Improving efficiency for Designbrook
Designbrook
The problem
Designbrook implemented PROJECTminder to provide a solution to the following business issues:
- The need to maximise internal resourcing and increase the efficiency of the practice.
- Decrease the amount time on spent job costing and increase the accuracy of fee proposals.
- Decrease the amount of time being spent on the monthly billing process.
- Eliminate the need to analyse a number of different data sources in order to produce a single report.
The solution
PROJECTminder for Engineers provides a clear view of who is doing what at any given time. Providing analysis as to who has got the capacity to work on a new project, who is coming to the end of a project, and who has worked on a similar project before.
What they said...
“Since implementing PROJECTminder management have more control over staff workload, ensuring they work more efficiently. Management are more aware of what staff are working on, so we can monitor their workload better. Timesheets submitted on a weekly basis so no longer have to chase for weeks. Members of staff have also become more aware of their current workload and what is included within our project fee, enabling us to capture additional fees before the tasks are carried out.”
With the implementation of PROJECTminder for Engineers Designbrook were able to create more accurate fee proposals by making available all information needed to budget a project. Historical information of past and current projects is held in a central database, allowing management to see how many hours were spent on similar projects and which team would be most effective.
What they said...
“At first I was very dubious about PROJECTminder being a web-based system. However, over time it has proven to be very reliable. I estimate that we now spend around 10% less time and effort on job costing alone.”
PROJECTminder for Engineers gives actual and up-to-date job costs, allowing the creation of accurate invoices, either monthly or when each stage of the project is completed. If a client moves the goal posts or extends the brief, the implications to the job are immediately known.
What they said...
“PROJECTminder for Engineers has saved us approximately 40% of our time when compared to our previous billing process.”
Effective project management is based on making the right decisions at the right time based on the right information. Most of the reports created by PROJECTminder start with a top-level summary with the facility to look deeper into the data to identify how or why a particular situation has occurred.
What they said...
“We are able to run reports from one data source as opposed to analysing from a number of different reports in different data sources as we were previously doing. This enables us to target the exact data we need to view.”
