This year’s Microsoft Convergence Show had a record-breaking 10,000 attendees.  During the show, Microsoft showed off its hybrid cloud strategy for their Dynamics products.  Dynamics CRM can now deploy identical software both onsite and in the cloud.  Dynamics NAV and GP will follow suit in 2013, with AX coming soon thereafter.  How can you get your Dynamics product ready for functionality in the cloud? 

Simply put, if Dynamics is in the cloud, you should have all of your add-ons in the cloud, as well.  I’ll use the example of adding timesheet software to Dynamics.  This is a common add-on seeing as how Microsoft Business Portal lacks an essential time-tracking functionality.

Microsoft Dynamics Business Portal lacks data validations and thus is prone to human error.  This is a huge time sink.  If your managers are busy manually checking timesheets, it negatively affects company operations.  Another downfall of Business Portal is the lack of

My company sells employee time tracking software that automates client billing, project accounting and payroll. We have implemented these systems for customers repeatedly where the employees previously were unaccustomed to accounting for their time. Occasionally this has generated some intense emotions. Some people really don't want to track their time even when their managers are very firm.

Why is this? Why do people find tracking time so unpleasant, or even maddening?

And how about you?  Do you like entering data into forms?  Why or why not?  Is tracking time any worse than filling out other forms? 

My experience has shown that it often is for several reasons.

Reason One: Reporting time can threaten status. For salaried people, especially if they’ve been employed earlier in their life in an hourly "time clock" environment, reporting time can make them feel demoted. Conventional wisdom (that I disagree with) is that "professional" people are more trustworthy and less in need of supervision than "blue collar" people.

It’s seemingly impossible to avoid multitasking in today’s busy world. The constant bombardment of emails, phone calls, and appointments quickly begin to pile up, so to combat this we attempt to juggle more activities at once. I instinctively answer the phone as I’m driving home from work or respond to an urgent email while I’m reading a report, but are these the best solutions to my problems?

Mounting evidence suggests that multitasking is the enemy of productivity. Though it may lead us to think that we’re being more productive, we’re in fact thwarting performance ability and significantly lowering quality of work along the way. While we can all recognize how multitasking affects the texting driver, the negative impact of multitasking in the workplace is not as immediately apparent.

A 2010 study in the journal Science tackled this issue by examining just how the human brain handles multiple simultaneous activities. Research suggests that when a person performs a single task, the goal-oriented areas of both frontal lobes work to engage the task together. When an additional task is added, the two lobes divide responsibility and each hemisphere focuses on its own objective. While our two lobes can work collaboratively to accomplish an independent task, they must divide to accomplish anything more fragmented.

According to a Gartner analyst firm report, 15% of all IT projects failed that year because of high cost variance, while 18% were unsuccessful because they were substantially late. [i]  This means that in 2008, 1 in 3 technology projects failed.  Why such a dismal success rate?  Such projects primarily involve the management of human resources in order to accomplish the target schedule, cost, and quality, so it is safe to assume that poor resource management played a large role.  Unfortunately, without effective resource management processes, such organizations are left asking questions like:

• “Who is working on what?” 
• “How do I get this project back on schedule?”
• “How much more work will it take to finish?” 

The Problem with IT Projects Today

Resource Management

            IT project teams are made up of knowledge workers who are categorized by skill types or job functions.  For example, a project team might require business analysts, developers, team leads, project managers, architects, or database analysts.

The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), under the authority, direction, and control of the United States under the Secretary of Defense, performs all contract audits for the United States Department of Defense (DoD). DCAA also provides contract audit services to some other government agencies.

Today, the DCAA consists of approximately 4,000 people located at more than 300 field audit offices throughout the world.

The purpose of the agency, simply stated, is to avoid the purchase of $300 hammers and $1,000 toilet seats. Business services companies, such as software and management consultancies, that sell project management and other services to government agencies need to comply with a number of DCAA requirements if they want to avoid failing an audit. As taxpayers, we should all be thrilled that our government has put processes in place to avoid overpayment and being defrauded. 

As business owners selling to the federal government, however, these procedures complicate the process for winning and performing on government contracts tremendously, especially for smaller firms.

When times are tough, every company looks to cut costs where they can.  Yet how can this be accomplished without eliminating key projects and people?  It is actually quite simple if you have the right data in hand.  With the appropriate per-customer per-project profitability metrics, companies can easily shave off unprofitable work and learn how to focus their time, efforts and budget on the profitable work alone.

Cutting with Precision

Do all of the top managers at your company know which of your past projects were successful and which were failures? Do they know how many employees worked on these projects or how much time was invested in them? How about which of your clients were a drain and which ones were profitable? Without this information, you certainly cannot cut costs without risking the loss of projects and people that bring in the most revenue. 

Implementing profitability metrics might sound complicated, but it is often easier than you might think.

In the event of a down economy, many companies start looking for ways to cut costs. This can include anything from reducing spending on various programs to cutting employees, yet such drastic measures are often unnecessary and harmful to the company's future. And yet, if you could simply figure out where your company is profitable and where it's not, you could simply choose to do more of the profitable work.

Planning for Profit

Companies need data to help them make future decisions. For example, how many executives really know which projects were successful? Which clients were a drain and which ones were profitable? How many employees worked on each project, and for how long?

If executives have this information in hand while planning future projects and budgets, they can make much more informed, cost-saving decisions. Here is a five-step process that can help you do so, especially in a down economy where every penny counts.

It’s not easy being a payroll professional today.  You are responsible for making sure that your company’s financial processes run smoothly, which includes gathering all of the time data throughout the organization, ensuring that everyone is paid correctly and on time, and preventing errors from finding their way into your records.  In fact, many payroll professionals struggle with these areas needlessly because they do not realize that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions can be leveraged to create seamless, efficient payroll processes.

The Benefits of SaaS Technology

• Less Work

Automated systems for processes such as time, expense and project tracking save payroll professionals an enormous amount of time and effort.  They often replace inefficient, obsolete manual or paper systems, and can also prevent double data entry by integrating with other solutions.  Not only that, but if the system is offered as SaaS, your IT department does not have to lift a finger.

Time and attendance tracking is necessary for obvious reasons, yet many business owners do not realize that this data can deliver enormous benefits to the organization, aside from payroll.  In fact, having employees track their time against tasks and projects allows managers to develop key performance indicators to measure progress against strategic goals such as increased billability, adherence to project estimates and project profitability optimization.

Key Performance Indicators

A 'key performance indicator' or KPI measures an organization's progress towards a strategic goal.  When leveraged correctly, KPIs can make a huge impact.

First, you must determine what the most important business goals are. It might be increased profitability, reduced number of defective parts per thousand, maintaining a certain percentage of customer satisfaction, or perhaps revenue per store location. Once this is established, you can create a KPI to help you measure your progress. 

Next, you must ensure that your KPI is measurable. "Make customers more successful" is not an effective KPI without some way to measure the success of your customers. "Be the most convenient drugstore" won't work either if there is no way to measure convenience.

Secure management strategies are nearly always summed up in terms reflecting a creative mindset. Thinking “outside the box” and coming up with “new, innovative techniques” is often the expectation and praise lauded on elite executives. Of course, there is great value to these attributes. The human element of management – that being the skill acquired from personal talent and the knowledge that comes with experience – separates the great managers from the mediocre. However, the development of these methods is only one aspect of a powerful managerial style. The other is a strong command of logistics.

Often shuffled into the background or carelessly delegated away, consistent logistical analysis has the ability to refine a project (or project coordinator), combining the positive results of innovation and forward-thought with the predictive ability of a hard science. Again, the key to effective long-term management strategy is consistency. That can only be achieved by keeping a close eye on all aspects of a project, team or industry.