CPMG is ISO9001 and ISO14001 registered with well defined processes in place to maintain these standards. These processes are currently underpinned by a paper-based system, highly reliant on manual data entry into Excel timesheets and Word documents. Keeping track of the financial performance of projects for example requires group leaders to feed projected staff resource allocation into an Excel spreadsheet. This information is then transferred into a second spreadsheet which calculates the cost of the resource on a project-by-project basis. Costs and fees earned to date taken from the Sage ledger system are then inputted to provide a final financial summary of each project.
Group Director Paul Bodill explains some of the issues this presents: “We go through this process every month where data is transferred from one spreadsheet to another. It can take a couple of days each month to collate the information and produce the costed project schedule and this is time that could be better spent on fee earning work. Whilst we do keep good track of time and resources, the way we do this needs to be more efficient and that’s where Workspace Project Accounting comes in.”
Workspace Project Accounting tracks time, expenses and resource allocation in one central web-based system against the relevant contacts, projects and organisations. With a direct integration to Sage Financial Ledgers, it removes any duplicated effort between systems and provides real time visibility of project profitability. “We have been aware of Workspace for a couple of years and, in light of an increased emphasis on internal efficiency, arranged a demonstration. The software enables us to streamline the way we work, saving us time and money” says Mr Bodill.
CPMG are gearing up for implementation and staff have been fully briefed on the changes that will be taking place. The key benefits of Workspace are; increased efficiency, better visibility of live project financials and the flexibility to resource different scenarios ensuring the most efficient outcome.
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Based in Nottingham, UK, Union Square Software is the author of Workspace. Workspace has been developed to provide organisations from across the construction supply chain with real competitive advantage through the pragmatic introduction of portal technology which enables effective Knowledge Management. Workspace provides a range of solutions for project centric organisations including: corporate database, enquiry management, document control, project collaboration and project financials.
