource loading across a series of projects and/or departments. It allows the business to determine if projects are feasible from a budgeting or requirements perspective. A series of dashboards allows executives to have at-a-glance views of general project and departmental performance. having all this data at hand allows for the creation of comprehensive “what-if” scenarios in order to determine different ways by which the organization can achieve maximum project efficiency and profitability. This ensures that there is governance at the executive level and a basis for measuring progress against the strategic goals of the company. Project management. ErP for Services software contains a suite of tools that facilitate project management practices. The concept of work breakdown structure (wbS) is key to project management. This refers to the way a project is broken down into smaller component deliverables, down to the level of granularity where a task can be assigned to an individual person. A task is an amount of work to be done by a certain expert resource in an allotted amount of time. The wbS creates an outline of a sequence of tasks that need to be done to complete a project. Costs and billing information are captured at the task level. This is the data that is used to inform the project manager, and by extension the executive group, on the progress of a given project. ErP for Services software generally has extensive capabilities in regard to project management. The types of functionality that are typically addressed relate to project initiation, planning, execution, tracking and control, and finally project closure. Resource management. resources need to be allocated adequately and effectively. In the case of services companies, the resources being referred to are mainly the people and their skills. ErP for Services resource management capabilities address inefficiencies and bottlenecks across the enterprise. These tools allow project managers to find available resources for tasks based on availability, skill set, geographic location, whether the project member is internal or external to the organization (i.e., full-time employee vs. an outsourced or contracted individual), and more. however, not all packages have the capability to support all these criteria. A key benefit of the resource management capability is the ability to do resource capacity management and leveling, and capacity constraint management. Constraint management, in general terms, is the planning of resources within a defined time span. This enables a project manager to conduct what-if scenario planning by mixing and matching resources to ultimately achieve continuous and balanced resource assignments to the tasks created in the wbS. » IT-Branchepublikation: ERP 2013 25
Page 1 and 2: ERP IT-Branchepublikation IT-Branch
Page 3 and 4: INTROdUKTION OM DENNE PUbLIKATION D
Page 5 and 6: IFS IFS er en af verdens førende l
Page 7 and 8: INFOR Infor er verdens 3. største
Page 9 and 10: dE STORE KØBER SMå - NyE KOMMER T
Page 11 and 12: vIRKSOMhEdER OvERvEJER ”TWO-TIER
Page 13 and 14: NyT ERP SySTEM? Træf det rette val
Page 15 and 16: Prioritering af krav vigtig for at
Page 17 and 18: BRaNChETaBEL UDVALGTE ERP PRODUKTER
Page 19 and 20: indikativ vurdering: hvor dybt og b
Page 21 and 22: LIVSCYKLUS I IT LEDELSE KAN DELES O
Page 23: MaKINg BETTER ENTERPRISE SOFTWaRE d
Page 27 and 28: 2011 ERP BUyER’S gUIdE FOR MEdIUM
Page 29 and 30: • Consolidation of services for I
Page 31 and 32: SAP Business All-in-One, SAP Busine

IT-Branchepublikation: ERP - Nyhedsbrev for Bestyrelser

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?