| Professional
Services
MIG & Co. has extensive experience in automating business
processes for professional service organizations. We understand
the nuances of the industry and how time/materials/expenses are
the “bread & butter” of the organization. The primary
inefficiency we have discovered and developed practices to correct
are accurate/timely billing, employee utilization, and task/resource
management. The attached case study highlights a Professional Services
project with a very high return on investment by leveraging Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP) Project Accounting in combination
with Microsoft Project.
Background
The client wanted their employees to have online access to the system
anywhere or anytime to enter their time or manage their projects.
Their existing FoxPro for Windows system was holding them back and
needed to be replaced.
One option was deploying Citrix or Windows Terminal Server to access
a client/server timesheet system. The client viewed this option
as being cost prohibitive, so we suggested a web-based timesheet
submission and approval system utilizing Microsoft Business Portal.
Solution/Integrated Functions
MIG & Co. selected Great Plains (GP) by Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions
because it offered project estimating, resource management, timesheets,
expense reporting, project management, contact management, invoicing,
purchase orders, knowledge management, and two-way integration with
Microsoft Project. It synchronizes account information such as customers,
jobs, vendors, and importing accounts payable and accounts receivable
information, such as invoices and expense reports. By utilizing
Microsoft Project, Great Plains (GP) Project Accounting, and Microsoft
Business Portal, we were able to satisfy the complex business requirements
of the client with commercial off-the-shelf business applications
that integrated out-of-box with very little custom modifications.
The project took two months to deploy. At the end of the two months,
the client had a fully functional Professional Services Automation
system tightly integrated with the Great Plains (GP) system.
Return On Investment
We achieved our client objective in giving their employees access
to the system anywhere or anytime. Other benefits include generating
reports that used to take 20 minutes, which now take under a minute.
Invoices are generated when a phase or project is complete rather
than at the end of the week with the old system.
The invoices are all sent out by e-mail without any complaint by
clients. Most importantly, the client has improved project profitability
because of better reporting and the ability to reference historical
data prior to estimating new projects..
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