5 Things to Look for in Cloud Software

Cloud software is a tough nut to crack. There are literally thousands of cloud applications vying for your business. Who should you talk to and who should you send packing?

5 Things to Look for in Cloud Software

There are many important things to consider when purchasing cloud software to run your business. The 5 things to look for in cloud software products are role-based permissions, configuration options, enforced workflows, accountability and scalability.

First, the software needs to support role-based permissions. The simple fact that the average user does not need access to all functions and configuration settings requires role-based permissions. Role-based permissions within the product should not limit productivity or visibility, but should preserve data integrity and protect organizational processes and controls from tampering. Furthermore, separating responsibilities can protect your organization from unnecessary liability and help maintain compliance with best practices and legal requirements.

When evaluating the configuration options offered by software, make sure you can accomplish your primary goals with out-of-the-box functionality. Implementing highly configurable software may seem daunting when facing implementation, but this investment in time and money is well worth the savings when compared to expensive software customizations down the road. Mature products often provide the flexibility to adapt to many organizations processes because they have been time-tested by many users in different environments. Organizations should leverage this experience for significant cost savings.

The software you buy should allow administrators to set enforced workflows that prevent your team from skipping steps in your process. Enforced workflows also contribute to producing consistent work and products that continually meet your standards.

The fourth thing to look for in a cloud software application is accountability. To hold your team accountable software should have excellent communication and reporting tools. The communication tools should be easy to use and should archive and organize correspondence for future reference. Reporting should provide management with actionable intelligence regarding breakdowns and root causes.

The final thing to look for in a cloud software product is scalability. To be a scalable cloud application, licensing should be flexible, training should be readily available, all information should be in one system and the software should be able to integrate with other systems.

ProjecTools Product Information

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Standard Project Management Features

September 2nd, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

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Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

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ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

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Project Management Assessment

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Document Management Software ROI

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

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Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

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Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

Project Management Software Overload

Great strategies for separating the wheat from the chaff and moving past Project Management Software Overload.

Project Management Software Overload

Ever been tasked to find the right Project Management Software? If so, you probably realize how ridiculously broad the category is. Project Management Software could mean anything from Basecamp to AtTask, or Microsoft Project to ProjecTools. This is Project Management Software Overload. To illustrate my point; on Wikipedia there are ~150 entries under “Comparison of project management software.” Which leads us to the subject of this post – how does one separate the wheat from the chaff? My answer – by correctly defining the words “project”, “management”, and “software” for your organization.
So let’s begin:

  1. We need to define “project.” If the project is simple, a simple application getting everyone on the same page and tracking input/change will be enough (think Asana, Basecamp, Trello). What about IT Project Management though? Totally different. Complex capital construction or EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) project? Once again, there’s an entirely different set of criteria that should be considered. These complex construction project solutions require significantly more powerful software to manage all of the moving parts. Even after defining the project though (for this post: EPC projects), one is left with a staggering array of software options. Which leads us to the second criteria – defining “manage.”
  2. too many project management software optionsWe need to define “manage.” What part of the project is most important to you? Simple projects have fewer moving parts and stakeholders – they’re relatively simple to manage and you may be able to manage many aspects of the project with relative ease. But if we’re talking EPC projects you must be much more deliberate; there is Scheduling, Document Management and Collaboration, Cost Control, Procurement, Engineering and Commissioning, and often there are multiple projects going on simultaneously (PPM). Of course these aspects are all important and different organizations place emphasis on different parts of project management – complicating the issue even further. Luckily there are tools that manage multiple pieces of these complex projects, but even the most comprehensive tools can’t tackle everything coherently. For instance, ProjecTools is arguably the most comprehensive Project Management Software tool (for EPC and Oil and Gas projects) covering Document Management and Collaboration, Cost Control, Procurement, and Engineering and Commissioning. That said, we realize there are other aspects of project management (scheduling especially), and rather than try to re-invent the wheel – we believe integration is stronger that competition (we integrate with scheduling leaders like Primavera). So now, if you’ve defined what you want to manage – we only need to decide what “software” means to you.
  3. We need to define “software.” To be clear, we’re not interested in the technical definition of “software”, instead I’m working to define the category of things that are typically described as software. Let’s start with the basics: deployment options, purchase options, how it’s supported, and standalone or integrated.
    1. Deployment options are a point of contention, but the writing is on the wall: cloud is here to stay (see my presentation on the subject at PMI here).
    2. On purchasing – is it a CapEx or OpEx and can you fit it in your department’s budget? If you’re buying traditional on-premise software or deploying a private cloud, you’re looking at a significant capital expenditure and a significantly prolonged installation/implementation. On-premise can mean as much as a 10X increase in budget, the addition of IT support personnel, a decrease in redundancy, and 3-4X increase in the implementation timeline (which means less project-oriented work gets done). Good luck (and I’m not the only one who feels this way).
    3. How’s it supported? Having someone standing by to take your calls and correctly handle and escalate issues is something that really, really matters. Like anything, you may not realize how much it matters until you really need the support, but don’t dismiss this when you define what software means to you. And please don’t confuse “maintenance plans” for support; a maintenance plan is a poorly-disguised profit-generating mechanism – while support is designed to help clients and customers when they need it.
    4. Standalone or integrated? Everyone is talking about Big Data, but what they’re finding is Big Data Silos. Collecting data is an exercise in futility if it sits within a single application and isn’t used across the organization to make better decisions. Whether your chose multiple “best-in-class” systems and integrate them, or choose a comprehensive solution – you should understand the importance of integrated systems. At ProjecTools we fall into the “comprehensive solution” bucket but we also integrate with other applications to offer our clients a better control and decision-making platform and that’s important. Why is integration important? Because integration saves double-entry, preserves data integrity, allows for better decision-making, increases adoption rates, and leads to dramatically increased success in deployment and operation. But just because a company claims their software products are “integrated” doesn’t mean it was built together – be wary of larger vendors that “integrate” multiple products through acquisition of (once) entirely separate companies.

If you’ve followed this post so far, your needs in Project Management Software should be fairly clear. By defining what you mean by “project”, “management” and “software” you will be better equipped to make a purchasing decision, specifically as it relates to complex capital construction and EPC project management. Of course we’d love to answer any additional questions you have – feel free to send them to me personally.

ProjecTools Product Information

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Standard Project Management Features

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ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

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Document Management Software ROI

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1357

Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

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Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

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Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

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Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

AEC PPM Software Buyer Guide

When low price is the primary factor in choosing an application, the old adage “You get what you pay for” usually rings true. It’s easy to approach software with a low price mentality. Don’t do it!

10 Fatal Mistakes of AEC/PPM Byuers

Shopping the AEC/PPM Software market is usually driven by legitimate, pressing problems that need to be solved. Schedule slippage, cost growth, and preventable stoppages in production may tempt you to settle for applications that look good but just don’t deliver.

Be the hero, not the goat, by avoiding these ten common mistakes buyers in the AEC/PPM Market make.

View PDF Version

Focusing on price rather than value

When low price is the primary factor in choosing an application, the old adage “You get what you pay for” usually rings true. It’s easy to approach software with a low price mentality. Don’t do it! Step back and make sure the application will solve your problems and add value to your company before signing a contract. After all, it’s easier to deal with price once than to suffer with poor quality forever.

Insufficient due diligence

Buying software that will change the way you do business is a big deal. Improperly vetting customer support, reputation, financial viability, innovative ability, and integrity of your software partner will lead to a painful (possibly fatal) software purchase.

Hidden costs

You couldn’t see the hidden costs because they were… hidden. We get it.
These hidden costs can be avoided by proper due diligence. Take extra care to read the service agreement. Pick up the phone and call the references provided by the sales team. Heck, even call other users that aren’t on the reference sheet.

No roadmap or growth plan

If an application works like you need it to work, you will be solving real problems and creating real value for your company. Chances are you are going to want to roll it out to more divisions or company-wide. To avoid unexpected jumps in price, make sure to get pricing for plausible growth scenarios from years two through five.

Focusing on technology and features rather than solving business problems

Don’t let this be you. Always have your problems and objectives in mind. Don’t get distracted by bells, whistles, and unproven technology. This seems like a simple concept, but we hear of this mistake time and time again.

Settling for software that requires major customizations

A blank slate can sound nice, but not in the context of business-critical software. Extensive customization is expensive, time consuming, and slow to be delivered. If an application has your key functionality already – go with it. The customization route spells money, anguish, and uncertainty.

Lacking industry experience

There is great risk in being the guinea pig for any software vendor trying to branch into a new vertical where they have no expertise or experience. Your business is too important for that. Find a software application that is proven in your industry.

Overlooking integrations with other business-critical applications

If a software company can’t or won’t deliver a key product integration, whether the integration is with Dynamics, Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, or a legacy database from 1983, look elsewhere. This is not 1998 – your applications need to work together.

Underestimating training & implementation needs

Can your team leverage your new tools, without adequate training? Probably not. Is the software partner willing and able to thoughtfully map out and deliver meaningful training and implementation that will make your power users and your casual users successful? Do they offer a train-the-trainer approach, so your on-staff experts can bring your other team members up to speed?

Culture doesn’t change with the new application

Not everyone on the team will be in love with a new application, or welcome any change whatsoever. It’s important to recognize this. Nothing can rally a team around a new application like strong leadership and executive buy-in. Make sure your executive team will help lead the charge.

ProjecTools Product Information

  • 817

ProjecTools Client Spotlight

September 24th, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools Client Spotlight "I don't see how companies can manage projects like [...]

  • 568

Standard Project Management Features

September 2nd, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

ProjecTools Resources

  • 1872

Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

March 9th, 2017|0 Comments

Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

  • 1811

Project Management Assessment

November 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, [...]

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1357

Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

February 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

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The Keys to Successful Document Management

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Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1631

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

August 24th, 2016|0 Comments

Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

ProjecTools Products

ProjecTools software products are designed to work individually or as an integrated unit to bring together the EPC and capital construction disciplines such as document management, engineering, procurement, inspections, logistics, HSE, contract management, cost control, and completions & commissioning.

ProjecTools Products

View PDF Version

Documents

Manage project documents and communication while maintaining accountability, revision accuracy, and access to documents and all ProjecTools products through the web.

Document Manager

Centralize project documents and engineering data with advanced revision control. Maintain all information pertaining to suppliers, subs, and service firms involved in a project.

Correspondence Manager

Records project communication in an easily accessible, searchable register.

Document Interface

Integrates ProjecTools with other document systems

Engineering & Commissioning

Track equipment from purchasing through construction with comprehensive status and inspection reporting for on-time completion.

Equipment Manager

Track parts and equipment by tag numbers and manage requisitions in the equipment register.

Systems Completion

Complete commissioning management system to manage ITRs, create certificates, and report on project progress.

Construction Punch List

Track Punch list items. Relate them to ITRs in systems completion and report on progress.

Cost Control

Integrate with purchasing and accounting for efficient project cost/cash management with real-time tools and extensive reporting

Cost Control Manager

Allows cost controllers to set up detailed WBS and practice project cost accounting on very detailed levels using robust reporting.

Scheduling Interface

Integrates ProjecTools with other scheduling systems like Microsoft Project, Primavera, Etc.

Finiancial Interface

Integrates with accounting software to streamline key financial processes and real time exchange of data.

Procurement

Build and execute bid packages with definable workflows to ensure deliverables are delivered on time and built to spec.

Purchasing Manager

Conceptualize, develop, and issue requisitions and purchase orders according to set workflows in a paperless system with online bidding.

Mateials Manager

Provides expediting, shipping, and receiving management for multiple locations using real-time data.

Quality Surveillance

Simplifies defining, executing and reporting on purchase order inspections.

Supplier Manager

Manage supplier lists, commodity codes, and supplier performance.

ProjecTools Product Information

  • 817

ProjecTools Client Spotlight

September 24th, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools Client Spotlight "I don't see how companies can manage projects like ours without ProjecTools" "The staff at ProjecTools has been with us every step of the [...]

  • 568

Standard Project Management Features

September 2nd, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

ProjecTools Resources

  • 1872

Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

March 9th, 2017|0 Comments

Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

  • 1811

Project Management Assessment

November 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, Oil & Gas, and EPC projects The [...]

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1357

Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

February 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

ProjecTools Videos, Demos, & Webinars

  • 1519
  • Review and Approvals

Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

October 14th, 2021|0 Comments

Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial...

  • 1567
  • Document Management

The Keys to Successful Document Management

November 23rd, 2020|0 Comments

Let's talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system...

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1631

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

August 24th, 2016|0 Comments

Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

Document Distribution and Access For Global Teams

We totally get it. Its 2015, you have a global supply chain, engineers are working in India, Romania, etc., project management is in Calgary, and the client is in Mexico. Situations like this are incredibly common and aren’t going away.

Document Distribution and Access For Global Teams

We totally get it. Its 2015, you have a global supply chain, engineers are working in India, Romania, etc., project management is in Calgary, and the client is in Mexico. Situations like this are incredibly common and aren’t going away. That’s why it’s high time to solve the problems relating to document distribution and access for global teams.

For global or regional project teams, having access to the right documents can mean the difference between sitting on your ass until the India team gets back into the office and then staying late – all because someone left an attachment off of an email. These situations happen all the time and they are super frustrating for engineers, partners, suppliers, document control, and clients. On top of that when one interaction or process gets out of control, everybody loses. Clients lose money, document controllers lose credibility, engineers lose sleep, and eventually someone starts to lose business.

Mastering Document Distribution and Access for Global Teams

Welcome to ProjecTools Mastering Document Distribution and Access for Global Teams Demo. Today, we’re going to do exactly this. We’re going to talk about how to master document distribution and access for global teams.

First, we need to talk about what is document distribution and access, here in our environment in 2016? What does failure at these things look like, and what you can do to remedy those failures, shortcomings, or whatever. Then, we’re going to take a look at how ProjecTools does this in our application.

Let’s get started. When you’re talking about document distribution, it’s how your organization delivers documents and revisions to partners, clients, subcontractors, engineering teams, marketing, HR, suppliers, buyers, a whole host of things. Every one of these people and groups that are receiving documents, they have an interest in that document, and they need to access it. They need to access the latest revision and they need to access it on demand. Those are really the three keys to excelling at document distribution and access for global teams.

What does it look like when there are problems? Some typical problems that we see are emails and file servers, generic or rudimentary systems to distribute documents, provide access to their teams. This is decent, it’s a step in the right direction from emails, or just thumb drives, maybe. These document distribution “systems” tend to have a bunch of folder structures and there’s no control over numbering. Each team kind of manages their own thing, in their own way. That creates a silo within that division group, and then confusion when anybody else tries to interact with that group, because there’s no standard. There’s no rhyme or reason. Say group A puts a revision in a sub folder and group B puts a latest revision right out there on top, on the highest level folder and then all the previous revisions down in a sub folder. Just the fact that it’s not standard and requires humans to access and catalogue, results in confusion. Pile on top of that human nature and the whole thing devolves into an inconsistent document storage mess.

There are some other problems, especially in the globalized world that we live in. We work a lot with oil and gas companies, so they have people that are offshore on rigs that need to go access documents. It’s really hard to get it to them because they’re out of the office. If they’re out of the office, how are they going to get into your file servers or your rudimentary systems? If it’s not an online system, these folks are usually out of luck, they have to wait for a helicopter to deliver a thumb drive, or wait on email from a document controller. Those aren’t great. It’s not self-service. Basically, they’re not accessing real-time information either, because there are transit times associated with those.

We also see a lot of problem relating to global teams relying on emails, spreadsheets, and file transfer protocols. These were great 20 years ago. They may have been passable for you in the past 20 years up until now, and it might even be what you’re using now, but it’s really not the best way. People forget, all the time, to add a captions to email, where they attach the wrong file to emails. Spreadsheets, in order to be correct, require one person to be running them. Even then, if you’re using something like Dropbox to manage your spreadsheets and to track that latest revision, have it accessible to all, sometimes it doesn’t save right. It’s like you have 30 different copies of the spreadsheet, and you really don’t know who’s done what to each, and it turns into a nightmare.

FTP, File Transfer Protocols, that’s really frustrating for folks. Usually that’s employed when people are geographically separated and you need to transmit documents. It’s just kind of a clunky process and it’s prone to failure. I know I’ve gone to transmit a file via FTP and have it crash half way through it. It’s sometimes a three hour cycle to transmit the file, and it’s either demoralizing, or it’s devastating to your reputation. It could even impact your career or advancement opportunities, if this unreliability gets projected on to you and your team. That is terribly unfortunate because you’re seen as unreliable.

Another problem is numbering confusion, revision confusion, permission confusion, and disposition confusion. All around confusion. I kind of talked about this earlier, when teams manage things their own way and kind of just hope for the best, and think they can integrate different teams into their team and out, but if they’re not using the same conventions or using any level of control that means anything to another group, it’s all really just pointless.

Another thing is most application and systems, they really don’t provide document access. They provide a warehouse, but they don’t provide access. More than that, they don’t provide access with the context. With that document when you find it, you find the latest revs, you can see tasks that have been executed with this particular document. Access is permission based. There’s the meta-data that you need such as release dates, revision, revision purpose, and things like that, that really tell you where this document is in its life cycle, what’s been done to it, and who has done those things to it.

The last thing, and we hear this all the time, is that in order to find a robust system, that’s clever enough to handle your particular business, it costs an arm and a leg. I’m here to tell you that that’s not true. ProjecTools is very affordable. There are some other affordable systems out there, depending on what you’re looking for. If you’re still using emails, spreadsheets, and File Transfer Protocols to transmit documents, store documents, log and manage documents, there are way better options than that even, that don’t quite reach the standard of ProjecTools.

Let’s take a look at document access and how you guys can totally own the game and make your employees more happy, make your subcontractors, partners, your other teams, and your clients even more happy, and really make your clients believe in you; that you have robust systems in place and a level of control that other companies don’t have.

How to win. The first step is to get an online system that is going to centralize everything to eliminate all of the confusion associated with that. This really helps out with your offshore or out of country folks, by giving them instant access to the latest revision. This is pretty key here. You want to find a system that will make it very crystal clear what revision’s the latest. I know clients don’t like paying for wasted engineering work and things like that, but that’s what happens when people don’t have access to the latest rev. They end up working on superseded data that’s probably going to need to be redone.

More than that … Just an add on to that, if you don’t know what the latest rev is and you send that to a supplier or something and they build it, you’re going to be out hundreds of thousands of dollars probably, if not millions. Depending on the piece of equipment, if the engineering documents that they’re building from are not the latest provision, could have huge impact to the project and at least that PO.

The third thing is, if you want to win at document control, you’ve got to eliminate frustration. The way to do that is to get rid of your email, which has huge deficiencies and your FTP, which has connection errors, frustration, and so forth. You want to make your numbering standardize and that the meta-data is all there with your documents. You want task based workloads that remove all of the ambiguity from tasks, all the uncertainty as far as who should be doing what and when is it due. Thereby, eliminating a lot of the excuses that we hear all the time, as to why things aren’t done, are done incorrectly, or aren’t done on time.

I do want to tell you that you’re starting out strong here, by being with us today. You’re really interested in knowing how to win and you’ve kind of gotten there. You found an affordable system, ProjecTools, that is clever enough to handle the demands of engineering teams, legal teams, procurement, HSE, marketing, entertainment, construction. All kinds of groups use ProjecTools for all kinds of projects.

The greatest part about it … Well, I hesitate. One of the greatest things about it is that we can have you running and experiencing value in ten days, or your money back. We’ll come out there, get you set up, get your team trained, get you totally implemented, and if after three months, you guys aren’t satisfied and we are not delivering like we say we will, we’ll hand you your money back, if we can’t fix the problem. If you don’t want us to fix the problem, we’ll hand you your money back and we’ll never talk to you again. We’ve never really had to exercise that because we’re pretty good at what we do. I hope you take advantage of this and see what we can do for you.

Now, I’m going to get into ProjecTools application. I’m going to prove to you guys that ProjecTools gets suppliers, subs, clients, and partners all working in the same system, coherently, and that the application provides online access and role-based permissions, and that the application has search and segmenting tools that make grouping super quick and easy, and that we provide access to a clearly identified latest revision and the document history right there in one spot, for anybody who needs it and should be seeing it.

Now, let’s get into the application. Let me log out here. We’ll log in. You’ll notice that this is right from ProjecTools, that we’re logging in. This takes us to ProjecTools Application Homepage. You can do a lot of different things here, but the document distribution and access for most users, is going to be right here from this page.

The first place I want to look is the document distribution matrix. This is like a personal document register. I can see every document that I have permission to see, right here in this register. Let me take you through a couple of the things about this, that I just think is super awesome. It’s really our marquee tool here for document distribution. Real quick, I want to point out that you can search by latest revision or all revisions. You can make sure your teams always have access to the latest revision and the other documents proceeding that, so they build a good context of why that information is the way it is.

Also, I want to draw your attention up here to the document number. When you’re in this document distribution matrix, you can display and search by the document number, your standard document number. This will be … If my company owns this instance of the tool, this would be my document number, or the other document number if we’re working with a key partner on a particular project, we can add their document number in here as well, or the client document number.

Let’s go back here to standard number and let’s start searching around for some files. I want to show you how to group and segment very easily. Let’s take a look at PI. All right, just by typing in PI, I can see all the PNID’s for this project. I can see the document number. I can flip back and forth from the different document numbers here. I can also expand all of this, to see the routing and transmittal history. I can see commented files, so if I’ve sent out a routing and people have executed it inside of the system, or even outside of the system, I can see all of their markups here. It pulls up in a viewer, so I don’t have to download it and mess up my desktop space, or anything like that. I can still download it here, if I want to. I can actually see the revisions here in PDF form or your native form, you know, a lot of people have DWG’s, documents, excel files, CAD files, and so forth.

Let’s take a look at another segmenting tool here. If you want to get really specific, you can go down to document or use multiple levels of your document number. Here, I can see all of the drawings using these numbers, whatever these mean to my company. Talk about document access done right. Obviously you can define what your numbering levels are, but just by typing in a string that the document number contains, I can narrow down what I’m looking for, which might be the grid-drawing blocks for Deck AA. I can find that very easily.

Let’s clear that out. Let’s expand this, and I want to take your attention to the routing transmittal history. If you click on this, it brings up a screen that tells you where this document’s gone, who’s seen it, and when all of that back and forth happened. It’s a really useful feature to see. If you have questions or just want to see what’s being going on with a particular document, you can go on, and find it.

One of the last things that I want to show you is how you can and a lot of people manage contracts in our systems, so if you go find your project and you look for your project, you can sort by contract type. You can see here, that I’ve searched for all my inspection contracts here, and I have some MSAs for inspections. I can see all the information regarding that.

We’ve already talked about how an engineer can find their files. We can talk about how people administering contracts can find their files. This is also really useful for buyers, and suppliers even, or clients, if they want to come in, and see documents by PO.

If your engineers want to come in, or even your inspectors want to come in, and see all of the documents by system, they can do that as well. This is a very powerful tool for segmenting, and grouping your documents into something that’s useful for the individual user.

The last thing that I want to show you here, is that you can download sets of documents. If you want to pull up all of the standard files for a particular segment, you can download them. It’ll download straight to your desktop in a zip file and makes that really easy.

You can also search by rev purpose, rev date, and so forth, but you all are smart people, so you totally get the power of this and how clever filtering will improve your document distribution and access for your global teams. Let’s go take a look at something else.

Down here is the task manager. Most people would log into the application because they get a notifciation in their corporate inbox saying, “Hey, you got a task to complete in ProjecTools.” We can see that there are a lot of different tasks here. We have RFIs, engineering technical routings, flyer data routings, request for purchase, queries, notifications, and so forth.

Since this is talking about document distribution and access, let’s take a look at our distributions here. This is a very simple distribution that we’re going to look at. This is basically just letting somebody know that, “Hey, this document that concerns you, has been released, or a new revision has been released.” You can click on it, open it up in the viewer, whatever you need to do here. It’s basically an acknowledgement that you are aware that a new rev to this document is coming out. Cool.

Let’s go take a look at a more robust task. Probably one that’s a little bit more typical. Let’s take a look at an engineering technical routing. This has been sent out for review. This has been sent out for approval and I am the approver. I can see here that there are a bunch of other reviewers that have taken a look at this document and they have done things to it. I can open each of them up in here. I can view all of the original comments. This is going to pull it up in PDF format and I can see everybody’s markups, all layered on top of each other. As the approver, I can go, pick and choose, which ones I agree with, and add a disposition to each individual document.

Down here are the three documents that need to be reviewed. I’m going to draw your attention to the numbering here. The top one is our standard document numbering, here at ProjecTools. The second line is our other document number, and the third line is our client document number. This makes it very easy to integrate your key partners and your clients into the review and approval process. You can speak their language. You don’t have to have them guessing or trying to learn your document numbering system. Let’s face it, what client is ever going to learn your document numbering system? Moreover, if they do, are they going to be happy about it? Hell no. It’s a great tool to really cater to those groups, get them on board, win them over, wow them, and make them huge fans of yours.

Let’s take a look at this particular document here. Right away, I have some … Some red text is jumping off the page at me. I can see who made this particular notation. I can see who made this notation and all these notations. This is the PM, project manager. I can make my own notations here, like some arrows, boxes, text fields, and some sticky notes. Just typical stuff that is really helpful when you’re doing these things. I can also see the review history over here. The document manager said to see the notes here. This guy, Mark, said that, “Item ID is not matching up. See his markup.” It looks like the item ID’s here aren’t matching these ones. The PM Manager said that he added the missing items. He’ll get this fixed but let’s move this document forward to the next revision.

It looks like the project manager said, “Here’s the missing items. Don’t worry about it. Let’s move this forward. It shouldn’t hold us back.” Following with the approver, sorry the PM’s wishes, we can add a disposition of, “Approved as Noted, Item ID’s not matching up, see markup. Revise and Resubmit. Cool.

You can save those. You can go in and do all these for the different documents that you have. Add your dispositions here. Add any comments overall and then, add a disposition for this thing. Is it Approved as Noted? Is it Rejected? Is it Approved, and so forth? Now, when you approve this and submit it, it’s going to go back to the document controllers for processing. They can either get the engineer to merge all the changes onto one and issue a new rev for review and approval, or send it out to the client, whatever the case may be here.

When it comes to document distribution and access, here at ProjecTools, we are of the school of thought that, “The internet is key to working together.” This is an online application, so your users, whether they’d be off an oil rig in Korea, if you have inspectors in Australia on site, if you have buyers in Aberdeen, whatever the case may be, everybody can log in to one application and do all their work. They can take part in review and approvals, so distribution. Then, they can have that self-service access that is just so hard to find with a lot of other applications and apps, such as email distributions and folder structures, onsite servers, or Dropbox, and it just takes all the mess out of that and gives everybody all the meta-data they need, to see where a document’s at and basically get the latest revision, so they can be in the know, and work together coherently.

ProjecTools Product Information

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Standard Project Management Features

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ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

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Security and Reliability

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Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

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Construction Project Management Services

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ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

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Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

March 9th, 2017|0 Comments

Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

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Project Management Assessment

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Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, [...]

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Document Management Software ROI

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

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Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

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Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

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Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

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Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial...

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The Keys to Successful Document Management

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Let's talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system...

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

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Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

August 24th, 2016|0 Comments

Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.