Projekt Magazin tests projectfacts

Projekt Magazin has tested projectfacts!

projectfacts – the company headquarters

Medium-sized companies that handle their orders mainly in project form need software whose range of functions covers not only project management. In the sense of a “company headquarters”, it should also offer functions for customer management (CRM), personnel administration or invoicing, for example. The web-based tool projectfacts from 5 POINT AG was designed for exactly this purpose. Dr. Mey Mark Meyer has looked at the current version for you and describes the most important functions.

Medium-sized companies that provide professional services in the B2B environment handle their orders almost exclusively in the form of projects that need to be planned and managed. To keep track of project quotes, customer appointments and project execution, they need a software solution whose range of functions goes beyond that of pure project management functions. The web-based tool projectfacts from 5 POINT AG was designed for exactly this purpose. In the sense of a “company headquarters”, the modularly structured software offers numerous functions ranging from customer management (CRM) through personnel administration and document management to project management and the financial module for invoicing. Companies ranging from smaller to larger organisations, including PostAuto Schweiz AG, UC Point AG and Saint-Gobain Building Distribution Deutschland GmbH, rely on the software.

Modules and tiles structure the interface

projectfacts presents itself to the user as clearly designed software in the browser. After logging in, they see a row of links at the top of the window with which they can navigate to the individual work areas of the programme, called modules. Which modules are visible to them depends on their role and the associated permissions. For team members, the modules “Home”, “Time recording” and “Open items” may be sufficient, while project managers also need access to “Projects”, “Reports” and the customer management “CRM”.

A click on one of the module links leads to the entry page of the respective module. There, the user is greeted by information tiles that, following the Windows 8 principle, serve simultaneously as an information source and as a button for calling up the programme functions (Figure 1). The tile for the project overview shows, for example, how many projects the user is responsible for as a processor and how the projects are distributed across the various project statuses. Clicking on the tile opens the complete project list.

In the “Filter and settings” area, the user can individually adjust which information should be displayed. Frequently used views can be marked as individual favourites and are then accessible at any time with two clicks. The uniform structure of the tiles, which mostly provide a preview of the data behind them, as well as the flexibility in selecting the data displayed, make the interface appear tidy and intuitively operable.

Customer management and project quotes

projectfacts supports work from the very first customer contact, long before the project starts: In the “Customer Relationship Management” (CRM) module for customer management, customer data is recorded. On the entry page of the module there are tiles for companies, customer contacts, suppliers and sales opportunities. In addition to master data such as addresses and phone numbers, users can also document customer conversations in projectfacts, so that all parties are always informed about what has already been discussed with a business partner. Statistical evaluations help to assess customers and take appropriate sales measures, for example after analysing open quotes from the past few months or based on an ABC analysis by revenue in the previous year. A campaign management system, which can be used to plan and evaluate acquisition measures in the CRM, rounds off the functionality. This makes projectfacts a good tool for being able to approach potential project partners early and professionally.

The quoting function in the “Finance” module helps to create standardised quotes – also based on quote templates. In addition to material items, such as licences, project services can be quoted at a fixed price, by effort or per unit of time. However, these values cannot currently be taken directly from an existing project plan. If the customer accepts the quote, projectfacts creates a corresponding order confirmation, creates the project and later helps to create invoices and keep track of the due date of receivables.

The finance module includes a booking function with which financial transactions can be recorded for controlling purposes. Even though this function is quite sufficient to meet the demands of a company headquarters for project management: projectfacts cannot and does not want to replace financial accounting. Instead, it is possible to integrate financial accounting – whether your own or that of a tax advisor.

Project planning and project control

Before invoicing comes the delivery of services – and with it the project. It is planned and managed in the “Projects” module. The entry page of the module shows the overall project overview. Clicking on one of the projects brings up the detail view for editing the project. This is in turn subdivided into several sections by tabs. On the “Schedule” tab, for example, you will find the bar chart, which provides information on the project’s deadlines (Figure 2). Clicking on one of the transactions in the schedule displays its detailed information on the left side of the screen.

For project services to be billed correctly, effort must be recorded. projectfacts keeps track not only of the planned and the actual accrued effort, but also the budget. This makes it easy to check whether the current forecast from the effort incurred and still expected is within the original plan and whether the order is therefore still as profitable as hoped at the outset.

projectfacts aggregates the effort across the project structure: The effort of a summary task corresponds to the sum of the effort of all sub-tasks. Project planners can, however, also simply overwrite these values. This allows considerably more freedom in planning. If the entered amount is less than the calculated sum, however, the software marks the value in a prominent red.

The assignment planning function helps with resource management: It displays all the activities assigned to a specific employee and provides information about which tasks are currently being worked on. The “Dynamic Resource Planning” (DRP), on the other hand, illustrates the capacity situation. projectfacts compares the working time available to employees for projects with the planned project effort and thus makes any overloads visible (Figure 3). This also makes the software’s ambition clear: not just to be a project management tool, but to keep an eye on the entire company’s requirements.

In addition to working time accounts, projectfacts also manages detailed employee master data in the “HR” module and supports keeping track of leave requests and leave accounts.

In service projects, time recording is particularly important. It not only serves together with the estimated remaining effort as a means of progress recording, but is at the same time the basis for billing – provided the project is not billed at a fixed price. Accordingly, the “Time recording” module in projectfacts proves to be extremely versatile.

After the booking day and the corresponding activity have been selected, the project hours worked can be recorded with supplementary comments. Already at this point, it is possible to specify whether the project work performed can be billed. Because time recording is often an unwelcome task, the programme makes this work as easy as possible for the user by providing booking templates and a list of recently made bookings, from which new bookings can easily be generated. If desired, start and end times can also be recorded, e.g. because a customer requires exact proof. For users who work on the computer anyway, such as programmers, a stopwatch function offers a good way to record this information with little effort.

For personnel management, projectfacts optionally compares the booked times with the attendance times, which can either be entered directly in the software or imported from hardware terminals. Overall, the programme thus provides powerful support both for project time recording and for working time management.

Lots of collaboration around the project

From the project quote through project planning and management to billing – the focus of projectfacts is, as the name suggests, on projects. The manufacturer 5POINT positions the software not just as a pure project management tool, however, but also as a “company headquarters”. For the associated tasks there are not only administrative functions for financial and personnel management, but also a range of helpful tools that can be used in day-to-day work in and around projects. These include a wiki, the discussion forum and the survey function. The integrated file storage in the “Files” module stores files on the server, so that they are available to all users in versioned form – without the need for a central network drive. A web connection to the projectfacts server is sufficient. In order not to have to constantly download and then re-upload files for editing in everyday work, the file folders can be integrated into the file system of your own computer via WebDAV or by means of a plug-in.

Not every task is worth creating a new transaction in the project. The task management in projectfacts is used to organise and coordinate such minor tasks as constantly arise in and outside of projects (Figure 4). In the “Open items” module, projectfacts lists all tasks of a user regardless of the project, while all tasks associated with a specific project are displayed under Open items in the “Projects” module. In addition to the ability to assign tasks with due dates and supplementary information and to assign them to team members, task management can also replace meeting minutes: For this purpose, task lists are created in which all open items from a meeting are entered. projectfacts can make such task lists available to a distribution list; the corresponding team members then receive automatic notifications. Since an open item can be not just a task but also a note, a goal or an idea, an intelligent record can be created that reflects the completion status of the distributed tasks while simultaneously containing information and decisions.

The fact that tasks can be linked to projects or work packages corresponds to a basic idea of the software. Almost all planning objects can be set in relation to one another. In this way, documents are linked with tasks, quotes with contacts or tasks with quotes. What sounds complicated ensures in practice that the corresponding information can always be found in the context it belongs to. Users can, for example, jump to the general forum module to search for a post. The discussion also appears directly alongside the associated project.

System requirements

Users need a current browser with JavaScript to access projectfacts. If online-stored documents are to be edited directly without constant uploading, a Java applet with a corresponding Java VM is additionally required. Alternatively, WebDAV can be used.

On the server side, a wide variety of operating systems can be used, provided they allow the installation of an Apache web server with Tomcat application server and MySQL as the database. Especially for smaller companies and for getting started, the hosting offers are likely to be of interest. Your own servers are not required here; instead, the customer receives access either to the Software-as-a-Service offering or to an exclusively usable server provided by the supplier.