1. Keep track of time and budget
Making sure you keep a log of time spent and resources used so that you can balance it against your profit margin is key. Simple control of costs and cost planning will go a long way in establishing control over operating cost and improving profit margins for your projects.
2. Make sure you are aware of committed costs
A big challenge for many project based companies is that they often understand what the budgeted costs are and what the actual costs are, however there is no clear visibility on what the committed costs look like or the purchase orders that have been raised. If this is done manually and through different systems and processes it is often hard to see what the committed costs look like and can quite often be a leading cause in projects running significantly over budget and reducing profitability.
3. Have full visibility of key resources
This is a key metric for any project based company – understanding where your key resources are spending their time – particularly the time spent on chargeable activity as opposed to non chargeable activity such as internal meetings, proposal writing etc. Too often many companies will recruit additional expertise, bringing in more cost to the business, without reviewing utilisation and making sure it is hitting key levels.
4. Receive automated notifications
Whether being notified that a project is about to go over budget, or a reminder that a key deadline is nearing; automated notifications can eliminate inefficiencies. Automated contracts and invoices can also save internal time and resources, this could be in the form of a notification or invoice creation if services go over contractual costs.
5. Create a single source of the truth
Best practice for any project based business should be to create a single source of the truth. Whether you are looking in the finance system or your project / job system you should be seeing the same data. At Access we provide a single solution that allows us to track time, expenses, procurement and all the key areas that finance and project managers need to keep track of - this information flows through business workflows before posting into the core finance system – so whether you are a project manager of a finance director, whichever system you are working in, the data is the same!