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Deltek Workbook

Three Ways WorkBook’s Collaboration Can Help Agency Teams When Working From Home

Agency ERP system Deltek WorkBook‘s collaboration feature, allows agency teams to collaborate with ease. And best of all, all communication stays within the system so there’s no searching through emails looking for a vital piece of correspondence.

If you’re a WorkBook agency and not using this feature yet, here are 3 reasons to give it a go!

1. BRIEF COLLABORATION

Getting a brief right is important for so many reasons. In WorkBook you can collaborate on briefs at both a job level and a task level.

At a job level, collaboration helps get the initial brief right before it’s shared with the wider team.

While at a task level it allows those working on tasks to review them easily and ask any questions should anything be unclear.

2. ESTIMATE COLLABORATION

Getting an estimate right is important. Collaborating on the estimate allows the person creating it to liaise with all the individuals involved on the job. This will ensure the correct number of hours for each role have been included.

Estimate collaboration will also ensure scope creep is kept to a minimum.

3. OVERALL PROJECT COLLABORATION

Collaboration in WorkBook is not just limited to estimates and briefs, agencies can also collaborate on pipelines, invoices and purchase orders. Meaning all project related communication is stored in the system against the job, so it is easy to access and get an understanding of where a project is at any given time.

Set Up Timesheet Reminders To Improve Compliance

Nobody likes timesheets. But for agencies that scope work based on hours, unfortunately they are a necessity. That’s why WorkBook helps you take the sting out of timesheets and improve agency-wide compliance by first making timesheets easier to fill in, and secondly, by allowing you to schedule reminders that help employees remember to submit them on time.

Here’s How:

Global Settings: First, set up how far in the past WorkBook looks at incomplete timesheet registrations. Navigate to the “Settings,” find “System variables” and search for “896” to locate System variable 896.

You can set the system up to look at:

  • Days
  • Weeks
  • Months

Employee settings: Once the global time frame for timesheet registrations have been set up, the feature should be enabled on each employee.

Use the initials field to bring up the employee card and navigate to Employee basic settings.

Result: Next time the employee logs in, they are prompted with a “Time entry incomplete” dialog that looks like this:

From here the employee can add jobs and tasks to register time on.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If an accounting period has been closed, this will LOCK OUT the user until they either approve the day without adding hours, or a system administrator removes this pop-up from their employee settings.

Why you Should Lean on PCI for Staffing Support

The answer is easy – using a third party for staffing support saves you time, money & resources.

PCI utilizes our reputable network of industry resources to provide clients with the best finance and accounting solution for your projects. PCI Staffing Solutions can connect you to direct hire and contract staff to manage your back-office support. Our placement success spans all levels, from c-suite to entry level.

Our recruiting team has over thirteen years of recruiting experience for positions relating to finance and accounting, information technology, marketing, human resources – as well as various other roles across many industries. At PCI, we focus on helping our clients build successful teams with professionals who have a strong background in Government Contracting & Marketing Agency accounting.

Our recruiting process is comprehensive and detail oriented. We will save you time and money in the process of finding the perfect professional for your firm. We begin our staffing process with an informative introduction call to PCI Staffing Solutions with your designated PCI recruiter. In this call, we will gather information around the role to be filled, the skills that are needed for that role, and details on company culture. From there, our team is able to pick up on your needs for this position and begin the recruiting process.

PCI uses industry leading search tools to find and speak to qualified candidates. Not only will our team review all candidate’s professional background they will also screen for interpersonal and communication skills. Once qualified candidates are identified, we will then assist in coordinating interviews. If a PCI candidate is selected for the opportunity, we will help both the candidate and the client in the onboarding process to ensure a smooth start.

PCI Staffing Solutions looks forward to partnering with you to build a successful team now and in the future.

Learn more about PCI’s staffing solutions here.

Predict Job Performance With WorkBook’s Estimated Time to Completion Calculation

One of WorkBook’s most insightful features is the Estimated at Completion (EAC) algorithm. This metric shows you how WorkBook uses all the data you’ve put together in a Job plan or budget to essentially predict how your Job will turn out so that you can take preemptive action to mitigate overruns or maximize margin.

The thing that makes WorkBook exceptional is the ability to calculate a key variable in this prediction: Estimate to Complete (ETC). ETC is a calculation of the hours and costs that are left to complete within the Job’s plan. When enabling ETC in WorkBook, you trigger the system to ask the users assigned to Tasks if they are on track in completing it within assigned number of hours, or if they expect to log more hours than planned. WorkBook then takes that input and calculates the cost of what is left in the budget in order to complete the Job.

When ETC is combined with the hours and costs already incurred, you then have your predicted outcome or EAC.

How to Enable ETC:

In order to enable this feature, you need to enable system variable 405 which has three settings:

  • Disabled
  • Enabled on billable jobs
  • Enabled on all jobs

Once enabled for instance on all Jobs, only new Jobs will have this setting enabled. For existing Jobs, you need to enable this manually.

So let’s say you allocate a Task to an employee for twelve hours.

The employee starts working on the Task, and if they want to make a request for more hours, they can do so by right clicking on the Task in the to-do list. The ETC filled in will be the total number of hours to complete the Task.

For example, if the employee has been assigned for twelve hours and now uses two hours, and request twelve hours, then the total allocated time will be fourteen hours. In other words, the ETC request is the total hours needed.

Once the employee submits the ETC request, it will go to the Task Responsible on the job for approval. If no Task Responsible has been set, it will automatically revert to the Project Manager on the job.

If the ETC request is accepted, a notification will be sent to both the employee sending the ETC request and the Task Responsible/Project Manager.

The number of hours allocated will be increased upon acceptance of the ETC.

This new ETC calculation will then inform the EAC calculation, giving the Project Manager a new predicted outcome. At that time, they can take preemptive action and adjust the project plan to mitigate any potential overruns before it’s too late.

If you’d like to learn more about WorkBook, your can contact us or check out some of our demo videos!

Centralize work-related communication in a single place in WorkBook

As more agencies begin adopting a work-from-anywhere model, they of course rely more heavily on virtual collaboration tools to maintain communication and stay productive. But when you’re getting pinged via email, calls, texts, and chat tools all day, it can be impossible to focus on any task for very long, and with so many channels to send information through, it is easy to lose track of important comments and feedback. That’s why it’s important for distributed teams to minimize the chaos by centralizing work-related communication into a single defined place.

WorkBook’s built-in collaboration does that and more. Because WorkBook is built and designed by agency veterans, the user experience better reflects your agency’s collaboration workflow by creating an auditable history of communication and automatically storing comments and files within the Task or Job to which they belong.

Oftentimes, a topic may come up within a WorkBook Conversation that requires a Task be created to ensure it gets done. And in some cases, especially when having a conversation with a Client, that Task may grow to the point where it becomes its own Job. WorkBook cuts out the busy work and makes it easy to quickly create Tasks directly from a Conversation or convert a Task into a Job.

Case in point, when Connecting Plots transitioned to a remote working model, they began relying more on WorkBook to focus team collaboration so nothing would get overlooked or lost in email or other chat tools. Once they discovered the all the benefits of WorkBook Conversations, and could easily turn comments into Tasks, they relied on it even more.

 

Here’s how you can do the same:

TURN A COMMENT INTO A TASK

In this example, assume your agency is working with a client, and they send you a comment via WorkBook’s Client Portal requesting a new project. Rather than building a new Job from scratch, you can easily turn this same comment into the first Task to build a Price Quote.

Open the conversation options menu to the right of the comment and select “convert comment to task”

Select which Task resources you’d like to copy over and click “OK.”

 

TURN A TASK INTO A JOB

Once the Task has been created you can then convert it into a Job using the dropdown menu in the Task’s settings.

In this box you can name the Job, assign a Project Manager and Contact, set the Close date, Job status and select the Rate card that should be used to ensure the Job’s costs are recorded accurately.

In just a couple of steps, you’ve quickly turned an informal comment into a legitimate Job. At this point, you can begin logging hours and can simply follow your agency’s normal process for approving the Price Quote and starting billable work.

Updates to the WorkBook Mobile App

With the latest release of the WorkBook mobile app, users can continue to accomplish their daily tasks from anywhere. This version includes appealing enhancements to the User Interface, Tasks, and Resources that can help users be more productive on the go.

Match the Appearance Theme of Your Mobile Device

The WorkBook mobile app can be set to reflect the Appearance theme of your choice, either light or dark. Now, with this latest release, you can select the option in the app’s Settings to have the WorkBook app automatically adjust to match your device’s theme.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

View More Information About Your Tasks

In the interest of giving users as much information as possible to complete their tasks from anywhere, the Task list now shows the Job number to which each task is associated.

And when you open the Task card, we have redesigned the information you can see in order to highlight the Task’s status and priority, while leaving advanced Task information viewable as read-only.

Get More Detail About Contacts and Absences

Get more information about your Contacts now that the Parent Resource Name is visible from the Resources list.

Now you can easily see which team members will be out of the office and for how long.

Get more done from anywhere with the WorkBook mobile app, available in the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

Three Stages of Resource Management

Effective resource management can be broken down into the following steps

Following these steps will ensure your projects stay on budget, and you can think long-term.

Step 1: Get a complete view of tasks being performed over the next two months. Create project plans for all signed projects, and ensure Project Managers are also planning a couple of months ahead.

Step 2: Move to long-term project planning, including any possible opportunities. For projects more than two months away, this may require monthly updates.

Step 3: Finally, implement revenue forecasting—so you can combine the first two steps and make any hiring decisions.

 

To follow resource management improvements, we recommend tracking these KPIs:

  • Actual Utilization: Hours on billable projects a percentage of available hours – per person.
  • Planned Utilization: Weekly view of future workload, expressed as hours booked or utilization
  • Freelance Ratio: % of your total salary costs spend on freelancers, tracked monthly

Establish Intuitive Process

Resource management is a difficult discipline to implement. To prevent teams from resorting to local spreadsheets there must be clear, easy-to follow processes in place. To maintain a strong level of control, we recommend implementing these four processes with a regular cadence every month:

Four key processes to put in place:

  1. Setting the project team – Projects fail when you staff them solely based on availability. So it is important to select the right team from the beginning, especially on bigger projects, to ensure successful delivery and provide Resource Managers with important metrics to identify potential burnout and underutilization.
  2. Weekly planning process – Keeping plans up to date is crucial. Here’s a suggested schedule for optimizing weekly planning:

Step 1: PMs update plans every Thursday.

Step 2: Department heads and Resource Managers review and adjust bookings on Friday.

Step 3: Employees execute according to bookings.

  1. Monthly forecast – Resource plans can’t always be updated for the full length of the project, especially when not all opportunities are visible. Instead, introduce a monthly planning process for Client Services and PMs, where they create a picture of probable upcoming work.
  2. Freelancer usage – Freelancers often play a vital role in project delivery. But if you don’t monitor and control how often they are used, they can become costly and break your project budget. To minimize unnecessary freelancer use, ensure Resource Managers are made aware before any purchase is initiated.

In order to keep project costs up to date, streamline the invoicing process, and prevent budget overruns, we suggest that freelance costs are applied using a purchase order (PO) process with an approval workflow.

Plan Effectively for the Future

Who should be involved?

If resource plans are not visible across the planning team, it leads to poor data quality and untrustworthy planning. Everyone needs to be on board, with strong, decisive support from management.

The roles we most often see involved in the planning stage include:

  • Project Managers should update and own the progress of the project.
  • Line Managers or Department Heads should own the resources, and ensure everyone involved is placed effectively.
  • Resource or Traffic Managers optimize planning and utilization by streamlining task assignments and employee usage.

In how much detail?

The more detailed your plan, the harder it is to update, as the number of entries and frequency for updating will increase. But how you plan depends on your agency’s requirements. Below is a practical guide to planning:

Practical tips for resource planning:

  • Only plan your billable staff—not your admin team.
  • If certain freelancers work for you frequently, include them when resource planning.
  • Lay out your project backlog and ensure that it is frequently updated to get a forecast of the next two months’ work.
  • If you want to predict freelance or hiring needs, consider and plan resources for probable opportunities from beginning to end.

Get More From Your People

Getting more from your employees doesn’t just mean higher quality work—it will improve your bottom line too. And when you optimize utilization, whether at employee or management level, your people benefit from work/life balance and become a happier, healthier team. So if you don’t already measure utilization, we encourage you to consider both realized and future utilization in your resource plans. We recommend tracking these KPIs:

Billable utilization: hours billable work / hours available *100

Productive utilization: hours billable work + hours business development / hours available * 100

Three Steps To Streamlining Your Project Management

The current global crisis puts new pressure on your margins and your people.  It’s more critical now than ever to keep projects on time and on budget—while avoiding employee burnout and turnover. Solid project management often comes down to successfully following a few key steps. These three streamlined operations optimize project management to improve workflows, control costs, boost utilization and effectively monitor projects from ideation to delivery.

  1. Set the right baseline
  2. Execute project and control progress
  3. Control your financials

To track project management improvements, we recommend focusing on these KPIs:

  • Over-servicing: compare to budget and identify run over (sales or cost price)
  • Project margin: revenue minus external costs, and minus cost of hours = project margin
  • % complete: percentage progress against the set baseline

Set the right baseline for project success

Sometimes projects fail because of scoping issues, staffing miscalculations, or inaccurate planning and budgeting.  All of these can be categorized as “setting the baseline” incorrectly. Here are four steps to getting it right:

  1. Establish your control point: Having a price quote, and a client-approved cost estimate or budget, is a vital reference point for project measurement and cost control. This should include an established number of revision rounds, complete with a timeline, to secure feedback and make revisions.
  2. Start with the right project team: Projects are often staffed with whoever is available—not the best people for the job. Establishing the best team for the project before kickoff will save valuable time later.
  3. Get the client to sign-off on the scope: Without a client-approved scope, you don’t have the documentation to secure all contractual aspects. We recommend that projects don’t begin unless the client has signed the Statement of Work.  If you decide to start a project without client sign-off, ensure there is a process in place to mitigate over-servicing.
  4. Kick off the project and keep everyone aligned: Kick off the project correctly by inviting the core team, including the client team, to establish deliverables, governance, and timeline.

As projects progress, client demands and expectations can increase too.  This can result in scope creep, when a project expands beyond the Statement of Work.  Project management must focus on two areas—monitoring what has been spent and providing clarity on progress against budget.  To monitor project, spend at a basic level, we recommend using our core model of progress management:

The baseline is the contractual budget, the actual is what has been spent so far, and the ETC is the Estimate to Complete. To calculate the Estimate at Completion (EAC), add the ETC and actual together. Or if work is delivered as T&M, the actual spend should be focused on.

Execute projects and control progress

Establishing ongoing processes is a critical part of project management, with many practices and rules that can be applied, agencywide.  But as a minimum, we recommend establishing processes in the following core areas with a regular cadence every month:

  1. Monthly control: As part of the month-end reporting process, PMs should provide details on the status of a project and evaluate the progress in terms of the value of work in progress (WIP), time and materials (T&M) and the percentage completion of the project (Fixed Price).
  2. Monthly invoicing: 
Setting clear monthly deadlines for invoicing will improve cash flow. Although often left to finance teams, we find that PMs can be better suited to handling invoicing, as they are closer to the clients.
  3. Weekly time and progress management: To maximize return on employee efforts, register time accurately and promptly. Employees need an easy way to submit time, and a secure approval process should be in place, so that all time registration can be complete by the beginning of each week.
  4. Weekly project staffing process: Project staffing should be updated on one given day a week, to avoid booking conflicts and ensure effective resource planning. Thursday is a good choice, as it leaves Friday to resolve any issues.  It’s critical that plans are updated correctly by all, as inaccuracies could lead to planning issues.

Control your financials

Depending on your agency’s workflow, you may delegate project financial management to another team member. But from a best practice point of view, we suggest that Project Managers have complete control over project financials, including invoicing, in order to be able to effectively manage project delivery from beginning to end.

Remember, the Statement of Work, price quote, and resulting project budget must all be precise and accurate, as they serve as your baseline for measurement.  So, we recommend including the financial terms below in your Scope of Work (SOW).  If any are already incorporated into the Master Service Agreement (MSA) with the client, then the SOW should reference that document accordingly.

Five Contractual Terms for Financials

  1. Payment terms: Ensure that your contract (MSA and/or SOW) has a clear definition of payment terms.
  2. Delivery dependent payments: When you enter fixed price contracts, ensure deliverables are clearly laid out, then make payments dependent on them—it gives you a solid reason for invoicing the client. Alternatively, a date dependent payment plan with upfront payment would work.
  3. Type of contract: Make it clear whether the project is fixed price or T&M.
  4. Expense handling: Set out how expenses will be treated. For example, they might be invoiced on a cost spend basis.
  5. Assumptions: In your SOW, lay out clear assumptions of expectations and dependencies of deliverables. This includes the number of revision rounds, or the amount of time set aside for the review and approval process.