Says Kelly McCarthy, CEO of Genesis Integration, “and when we tried to get data from the CRM program, the project management system and accounting system to get a clear view of the business, I couldn’t trust the numbers.”

When a building is being built that requires audio/visual set ups, Genesis Integration does the design and install. Genesis is a construction company that knows audio/visual.

Although the three systems Genesis used were linked, too much time was spent managing three databases. The information was not linked in terms of timing. Data was entered at various times of the month depending on the system or the data. This meant that data was old. Genesis couldn’t make real time decisions to tighten up cash flow, look at trends and do forecasting. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were nonexistent because of poorly organized and recorded data.

Many companies when faced with this challenge, rely on an accounting system to provide KPI information. But when you are run a service business that must also deliver hardware as part of the service, an accounting system is only a snapshot in time of what is going on in the business. It just records history. For a business to make business decisions, McCarthy needed a snapshot in real time of what is going on in the business.

When you work in 3 divergent databases, it’s like using a paper and pencil,” said McCarthy. “You write it down and then erase it if you don’t like what comes out the other end because it does not reflect reality.

Solving the Problem

Genesis knew they needed to make a change and find a single platform to manage all of the key components of the business. The challenge was to find something in the market what would work. This process would be the single largest risk to the business. “We wanted to have much tighter process control,” said McCarthy. “But we found that you can’t do process control work until you solve the software problem. Get the tools and then put processes around them.”

The Solution

After an exhaustive search that included big names, the company thought the solution was a software as a service (SaaS) product from Europe that was gaining momentum in the industry. After reviewing the product and conducting due diligence, they went to visit a company using it. Management was happy but the users were unhappy.

The base for the program was built in Europe for another vertical market and the software firm had attempted to make changes for the integrator market. The product was not North Americanized and had no solid US support. So Genesis went back to the management team and started asking people in their industry what they were using and how that was working for them. That is when Genesis discovered Solutions360 and their delivery of a single platform to run the entire business. This lead to full day requirement sessions and reviews and after continually “peeling back the onion” Genesis was convinced that one system that could handle sales, project management, project accounting and service dispatch, was the way to go. Plus, they would have a team dedicated to helping set up the system and import data, something that SaaS companies are weak on.

Conclusion

“We thought we were getting good, accurate information before, but we were not,” says Genesis CEO, Kelly McCarthy. “Now we are. This difference has translated itself into much better cash flow management, we cut our accounting department in half in six months, and we are seeing efficiencies in places we could not have predicted.

“Now we recognize revenue in actual real time. When a piece goes out the door it hits the P&L statement almost instantly”.

Having one bucket to draw from creates incredible opportunity to get necessary information in very creative forms. The system also has a document management component. We hope to be paperless within six months. There are a bunch of other aspects too numerous to name like project management via the web, blackberry integration for technicians, GPS integration for service calls, etc.

The Results

“It was an integral part of enabling our growth last year with an 80% increase in revenues while using $1.5M less cash to do so.  Enough said; this investment has paid for itself many times over.”

The post When you can’t trust the numbers, what do you do? appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

Business as usual is not working. With the various pressures that today’s systems integrators are experiencing, companies must look beyond what they’ve done before, because doing

the same thing and getting the same results no longer cuts it when markets are evolving so quickly.

The vision of NSCA’s partnership with Solutions360 is a simple one. Using NSCA’s Best Practices and Standards and Solutions360’s Business Management System will allow member companies to take a holistic approach to help improve all facets of their business. This is the opportunity to have line of sight into core business functions that will enable you to make more profitable business decisions.

Often what is missing in an industry is agreed upon standards or best practices and getting them widely adopted and followed. This challenge is what NSCA and Solutions360 have set out to overcome. How can our complementary offerings help an integrator’s business produce better, more accurate bids? How do they accurately forecast profit? How do they control costs during a job to match or improve expected margins? How do we help make them more competitive? How do we allow them to provide better customer service and project a professional appearance in the marketplace? These are the questions we set out to answer through this partnership available to you today.

This new resource and partnership with Solutions360 will provide you with the following benefits:

Most companies use some sort of analytics in their business, but very few deploy it across the organization; it’s just too difficult to tie together disparate data in a timely fashion. But better data analytics, more data across a broader spectrum results in the ability to make better, more informed decisions.

The post Watch Your Profits Increase appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

I hear from many people in operations that they are often setup to lose money on jobs before they schedule a single resource to the project because the labor estimates they are obligated to meet are not realistic.  With all the variables that can negatively affect the delivery of a job you certainly don’t want to start without enough hours to complete the job on paper.  That only leads to rushed work, which leads to re-work or it leads to profit killing overtime.

So, how do you properly calculate the resources needed for a job during the bidding process so you are not setting up a losing situation even before the job is awarded?

Here are two important bidding best practices:

1. Know what steps and skills are required to resource the job appropriately. 

First, use a work break down structure (WBS) to divide the job into deliverable oriented smaller tasks.  This will help you define the project’s discrete work elements that define the total scope of the project.  This will provide you with the necessary framework for you to come up with your detailed cost estimating.

Once you have your framework laid out you can develop the overall planning of how the job will unfold and natural control points will emerge.  This will allow you to divide the work into increments that will form the statement of work.  With the technical design and engineering work defined, the material schedule, the staging labor and installation labor broken out you can plan what resources are required when.  You can plan material deliveries just in time and ensure human resources are planned to optimize their time and skills to ensure an efficient delivery is scheduled.  Ideally this type of breakdown is templated so you are always working with your internal best practices of the actions needed for a successful and profitable outcome.

2. Benchmark and template your labor standards.

One of the most difficult things to do when bidding a job is to calculate your labor estimates.  With margins so low on material, labor is your best lever to affect profit; unfortunately it can have both a negative or positive affect so accuracy in your bids is the first step to success.  When done well, this step will allow you to win business you can make a profit on as well as to ensure your installers have the best chance to deliver or exceed on the profit projected on the estimate.

There are basically two sources of information to consider at this stage of your bid.

“labor variables have become the single biggest risk factor for determining the true cost of each project.  Having this document for bench-marking your productivity and efficiency against fellow NSCA Members is an extremely valuable tool”. 

b) The second best practice for estimating your labor when bidding is to take an objective look at how your teams have performed on similar jobs in the past.  If you are tracking your job costing in detail you can go back to individual jobs to see the actual hours vs. the budgeted hours to see where the estimates came in.  Then you can pull back to all jobs of a similar type over a period of time to see how the project actuals vs. budgeted have trended.  This allows you to see the reality of what happens on the execution of your jobs.  It also has the added bonus of allowing you to run a comparison to how you are doing against the industry gold standard as noted in point a) above.   Depending on how you are trending against industry standards this information should have an impact on the bid.

If you are able to access this information, it should be utilized by two groups in your organization; the estimating supervisor to make sure your company’s past performance is factored into your bid, and the manager in charge of operations so that improvements can be made in the department as a whole to meet or exceed the industry standard.  It is a great opportunity to compare your team against a higher bar.

Armed with these two objective sources of information your bid should be well on its way to being accurate and a dependable projection for your team to deliver against.  Other elements such as travel, paperwork, internal administration and other burden inputs will have to be considered to ensure the most accurate bid can be prepared.

Allocate your resources effectively and improve your project profitability.

Having accurate records of how efficient you are at various tasks affecting project delivery will help you create winning bids and allow you to create a culture of continuous improvements in your project execution.  Then you’ll be poised to provide excellent and efficient service to all of your clients.

Ultimately, you will have happier clients and employees, a more efficient workforce and more profitable projects. What else do you need to consider during your bidding process?  Check out the Job Costing Survival Guide.

Get Your Free Job Costing Survival Guide Now!

You can start measuring the success of your business through the full life cycle of work. Right from your $100,000 investment into a trade show, measuring the effectiveness of your qualification process and the resulting business. Through to the effectiveness of bidding, delivering and maximizing the profit on a job through to providing exceptional customer  service while keeping an eye on the overall profitability of that customer. Each of these areas can represent a million dollars opportunity or a million dollar mistake. Which way your business goes depends on how fast and accurate information comes back to your decision makers so they can adjust in time to affect the next business cycle.

Centralizing your database is important to the success of your business. It removes latency issues, improves customer service, and it makes way for profitable, rapid business growth. Find out what else could be cutting into your project profitability with our Job Costing Survival Guide.

The post Can resource allocation improvements help you bid a job profitably? appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

MARCH 2013: NEWMARKET, ON – Solutions360 Inc., a leading provider of business management software announced a partnership with the National Systems Contractors Association (NSCA) to offer the Q360 Professional Services Automation software technology platform to NSCA members. The partnership was developed in order to provide integrators with a technology solution aimed at streamlining processes that create efficiency and provide opportunities to grow NSCA member businesses.

“This partnership with Solutions360 offers our members a well-recognized product in business management software,” said Chuck Wilson, NSCA, executive director. “Our expertise is in growing businesses from the inside out. We are continually evaluating offerings that provide our members with a solid framework that allows them to focus more on growing their business.”

The partnership with Solutions360 provides NSCA members with the opportunity to utilize the Q360™ platform, a perfect vehicle to deliver NSCA best practices and business tools. The business outcomes for NSCA’s members of this strategic sourcing initiative include:

• Shared Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and benchmarking across the NSCA
• Shared NSCA best practices through a standardized, yet flexible platform
• Reduced operating complexity from design through installation and follow on services, resulting in lower error rates and greater customer satisfaction.

Wilson continued, “The Q360 platform has a seamless structure that allows businesses to scale quickly while facilitating the key processes that create speed and efficiency, all without adding unnecessary headcount.”

“This partnership is very important to us because we work with business owners who understand the importance of improving the processes within their business, not just deploying technology,” said John Graham, Executive VP for Solutions360. “Our professional services automation platform is designed specifically for technology integrators that not only want to improve customer satisfaction but also want to grow their businesses in a stable and profitable manner.”

Solutions360’s single software platform Q360, allows companies to consolidate their business onto a single platform from prospecting and quotations, right through to service, dispatch, project management and invoicing. Q360 helps to eliminate unnecessary steps in processes and data accuracy issues that are caused by having to manually enter data into multiple systems.

The end-result for NSCA member companies is a more holistic approach to not only help run core functions of the business, but also to allow companies to systematize their business in a way that can scale growth and maximize project profitability.

About NSCA

NSCA is the leading not-for-profit association representing the commercial low-voltage electronic systems industry. NSCA is a powerful advocate for all who work within the low-voltage industry, dedicated to serving its integrator members and all channel stakeholders through advocacy, education, member services and networking designed to improve business performance

To take advantage of the NSCA/Solutions360 partnership, please contact John Graham at jgraham(at)solutions360.com or and visit solutions360.com.

About Solutions360

Solutions360 has more than 25 years of experience and provides proven solutions to help customers run profitable and productive businesses. Solutions360, a leading provider of professional services automation software and solutions, creates One View of the Business™ for customers.

Solutions360’s PSA software platform Q360™ is a tightly integrated system that handles all aspects of an integration company’s business processes from sales and proposals to service and dispatch to invoicing and accounting. Solutions360’s Q360 platform means integrated data which translates to immediate access to accurate reporting, relational information that can drive profitability in project management, and efficiency in business processes.

For more information about Solutions360, please visit solutions360.com or call 1-800-450-7748 or email us at answers(at)solutions360.com. For updates on the release of future business process guides, be sure to sign up for our email list by entering your email at the right on Solutions360’s website.

For more information contact:
John Graham at Solutions360
jgraham(at)solutions360.com
1-800-450-7748 x230

The post Solutions360 and NSCA Partner to Provide Members Access to a Best in Class Technology Solution appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

You can’t make good business decisions with dirty data. When you’re planning your resource allocation or you’re auditing your project accounting, if you don’t have one centralized business management software platform, there may be bad or missing data. That’s costing you precious money and time that can be better served helping your customers.

You may think your systems are integrated but if your business has more than one database you may be at risk of losing project profitability. Even if you have someone manually updating data into all of your databases, you’re at risk of having dirty data. Information becomes silo-ed in whatever database you’re holding it in and you lose visibility and it certainly doesn’t scale.

Subsequently, your project profitability suffers. Even if you have some level of integration to update all of your databases, you can’t effectively compare and contrast information across silos. The fields in your different databases will differ and the age of the information is not the same. The answer is often a patchwork of spreadsheets. But even consolidated spreadsheets become a headache and you start losing time and money just trying to mine your own data and maintain the integrity of the spreadsheets. With this mode of doing business, your process is flawed right from the start because it’s next to impossible to accurately bid on a project when you have bad data because the discrepancies between past estimates and the reality of what really occurred can differ by tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

Best case scenario: dirty data causes latency issues. Your business suffers from bad information that takes time and great effort to manually update and maintain across all databases.

Worst case scenario: the information is never updated which introduces unnecessary risk to your business and you set yourself up to lose money before you even start a job by using bad data in the bidding process through your job costing process for new projects.

Don’t get caught off guard with bad business data

When the bank, vendor or client calls, you want to give them the right answer right away. You also want the job costing process to make you more money—not increase your spending.

That’s why you need a job costing system that  is part of the fabric of  your other business functions. With the right integrated system, your data is no longer held in silos. It gives everyone line of sight in every aspect of your organization to use. Accessing data becomes self-serve. It’s accurate and up-to-date. Now, when a customer or client calls, any department in your organization will be able to answer their question with context  or update the database with new data for everyone to see immediately. By cutting down on dirty data and the processes that create it, your company’s organization improves and your customer service quality increases.

On top of that, the job costing process becomes easier, more accurate and ultimately more profitable. Because you have good data to work with, the estimations you make when bidding on a project are more accurate and closer to the numbers you’ll see when the job is done. You can count on the information in your database and that is crucial to scale your business.

With a PSA software solution like Solutions360’s Q360, you can see the full 360 degree view of your business. No more dirty data. No more latency. Better business decisions, faster turn-around times, and higher profit margins.

How do you get from bad data to good data?

1. Centralize your database

Remove the threat of bad data by consolidating your databases into one, simple, easy-to-use system. Terrified to implement new software? Don’t be. It’s easier than you think and your organization will be worse off if you don’t do it. With accurate data located in just one database, everyone in your organization can access the right information right away. Also, when you have a centralized database, you can systemize the checks and balances in every process. Labour involved in transferring information can redeployed to revenue-generating work when you’ve got a central database.

2. Evaluate the as-is to the could-be (i.e. See where things can be consolidated)

When there is more than one database storing your data, there are likely duplicate processes that need to be eliminated. Once your central database is in place, evaluate what employees are doing in their key roles to see what value they are adding as they process information. Better practices can then be identified and put in place for your new system.

3. Start measuring your data through the life cycle

With accurate data, you can start measuring things you weren’t able to measure before. Income statement and balance sheets are classic rear-view mirror tools of how a business is doing. With accurate centralized data, you can compare and contrast periods of historical (traditionally disparate) information and leverage this data to model and predict where your business is going and make proactive adjustments as new real-time information is introduced into your decision making.

Get Your Free
Job Costing Survival Guide
Now!

You can start measuring the success of your business through the full life cycle of work. Right from your $100,000 investment into a trade show, measuring the effectiveness of your qualification process and the resulting business. Through to the effectiveness of bidding, delivering and maximizing the profit on a job through to providing exceptional customer  service while keeping an eye on the overall profitability of that customer. Each of these areas can represent a million dollars opportunity or a million dollar mistake. Which way your business goes depends on how fast and accurate information comes back to your decision makers so they can adjust in time to affect the next business cycle.

Centralizing your database is important to the success of your business. It removes latency issues, improves customer service, and it makes way for profitable, rapid business growth. Find out what else could be cutting into your project profitability with our Job Costing Survival Guide.

The post Dirty Data is Costing Your Business More Money than You Think appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

Not all projects are created equal. It would be nice if there was an exact science to bidding a project but sadly many factors come into play that could malign your latest bid. You need art and science, a job costing system in place, to make it work.

Why the job costing process is so important

You can throw a stone and find a CEO in any industry who complains about:

• Shrinking margins,
• Fierce and more aggressive competition, and
• Higher expectations about turnaround times and delivery.

Almost any company bidding a project these days has to deal with these business issues. So, being able to apply art and science to job costing has become an active pursuit for many CEOs and CFOs.

Sometimes various technology tools in the company come into play. Sometimes estimates are based on pure human insight. The bottom line is that no matter how hard you try to apply a scientific approach to the job costing process, there are always things that will come back to haunt you and make your profit margin slump.

How to Bid a Project Right

Here are five important considerations that require the art and science of an effective job costing system:

1. Are your materials based on real costs?

The first step in formulating a material cost is identifying the materials needed. For many items, this can be as simple as counting up the number of items and multiplying by the direct cost of the material but this isn’t always a fool-proof formula. Some items may need to be broken down into elements in the aggregate. For example, when cabling is required for a specific job, the entire job does not require just one type of cable and there is likely an element of engineering involved. Another example is when contractors are required to create an integrated solution which may include computers, switches, racks, cabling, power units, design and engineering work and other consumable materials that go into the final solution and all of those costs need to be incorporated to determine total cost.

Additionally, the amount of waste, setup, and staging should also be accounted for on projects, as a bidder will have to compensate for the additional expense of these leaks in the processes. Items of work that use pre-manufactured products will have little, if any, wasted material or time. However, other products need to be first designed, engineered and built out. This can be a real art to account for you if you don’t have a repository of information showing exactly what was involved in the last similar job you did of this nature. With access to this information you can really nail down your true costs to apply to the next project bid.

2. Are you including warehousing, handling and shipping costs?

The cost to transport large quantities of materials to a job site can be a real hidden killer of project profitability. Depending on the job location and where material is coming from, this cost is often overlooked and simply calculated as a bulk “shipping” cost. But distance, weight and complexity of the equipment being shipped can skew costs into the red on the balance sheet. Having a better job cost accounting process in place can help with more accurate calculations of warehousing, handling and shipping costs for a specific job you are bidding on. There are also opportunities to save money through consolidating purchases across projects while still maintaining just in time cost savings.

3. Do you know what materials you have in-house?

Many companies do not have accurate tracking of what is in stock and what needs to be ordered. This often leads to over-ordering something that could have been used from the last project. Being able to track:

• what has been ordered,
• what has been used, and
• what has been re-stocked

is the key to the “art” of proper job costing. This also allows you to cut down on expensive vendor re-stocking fees and inventory write-offs.

4. Do your estimated hours accurately reflect what happened on past projects?

Sometimes, when a project is completed, the proper post-mortems are not done to analyze whether the hours estimated to complete were properly quoted to reflect systemic cost overrun areas. This has a rollover-effect that means the next project’s profitability suffers in the job costing process before it even begins if you didn’t accurately consider ‘actual’ hours on past projects and look at the ‘why’ behind variances. Equally important is the opportunity to look for increased profit on past projects; areas that came in under budget. This allows you to know exactly where you are when considering lowering a bid while safely maintaining margins.

Being able to track and analyze project hours from project to project is more science than art if a proper system is in place to manage these details in real time. Regardless of whether these hours are tracked in a project management system or an Excel spreadsheet, these hours are a profit drain or a missed opportunity if they are not realistically calculated and estimated from one project to the next.

5. Do you have a proper job costing review in place?

We all remember how painful it was in high school to have a parent or friend edit our English essay, but regardless of how skilled the editor was, it increased our chances of a better grade. A second set of eyes never hurts, so many companies institute a formal project bid review process in order to make sure:

• they have not missed anything,
• they are using accurate time and materials costs,
• they have not over-quoted or under-quoted the project, and
• they are using real numbers in the project bid, not just what they feel happened on the last job.

A Good Job Costing Process Improves Your Project Profitability

Whether you see job costing as art or science, you can’t ignore the profound impact of a good job costing system on a business. Better technology tools, smarter project managers, more detailed materials estimating and a variety of other ingredients contribute to positive project profitability. Solutions360 has created a Job Costing Survival Guide to highlight these and other job costing best practices.

Do you see job costing as an art or science? Contribute to the job costing discussion below.

The post 5 Things to Consider when Bidding a Project appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

A volatile market and a troubled economy are accelerating the need for small to medium sized companies to contain and reduce costs. As a company reaches the tipping point in growth its pursuit to reduce costs and sustain and grow revenue and profits becomes contingent on its ability to preserve the level of visibility that management enjoyed when it was a smaller organization. This problem is exacerbated because growth adds complexity to the business and systems that used to support the smaller organization begin to fail at an increasing rate; we’ve all heard the term “imploding under their own weight”. A fast growing company can easily go out of business even as revenues increase at a healthy rate.

Successful Business Growth Dependent on Well-Integrated Systems

The situation can be exacerbated if you are well into a growth phase of your business. As companies grow, the need for interoperability and systems integration increases. This requirement creates unforeseen stress on current systems, making the need for a consolidated view of your data even more important and difficult to achieve.

Quite often the answer to the myriad of questions and problems that percolate from managers that find themselves in this situation is to put a new system in place. Each manager has their own set of criteria and they usually focus on automating what they already have only to find this myopic view only intensifies the problem. What is really needed is a holistic view of the present-day business, a careful look at where the business is heading and where you want it to be in the future. If the organization is to embark on a growth strategy, they need to align any new system and processes with the entire business to ensure it supports this plan. The logical solution is not just another patch work of software, but a tool that supports the business, the processes and the people.

Centralized, Accessible and Actionable Business Data

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the age old answer; but what if we overlay ERP with a tool that was focused on business process management (BPM) and visibility into those processes across the business? And, most importantly, what if we include industry experts specially trained to implement an ERP solution into your unique operation? This approach provides the much needed capabilities to manage financials, materials/inventory, human resources, purchasing, projects, service and many other transactional data within one database in order to maximize the benefit you can get from it.

The value proposition for this investment is tied to the standardization of best practices and the centralization of your data making it easier and faster to collect, manage and view data throughout the organization. The outcomes from combining ERP and BPM are:

• Streamlined and accelerated business processes
• Standardized business processes,
• Complete visibility across all functions and all departments.

The Business Benefits of ERP and BPM

The specific business benefits will vary from one company to another depending on the specific goals and objectives of the organization. The overall success factor for a good ROI is the quality of the implementation and the resulting utilization of the software. It is common for a best–in-class organization to recover 100% of their investment in the first year. Even laggards can produce measurable cost savings; it just takes a little longer to produce the full return. We’ve seen some of the following benefits to the business after implementation of ERP and BPM:

• 20% reduction in inventory levels
• 97% inventory accuracy; warehouse and in truck
• 97% complete and on-time delivery of material on site
• 96% internal schedule compliance on project tasks and service work
• Improvement in the efficiency of the Financial Statement Close Process
• 14% reduction in administrative costs
• 14% reduction in operational costs

Why Leveraging Business Intelligence (BI) through ERP/BPM is Essential

Through the implementation of an ERP system, the ability to harness your centralized data is the big strategic advantage.

How do you take this vast repository of data and broaden the audience both in terms of number of users and functional reach to more areas of the business? Business Intelligence can provide some of the following benefits:

• Provide more relevant information to more end users
• Improve speed of access to relevant business data with minimal amounts of manipulation
• Relate more data to other areas of the business for the users
• Leverage information feedback to make changes to the next cycle of work
• Expand information to improve vendor and customer relationships

Overwhelming Business Data Can Impair Ability to Use it Wisely

Not only do organizations now operate in a more competitive and accelerated pace which forces the need to speed up decision making, but decision makers are also forced to deal with an increasing amount of data. As we are inundated with more sources of data, we are also subject to higher levels of risk. Why?

• You don’t know the information is there,
• You can’t access the right information, or
• You have access but no context for what you are reading.

We have found that more than two thirds of prospective customers did not consider extending their search to include BI which would have left them underserved by their investment. The “intelligence” is needed and is a critical success factor. Organizations today are sitting on mountains of data and as long as that data resides in multiple disparate systems, they will be limited to the value that can be derived from it. Yet achieving transparency and visibility is no longer simply a lofty goal, but a core necessity of the business to survive.

The Successful Marriage of ERP, BPM and BI

A centralized ERP provides the fiscal and operational system of record upon which you run your business. BPM serves to standardize, streamline, automate and add visibility and transparency to business processes. BI transforms data into intelligence for faster fact based decisions. Each individually brings value to any organization. The marriage of the three produces a synergy by which the total value far exceeds the sum of the parts producing a single version of the truth. You can grow a business on that.

The post ERP and BPM with BI: When 1+1+1=4 appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

Newmarket, Ontario – January 2013 – Solutions360, a leader in PSA software solutions and business process management, has partnered with Yellowfin to offer Yellowfin’s user-friendly Business Intelligence (BI) solution. Solutions360 will also offer implementation and training services to complement this new product offering.

Yellowfin’s BI solution is fully-integrated with Solutions360’s Q360™ PSA software, offering analysis and reporting capabilities that are easy to develop, share and consume.

Yellowfin’s intuitive user experience includes a drag and drop interface and interactive dashboards so that business stakeholders can see multiple data sources in one real-time personalized view. Yellowfin also offers sharing and collaboration functionality, commonly referred to as Collaborative BI, as well as Mobile BI capabilities – the ability to access business data anywhere and anytime via native and browser based applications for mobile devices.

“Solutions360’s Q360 software is a perfect integration partner for Yellowfin’s BI solution,” said Glen Rabie, co-founder and CEO of Yellowfin. “This partnership will provide users with best-in-class access to business data to positively impact the bottom line.”

Solutions360’s PSA software solution Q360 manages business processes and is powered by a single database which delivers customized insight to control and manage business operations. Q360 offers comprehensive project management, job costing capabilities, resource utilization management as well as time, expense and billing management in one single system that gives business owners and stakeholders one complete view of the business.

“We are excited to partner with an innovative Business Intelligence leader like Yellowfin to combine the power of their BI solution with our Q360 PSA software,” remarked Brad Dempsey, president and CEO of Solutions360.

“Today’s ever-increasing need to capture and report on business data from a variety of sources makes it difficult for business leaders to easily see the complete view of their business,”

Dempsey continued, “The partnership between Yellowfin and Solutions360 has resulted in the integration of two leading enterprise software systems – a joint solution capable of delivering the right business data, to the right people, at the right time. This means actionable real-time business data is in the palm of your hand, whenever you need it.”

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What is Business Intelligence software?

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to a broad range of computer software applications and tools used to report, analyze and present data in a range of formats, to help businesses identify trends and opportunities, and support fundamental decision-making.

What is PSA Software?

PSA software is software developed to help professionals and businesses with project management and resource management for clients’ projects. PSA software allows businesses to better understand operations which allows for improved business efficiencies and project profitability.

About Solutions360

Solutions360 has more than 25 years of experience and provides proven solutions to help customers run profitable and productive businesses. Solutions360, a leading provider of professional services automation software and solutions, creates One View of the Business™ for customers.

Solutions360’s PSA software platform Q360™ is a tightly integrated system that handles all aspects of an integration company’s business processes from sales and proposals to service and dispatch to invoicing and accounting. Solutions360’s Q360 platform means integrated data which translates to immediate access to accurate reporting, relational information that can drive profitability in project management, and efficiency in business processes.

For more information about Solutions360, please visit solutions360.com or call 1-800-450-7748 or email us at answers(at)solutions360.com. For updates on the release of future business process guides, be sure to sign up for our email mailing list by entering your email at the right on Solutions360’s website.

About Yellowfin

Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) software vendor passionate about making BI easy. Yellowfin is headquartered and developed in Melbourne, Australia, offering a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution. Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embeddable BI as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization. For more information, visit yellowfinbi.com.

For further media information, interviews, images or product demonstration, please contact:

• John Graham, Solutions360 Executive Vice President
• James Lachlan , Yellowfin Communications Manager

The post PSA Software Solutions Leader, Solutions360, Signs Business Intelligence Partnership Agreement with Yellowfin appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

Twenty-five years later, innovation is still at the heart of Solutions360, one of the psa software industry’s most respected and well known companies. The original ethos of the company was a commitment to constantly reviewing and refining its impact on clients’ businesses and ensuring that its software products were the most technologically advanced on the market. This principle still remains today, with the Solutions360 R&D team being renowned for their forward-thinking and ability to push the boundaries of software design to support the evolving direction of their customers’ industries.

“We know our value-added proposition and measure it frequently,” said CEO and Founder Brad Dempsey. “It’s amazing to look back and see how much progress we’ve made since I started the business in 1988. It’s been a very gratifying 25 years,” he continued, “filled with great lessons and wonderful relationships.”

What began as an attempt to improve Dempsey’s own business through automation has expanded to supporting the most progressive technology integration businesses in the industry today.

Dempsey remarked, “If you had asked me 25 years ago if I would be working with market leaders in the integration business, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. That being said, expansion came quite naturally as we saw the common requirements between various vertical markets in the integration business”.

John Graham, Solutions360’s Executive Vice President, joined the company in 1999 and saw the tremendous opportunity the company had in front of it.

“Building on the basic principles set down by Brad Dempsey, we continued to build flexible solutions developed with the future in mind,” said Graham. “Our ability to adapt to change is what has sustained our leading position for a quarter of a century,” he added.

“Twenty five years may seem like a long time for a psa software company, but we are as current as ever because our software is architected to respond quickly to new and emerging technologies facing our clients,” said Dempsey. “What has changed over the years are things like marketplace consolidation and the complexity of our customers’ organizations. For those aspects, we are well positioned for another 25 years, if not longer.” he added.

About Solutions360

Solutions360 has more than 25 years of experience and provides proven solutions to help customers run profitable and productive businesses. Solutions360, a leading provider of professional services automation software and solutions, creates One View of the Business™ for customers.

Solutions360’s PSA software platform Q360™ is a tightly integrated system that handles all aspects of an integration company’s business processes from sales and proposals to service and dispatch to invoicing and accounting. Solutions360’s Q360 platform means integrated data which translates to immediate access to accurate reporting, relational information that can drive profitability in project management, and efficiency in business processes.

For more information about Solutions360, please visit solutions360.com or call 1-800-450-7748 or email us at answers(at)solutions360.com. For updates on the release of future business process guides, be sure to sign up for our email mailing list by entering your email at the right on Solutions360’s website.

The post Solutions360, PSA Software Leader, Celebrates 25 Years of Enterprise Software Innovation appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.

Mark the Calendar: February 21st – 23rd

Join industry business owners and managers at the premier conference for electronic systems integrators to transform through a variety of new strategies to improve your business performance and compare notes with your industry peers on what works and what doesn’t.

Glance at the many reasons why this year shouldn’t be missed:

• Want to go for free? SUBMIT your application.
• Heard of Keynote Peter Sheahan? READ about him.
• NSCA has a secret, want to know? WATCH the video.
• Ever heard of a beer burro? Best of Bananas? SEE them.
• Make it a family trip! This resort is perfect for it. STUFF to do.

Special Offer from Solutions 360
Solutions 360 would like to extend a special conference rate of $899 to you – a $200 savings. Register by clicking here, select the regular price and in the registration code input “SOLUTIONS3602013” to receive the rate.

But hurry! This offer is only good through December 31, 2012.

Watch for Yourself – Click on the Image Below

While You’re in Town for BLC…

Join the NSCA Education Foundation Thursday morning (February 21st at 8am) for the Charity Golf Tournament. It is a great opportunity to network with friends- new and old, donate to a great cause and of course, have a little fun while out of town on business!

Located at the Arizona Grand Golf Course, it is only a step out of your suite and extremely easy to register for. When registering for the Business & Leadership Conference simply check the box to attend the golf outing.

For more information or to be set up with a foursome, contact NSCA by e-mail (nscafoundation@nsca.org) or call 1-800-446-6722.

The post Proud Sponsor of NSCA’s Business & Leadership Conference appeared first on Business Process PSA Software | Solutions 360.