Strong growth in five years The need for a reliable time recording and project management solution
AB-Projects computer scientists are known for their efficient concepts: “We always offer an efficient IT solution that is also feasible,” says Jürgen Heilmann, project manager at the company since 2010. He came to AB projects as a “third man” to support the two founders and managing directors and supervised two IT migration projects. Two projects quickly became ten. Additional employees were needed. As the number of projects and experts in the company grew, the need for a reliable time recording and project management solution grew. At this point, project data was entered in Excel spreadsheets and — as with many “young companies” — the founders and managing directors worked around the clock. Controlling in the strict sense of the word was limited: Time was recorded by the customer, travel expenses were settled on the basis of entries in an Excel sheet.
Control according to fixed prices or by hours?
IT consulting projects are very diverse and can take from five man-days to three years. Some are billed according to fixed prices, others according to hours. They all have one thing in common: They must be efficient and cut costs. “For our customers and for us, there must be a plus in the end,” says Heilmann, summing up the economic aspect. Accurate resource recording and project management help with this. In the past, agreeing on a fixed price always meant a high financial risk: “You always had to estimate the cost of new tasks on the basis of previous projects,” says Heilmann. As a result, there was always a certain uncertainty factor in the calculations.
Surfing hitsn
Heilmann found the PROVANTIS software “ZEP” on the Internet. He tried out the free installation offered on the website using a test account and was impressed by its performance. He is convinced that the solution is particularly suitable for companies that see time recording and project management in connection and want to improve their performance through efficient post-calculations. Various other programs that Heilmann compared did not meet this requirement. Among employees, the introduction of the new time recording and project management solution was initially “met with natural resistance to innovations.” Some reservations had to be overcome before switching to ZEP. “During everyday project work, colleagues have found that recording their project data in ZEP is not a waste, and they recognize the benefits,” says Heilmann.
Direct line to support
The implementation costs of ZEP were relatively low; as the number of users increased, only internal training requirements grew. As a key user, Heilmann is the interface to the ZEP consultants at provantis. The manuals are no longer required. If any questions arise, he appreciates the direct connection to support: “Even if my first point of contact is not available in the office, I get professionally experienced support — great. ”
With ZEP, AB projects now records the times and documents, and the travel expense report is also carried out via the system. In addition, the software is used to prepare for invoicing and to track billed project milestones. Project control is to be carried out in even more detail in the future. The “overtime/vacation” function is standard for all employees today. When a new order arrives, the project is created in ZEP. In ZEP, each project is assigned employees and is divided into three to four milestones. Each milestone is billed in ZEP and the information is forwarded to the tax office. An important task that ZEP also performs is the (wage) cost distribution (DATEV) to the project cost centers based on the hours recorded in the previous month. Another particular benefit of the system is the recording of all documents based on project cost centers.
Transparency in effort and evaluation
Heilmann: “Today, ZEP shows where the expenditure is incurred. It can be concluded from the results what can be made even more effective in similar projects in the future. “Many evaluations can be generated from ZEP. The monthly evaluation via “Projects & Employees” (as a matrix) is most commonly used. The list of projects is regularly submitted to the tax advisor for coordination between the cost centers. An evaluation, which key user Heilmann constantly uses, shows the total hours in the project and the comparison with project planning. In the future, the computer scientist would like to see article management as an additional function so that offers can also be prepared in ZEP.
ZEP makes project success easy to measure
“ZEP is ideal for recording planned costs and calculating internal hourly rates — an almost perfect solution for us,” says Heilmann. All projects have become measurable, project control faster. His conclusion: “We are satisfied that ZEP is supporting the growth of our company in the right place — without ZEP, the risk of a miscalculation would be too great. ”
