This engineering firm of 100 employees had experienced some substantial growth over the last couple of years and now has 4 offices across multiple provinces. This growth and the growth planned over the next years made it clear there was a lack of understanding of results across their different lines of business. As such, they weren’t able to get a clear picture of their activities as a whole. This needed to change if they wanted to set themselves up for success as they continued their expansion.

The issue: Obtaining a better understanding of profitability

As additional offices began to pop up, it was now important to have a clearer understanding of which clients, lines of business and associates brought the biggest value to the organization. However, without a flexible project or departmental structure within their ERP system, the firm’s multiple lines of business made it difficult to analyze their operations, since staff members were working on multiple projects across different offices.

An additional challenge: 3 months to go-live with the system

There was an additional challenge: the firm needed the system to be operational in 3 months. They had an obsolete accounting system in place and had no choice but to make the switch in 3 months. The key to their search was a solution that would be flexible enough to meet their complex structural needs, but that could be implemented in a relatively short period of time.

The solution: A robust professional services system to structure their organization

JOVACO Project for engineering firms was developed for and by other firms in the industry. As a result, the system could easily meet the firm’s requirements in terms of flexibility and reporting. The forms, templates and reports already existed natively within the system, which facilitated the implementation and allowed them to meet their 3-month deadline.

The engineering firm also needed the solution to be structured differently depending on their different lines of business. They needed to manage small, simple projects lasting a couple of months as well as large, complex projects that can span years. JOVACO Project has the capabilities to extract the information needed at multiple levels, depending on who needs to review the information and the context of the type of project being worked on.

Since the project accounting solution already has the functionalities in place to manage projects within a matrix structure, this made it easy for the firm to pull their reports to better analyze the different aspects of their organization. For more information, read our article to find out how to solve the top challenges faced by professional services firms with a matrix organizational structure.

A system for everyone

Since the implementation 6 months ago, the management team has also implemented Microsoft Power BI to more efficiently share information through personalized dashboards and take their analysis to the next level. The project managers now have the tools in place to effectively manage their projects and improve the understanding and tracking of their budgets and resources allocated to the different phases. The administration can also open projects faster and more efficiently, and streamline the invoicing process depending on the type of project and client.

Finally, everyone wins as the employees now have an intuitive and complete timesheet that allows them to enter their time easily and efficiently. They don’t even have to know all the complex details pertaining to the project as these configurations are handled automatically by the system when the project is created.

Are you an engineering firm looking to optimize your system?

Read more about the different advantages to using JOVACO Project within your engineering firm. JOVACO Project is designed specifically to allow engineering firms to manage simultaneous projects of varying length and scope and that involve different groups and companies.