As a project manager not only responsible for managing my project but also asked by senior management to create a budget at the start of an engagement and then to submit weekly forecasts showing my anticipated revenue stream, how can I possibly find the time to get this accomplished using Oracle Project Management?
We implemented Oracle Project Management because it has the robust functionality we need. Still, the truth is I need to quickly update my numbers and get back to managing my project. It takes me over 20 screens to make weekly updates to my project forecast, and I have to be in the office to do that. I am in and out of the office, with little or no time connected to the network. Most of my time is spent on an airplane or at the client site managing my project. So how can I accomplish this quickly and easily without the monthly frustration?
Project Partners UI-Apps were implemented to address this need. UI-Apps provide a simple user interface in a familiar tool (MS Excel) that allows Project Managers (PMs) to review and maintain project plans at their convenience. It is built to work seamlessly with Oracle Project Management and provide PMs with a simple solution with built-in industry-specific processes for Professional Services Organizations. Only those Oracle Project Management functions relevant to our company are included on our UI-Apps worksheets.
PMs log into Oracle (from MS Excel) whenever connected to the office intranet, download project information to the UI-Apps worksheets, and save these worksheets to their local machine. They can now go on the road and review and update data into the UI-Apps worksheets at any time – and whenever they connect to the office intranet, they upload the updates back to Oracle.
Additionally, the most recent actual costs can be viewed (as entered and summarized in Oracle), compared with the current budget, and the weekly forecast can be updated to reflect the situation as it now stands. UI-Apps provide both lump-sum and time-phased planning capabilities, so our PM workbooks contain a lump-sum budget worksheet and a time-phased forecast worksheet. A convenient summary report allows PMs to review actual costs and planned amounts for rows of tasks by expenditure categories displayed in columns.
In each of the worksheets, PMs can change the dates of tasks and resources, add new tasks, indent, outdent them, or otherwise modify the WBS, add or change resources assigned to tasks. Since UI-Apps has downloaded the appropriate burdened cost rates and bill rates for these resources, PMs can make good use of their travel time and have a complete, up-to-date forecast ready to upload when they return to their home-base destination. Even for multiple-month engagements, entering time-phased Estimate-to-Complete amounts is easy because of flexible methods for displaying a project’s periods and a unique spread-method feature that allows entry of total amounts – and the worksheet automatically spreads it over the displayed periods. Specific periods can be modified as needed – with the total being updated accordingly.
UI-Apps gives our PM’s the option to update work plans simultaneously while updating their financial plans. In some instances, for complex engagements, we choose to track work plan progress, and with UI-Apps, updating the percent complete and entering progress status is easy to do in the same worksheet as we update our forecasts. With one click, the week’s plan is uploaded and submitted into our corporate workflow for approval.
As the IT team implements more UI-Apps functions or rolls out the latest UI-Apps release, we don’t have to worry about being out of sync with the current code or missing an update notification because each time we connect to the Oracle instance, UI-Apps checks for the latest workbooks and prompts for download of the latest version if out of synch.
Undoubtedly, senior management now has a firmer grasp on the profitability of our portfolio of engagements with up-to-date forecasts from UI-Apps.
