There are many differences to running a project internally for your company as opposed to executing the project as part of a project-based company. When your entire company is organized within, around, or in support of projects, as opposed to just managing the odd project here and there, the impact of getting it right is much higher than if you just do the occasional one-off project.
Project-based companies, or project businesses, continue to deliver projects late and over budget, and that directly affects the bottom line. Here we have identified four of the biggest mistakes project businesses make.
- Identity Crisis: Failing to Identify as a Project Business
If you’re in construction, engineering, architecture, ETO/contract manufacturing, or professional services, how would you categorize your company? While each industry is different, the construction, engineering, architecture, or services part of it is just about the type of projects they do. Essentially, these companies are project businesses, or companies that deliver their products/services to their customers through projects.
Failing to identify as a project business means you will not be able to understand how to prioritize and optimize your business activities and investments properly. While you maybe in construction or engineering, recognizing you are first and foremost a project business allows you to structure your business for success. By unifying your core project business processes, you’ll be able to set the foundation to scale, grow, diversify and increase profitability.
- Bad Habits: Project Businesses are Stuck Doing What They’ve Always Done
Many project businesses are operating the same way they did decades ago. Nothing has changed. Many continue to submit RFPs and RFIs for ERPs and business systems looking for solutions around project accounting. That means that any kind of financial and operational project management is done in a third-party application, or more often than not, spreadsheets. Either way, it’s not done in the main business application.
Project businesses that continue to manage their business through spreadsheets and disparate point applications are missing opportunities to increase productivity. It’s time for project businesses to embrace innovative technologies and seek out solutions that meet their specific needs.
- No Control: Lack of Project Business Governance and a Standardized System
If you manage your project business processes predominantly through spreadsheets, you’re not the only one. The number one strength of Excel is flexibility; however, flexibility is the enemy of governance. This means you have no control over your project business processes and as a result, it can be difficult to trust the output.
You need to understand the process to actually trust that the output is accurate. The lack of standardized and governed set of processes means you end up relying on individuals. Not only does this result in higher risk, but the success of your projects is dependent on individual capabilities. Only with a comprehensive solution that systemizes their project business governance can companies truly understand what is going on and make data-driven decisions.
- Slow and Tedious: Manual-based Processes Weigh Down Productivity
Project businesses operate in a very high-risk environment that demands organizational agility to be able to react. If it takes too long for you to know how your project is doing, chances are the manual-based processes in place are slowing you down. And if you’re making important decisions based on inaccurate and unreliable data as a result of the time it takes to get that data, you need to make a change.
Project business workloads and processes are usually limited within a silo. These workloads happen in the planning silo, accounting silo, or in another silo usually in a specific spreadsheet. Obviously, depending on the size and needs of your business, the number of silos can be quite extensive. The problem is these silos require manual interventions to move processes between them causing delays, inefficiencies, errors, etc. Lack of automation means someone needs to actually make that transition from on silo to the next. And oftentimes, that doesn’t happen.
The only way to increase productivity and grow is to automate your project business processes to better manage your projects proactively.
The Solution: Project Business Automation
By acknowledging the challenges and mistakes project businesses often make, it’s easy to make the necessary adjustments to be successful. Project Business Automation is a solution built specifically for project businesses that provides instant connections across all business areas. When all your project financials, operations and analytics sit inside one system, you are able to deliver more projects on time and within budget.
Download the Project Business Automation Blueprint to learn how PBA creates a streamlined, comprehensive system for project-based companies.
