Job Costing gets efficient with the use of an ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a PMO’s best friend. While there are many tools available for managing an individual project, managing all your projects, resources and timelines can be overwhelming and highly inefficient at the best of times.

You may have already experienced these problems:

• Significant disconnect between actual costs and presumed costs
• Decreased margins/profits
• Resource inefficiencies
• Scope creep
• Client relationship issues
• Tension within project teams and management
• Limited knowledge of your company success.

The use of a robust and integrated ERP solution will stop the broad (and usually wrong) assumptions associated with job and project planning, and allow you to provide real-time facts and tangible metrics to justify your need for resources and realistic timelines. It will also make you look super efficient in front of your internal teams and (more importantly) in front of your valued clients!

Bridge the Gap

The days of ‘herding cats’ may soon be over!  Bridging the gap between what is believed to be on-time and on-budget, and what is actually happening is essential to everyone’s success on a project. Clients often demand last minute updates and progress reports. Staff become ill or take vacations. By knowing exactly where you stand on a job or project, you are able to respond and act efficiently, and expeditiously.

Get real!

Providing quotes to clients based on proven metrics allows you to ensure you are not undercutting your profit margins and that you are accounting for all costs, based on your vast experience and ability to tap into historical data. This also prevents you from having to go back to a client for additional ‘unexpected’ costs or account for missed milestones.

One of the greatest advantages of having an ERP solution as part of your business delivery structure is that you can view real-time progress and costs, and align them to the approved project plans. If you are seeing an overrun in one area, you are able to address it immediately. If you are seeing a lag in the timeline, you can act upon it and get the project back on track by assigning additional or different resources – or even take a collective look at the scope itself.

ERP solutions are as smart as the information put into them. A focused effort is required when setting up your ERP, as well as a clear understanding of the business, its resources and past experience on job and project delivery.

You know your business! You’re confident your amazing team can deliver the jobs you are hired to do, on-time and within budget. With the use of an ERP solution, you will be able to manage your profit margins more efficiently and understand what it really costs to deliver your solutions, based on your extensive experience and knowledge.

Knowledge is power, after all. By implementing the Herbst Software solution, you will have a plethora of tools available to you and your team.

Also, we have a mobile solution called Herbst Jobber which helps to manage Job Costing in real-time and with accuracy. You can watch the video below to know more about that.

The more you know, the more you will be able to apply the lessons of each task into your ERP solution and exponentially improve all project efficiencies with your current and future clients.