Archive for February, 2007

CAMeLEAN Helps Measure Efficiencyof Projects

Doing more for less does not necessarily mean having great technology. More depends on managing time effectively so that not only productivity goes up but organizations are able to plan each task and at the same time get a clear idea of the concise amount of work completed at any given point of time.

Bangalore, Karnataka, India, February 23, 2007 — The timesheet management module in the recently launched CAMeLEAN®PM, a program management solution from Bangalore-based Ranal Software Solutions, a Ranal Group company, is an integral component of a program management tool.

Timesheets are used by organizations not only to track time utilized by each employee, manage online timesheet approvals and billing but also track and monitor non-project related work to collect data for analysis.

When each employee keys in the data to record the amount of work that he/she has done on a daily basis, it primarily serves a dual purpose. One, the project manager is able to obtain online information about the project – both in terms of the each team member’s performance as well as the status of the entire project as against the original plan.

“With our data capture ability, we can extrapolate and find out when the project is likely to be completed. Through this data the organization can also utilize its resources better. In case the project is behind time, workers can be added to get it on track or if it is ahead of time some team members could be removed and placed in another project,” says Mr Vijay Kumar Vice- president Ranal Software Solutions.

On the other hand, the timesheet module can also be used to calculate the cost of any future project through its in-depth data capture and analytic functionalities.

Today, timesheet management is becoming a crucial issue in organizations. Compared to 1999-2000 timeframe when companies had a price cushion to absorb project overruns, today’s environment is entirely different. The current wages and slashed pricing scenario along with a highly competitive environment had ensured that no such cushion for overruns exists. “Today, projects have to be completed as per the estimate. The margins are slashed by 50% and every company is extremely sensitive to time overruns. If it gets a project for 1000 hours it has to ensure that it completes it in 1000 hours to maintain its wafer-thin margins,” he explained.

Continue reading ‘CAMeLEAN Helps Measure Efficiencyof Projects’

Getting Employees to Use Timesheet Software

In an earlier blog, I discussed why people hate timesheets. Now, let’s look at ways to overcome this resistance.

Education and Buy-In: The most effective way to get people to do something is to make sure they understand what’s in it for them. In the case of payroll for hourly workers, the desire to get paid provides the incentive. In the case of billing automation, it’s revenue for the company (i.e. a successful company). Most people can understand this, and they care about the success of their company.

Project accounting is more abstract. If done badly, it can lead to unnecessary overtime, stressful blown schedules, bad estimates and cancelled projects. Relating specific examples from your company in which good time collection could have prevented problems helps to get employees on board.

Adoption Dashboard:It helps to include graphs that clearly illustrate which departments and people are entering their time consistently and completely, and which are not. This helps managers understand early on who they need to badger about getting their time recorded, or who to reward for doing a good job in this area.

Phased Rollout: Adopting a multiphase rollout approach that leads to per-person per-project profitability allows you to change the culture in more manageable steps.
Incentives: Linking bonuses or other benefits with complete data collection is often used in customer relationship management (CRM) tools to adjust sales commissions. The same can be done for other forms of data collection. My company, Journyx Inc., has a patent—we call it the ‘frequent flyer patent’—for automatically rewarding your employees on your behalf for timely time reporting.

Email Reminders: Getting an automated reminder when your time has not yet been recorded produces results…usually!

Implementing Project Accounting: If you have more than five people in your organization and they are working on many projects or within many processes, it is time to start thinking about implementing time tracking. If you have 100 people in an R+D group and you’re not tracking time, then you’re wasting the lives and work of a significant percentage of your employees. You might have them working on projects that the market will not reward you for, which are over budget or otherwise in the ditch, and you don’t know that today.

Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx.

DOVICO Timesheet Named Best Time Management Software for Second Year in a Row

TopTenREVIEWS rates DOVICO Timesheet as Best Time Tracking and Time Management Software with their Gold Award and a Perfect Score for a second year in a row.

Moncton, New Brunswick (PRWeb) February 14, 2007 — DOVICO Timesheet named the ‘Best Time Management Software’, and ‘Time Tracking Software’ by TopTenREVIEWS Inc. for a second year in a row. TopTenReviews Inc., a leading software review company ranked all major competitors on five specific dimensions including, Software Features, Ease of Use, Ease of Software Installation, Time Tracking Capabilities and Reporting Capabilities.

We are extremely proud to have this time management software recognized for the second year in a row as best in its class

DOVICO Timesheet was the only software to receive a perfect score on all dimensions.

“DOVICO Timesheet offers more practical features than any other time management program on the market. Just a few of the time-tracking features will track employee hours, sick time, vacation time, holidays and overtime. This software can do anything and everything to keep track of your employees’ hours,” said the review. “Exceptional time tracking and business management features coupled with over 136 different reports sets this application apart and makes it the ultimate web-based timesheet software for business owners and managers.”

“We are extremely proud to have this time management software recognized for the second year in a row as best in its class,” said Yves Doucet, CEO/President of DOVICO. “The field has mdovicologo_smaller.jpgany competitors and a lot of effort went into making this product the easiest time tracking and time billing software to use.

“DOVICO has thousands of successful companies worldwide using our software to gather important time and cost data to help companies know exactly where their actual project costs vs. budgets are and thus increase profits, and now with the combination of our latest offering, a new hosted online (SAAS, ASP) solution there is an even easier way for companies to get started.”

TopTenREVIEWS sums it up in a final statement, “If you want the #1 time tracking software and timesheet management web-based software on the market today, look no further, DOVICO Timesheet is it.”

About DOVICO Timesheet
DOVICO Timesheet is a powerful time management software solution that monitors project costs, employee time sheets, and expenses. This performance management software has been tested and proven globally by thousands of successful companies for workforce automation. Whether you’re a leader in your field today or just on your way to becoming one, DOVICO Timesheet can help increase your profits and provide improved project control and timesheet management. Integration to Intuit QuickBooks, Microsoft Office Project and compliancy with SOX and DCAA are included.

About TopTenREVIEWS
TopTenREVIEWS Inc. is the leading review Web site, featuring expert reviews for technology and entertainment products and services. TopTenREVIEWS.com provides free access to in-depth reviews, side-by-side feature comparisons, industry-related news, articles and qualified links related to software, hardware, movies and web services. The site has reviewed more than 150 categories of products and services with more than 600,000 Web pages of original content. For additional information, visit www.TopTenReviews.com

About DOVICO:
DOVICO Software is a software development leader that provides proven project time and cost saving solutions. Established in 1989 in response to the emerging global demand for improved operating efficiency, our time and project tracking software products have been embraced by thousands of the world’s best-known companies such as Motorola, WebMD, Michigan State University and Honeywell. DOVICO has created and continually refined our time management, time attendance and time billing software tools that let companies stay focused on what they do best and we will strive to constantly exceed their business needs and expectations.

For more information on DOVICO or DOVICO Timesheet software please call 1-800-618-8463 (North America), +800 4618 8463 (International) or visit www.DOVICO.com

(C) 2007 Les Entreprises DOVICO Enterprises Inc

Timesheet Management from Ranal’s CAMeLEAN®/PM Helps Measure Efficiency of Projects in Organizations with User-Friendly Interface

Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Friday, February 23, 2007 (Business Wire India)
Doing more for less does not necessarily mean having great technology. More depends on managing time effectively so that not only productivity goes up but organizations are able to plan each task and at the same time get a clear idea of the concise amount of work completed at any given point of time.

The timesheet management module in the recently launched CAMeLEAN®PM, a program management solution from Bangalore-based Ranal Software Solutions, a Ranal Group company, is an integral component of a program management tool.

Timesheets are used by organizations not only to track time utilized by each employee, manage online timesheet approvals and billing but also track and monitor non-project related work to collect data for analysis.

When each employee keys in the data to record the amount of work that he/she has done on a daily basis, it primarily serves a dual purpose. One, the project manager is able to obtain online information about the project – both in terms of the each team member’s performance as well as the status of the entire project as against the original plan.

“With our data capture ability, we can extrapolate and find out when the project is likely to be completed. Through this data the organization can also utilize its resources better. In case the project is behind time, workers can be added to get it on track or if it is ahead of time some team members could be removed and placed in another project,” says Mr Vijay Kumar Vice- president Ranal Software Solutions.

On the other hand, the timesheet module can also be used to calculate the cost of any future project through its in-depth data capture and analytic functionalities.

Today, timesheet management is becoming a crucial issue in organizations. Compared to 1999-2000 timeframe when companies had a price cushion to absorb project overruns, today’s environment is entirely different. The current wages and slashed pricing scenario along with a highly competitive environment had ensured that no such cushion for overruns exists. “Today, projects have to be completed as per the estimate. The margins are slashed by 50% and every company is extremely sensitive to time overruns. If it gets a project for 1000 hours it has to ensure that it completes it in 1000 hours to maintain its wafer-thin margins,” he explained.

There is another dimension being added to timesheet management. Customers are coming into the picture and demanding to see the time taken for, say, either a high or a lower level design work so that different pricing could be attributed to different levels of complexity and skillsets deployed. Moreover, the time-to-market is the sword hanging over every organization – be it services or products.

Effective timesheet management is also able to drastically cut down the time from say, 48 hours (to collect information and present it) to just about 30 seconds. Not only is it able to analyze and throw up hitherto unknown profiles but it is also able to enforce a certain amount of discipline in all organization’s processes.

Today, when most organizations are becoming acutely dependent on timesheet management, it is no longer a stand-alone module. Most companies are increasingly integrating the attendance monitoring functionality into timesheet module making it an integral part of the entire project management suite.

Ranal’s timesheet module has the unique capability to :

– Capture and record information under several headings, for example, a high level or a low level design, review, etc. Although all these activities fall under one task from a project standpoint, capturing information under different headings helps in a more in-depth analysis.

– Fine tune processes by using the captured data. The metrics enable companies to target better results the next time they take up projects in similar domains.

– Collect data pertaining to time taken for re-working projects, checking defects, etc.

– Collect non-project related data such as leave/attendance, time spent in meetings, ISO related work/audits, training (from a trainer or a trainee perspective).

– Even collect data from unique company experiences such as loss of time through power outages, network/sever downtime, download time and analyze it so that the problems can be ironed out.

– Write scripts so that reminders are sent automatically to workers for entering data into timesheets.

– Provide real time visibility to customers online so that if the need arises they can check the status of their projects immediately.

About Ranal Software Solutions:

Ranal Software Solutions is the R&D and product development division of Ranal group and offers the CAMeLEAN® suite of products for collaborative Process Lifecycle Management (cPLM) and Program/Project Management (PM). CAMeLEAN®/cPLM allows organizations to plan and manage their manufacturing processes in a flexible and predictable way and helps in eliminating the disconnect between design and production. CAMeLEAN®/PM allows organizations to plan, execute, track and manage their programs and projects according to business objectives, all from a single point. More at www.ranal.com/softwaresolutions.

About Ranal Group:

Headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA, the Ranal Group caters to worldwide client needs through focused competency centers based out of the United States, Canada, Europe and India. The group is backed by decades of experience in technology areas such as CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM, robotics and off-line programming, manufacturing process planning and management, program/project management, digital manufacturing and cPLM. Ranal has over 600 clients from automotive, aerospace, heavy engineering and other industries and include ABB, General Motors (GM), Kuka Robotics, Motoman, Renault and many other leading global organizations. More at www.ranal.com

For press backgrounder on Ranal Engineering click here

Media contact details

Ranii Menon,
Communique India,
+91 9845027101,
info@communiqueindia.in

KEYWORDS: CONSULTANCY SERVICES, BUSINESS SERVICES, IT, TECHNOLOGY

Submit your press release at http://www.businesswireindia.com