Without a Project Management Solution:

As Frank the project manager arrives at the office, he is ready to begin the day. Before sitting down, Frank is notified that one of their job sites is short staffed and it appears that there weren’t enough workers scheduled for this particular location. Frank grabs his Excel spreadsheet with his project schedule loaded and discovers he forgot that a few of his scheduled workers were sent to another job. It is too late to make any adjustments and Frank is forced to leave the situation as is, reducing productivity on that job site for the day. Frank finally sits down and begins to look into the multiple projects he has going on currently to understand the profitability and cash flow of each project. With all of the schedules, project phases, costs, and equipment of each project loaded into different Excel spreadsheets, Frank struggles to gain visibility into the status of his projects. He can’t remember if he inputted new equipment costs in one project. Did he update the progress schedule of another project going on? Has all of the paperwork on his desk been entered into Excel and reflected in each of the projects? Frank has barely started his day and already feels overwhelmed. Unfortunately, this type of day is far too common for Frank. Instead of being able to manage his projects effectively, most of his day is spent putting out fires and resolving issues.

With a Project Management Solution:

Frank wakes up and before heading to the office, checks his tablet to make sure each of the projects he has going on are properly scheduled with workers and equipment. He uses a tool such as the Project Scheduler from Jonas, which displays the phases and schedule of activities for each project on a Gantt chart timeline. Frank arrives at the office with no serious issues pending and is able to get straight to work. The first thing Frank does is load up his Project Management module in Jonas. This view gives Frank real-time insight into each of his ongoing projects allowing him to see profitability, cash flow, time, equipment, costs, tasks, and assigned workers for all aspects of each project. No more struggling to navigate through multiple Excel spreadsheets for Frank. From this Project Management view, Frank is also able to drill down to all documents relating to a job such as RFIs, submittals, transmittals, invoices, and purchase orders. This is done using a document management solution such as Digio from Jonas, which centralizes and integrates all documents in one location to help streamline workflow and approval processes. The process of integrating data becomes easier when technicians are able to enter their hours from the field with Jonas eTimesheets for example, which directly syncs with the Digio document management system. With information already integrated within one solution, Frank is able to easily create reports in real-time using a solution like Jonas DataMart, which also allows him to gain greater visibility into each of his projects. Frank’s day runs smoothly and he goes home satisfied.

Which one of these scenarios sounds like the better option? Life with a project management solution will not only allow you to generate reports on up-to-date, accurate information but will also provide you with greater visibility into your projects.