The IPM Blog

When most people think of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the words sales and marketing come to mind. It’s true that Microsoft Dynamics CRM is used in many sales and marketing departments to keep track of sales leads, marketing campaigns and accounts and contacts. But it can also be so much more than that. What I’m talking about is the fact that Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a platform; it serves as a base to build things on top of, much like the foundations of a house.

In some ways, each company or organisation is a bit like a house. You have the foundations of the company, then there are a number of different departments built on top, all serving different purposes. With CRM designed the way it is, it’s no wonder it is a software solution that fits quite well into this organisational structure. CRM lays the foundation software that your business needs, then depending on the other departments you have, you can build on top of it whatever you like. This way of fitting software to your needs is substantially cheaper than getting a customised solution for your whole organisation. You can purchase CRM add on products at a fraction of the cost, and only purchase the products you need.

There is an abundance of add on products out there in the market, from products like ours that can help you manage projects, through to email marketing, sales, website tracking, manufacturing and distribution tools. What’s more, the flexibility of both CRM and these add on products means you can still slightly tweak different products to make sure they fit your organisation perfectly.

By having the one foundation running right across your business, you also have so much more consistency and easier access to information as it can quickly be shared across different departments. There is also less training time as your staff are familiar with the whole system if they happen to move departments.

We feel that by teaming ourselves with such a solid and flexible platform as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we have such an advantage over other project management systems, as ours is one that can be built on, added to and tweaked to fit all the departments in your organisation. How many other project management tools can do that?

If you’d like more information on our project management tool for CRM or the different add ons available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM please contact us.

I found an article this morning about how social media is evolving in organisations to become more than just a marketing tool. Social media is now becoming a part of many departments in big organisations from HR right through to project management. And even smaller companies are jumping on board. So that got me thinking, what are some of the ways you could use social media to manage your projects?

The important thing to remember about social media is it is not confined to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Blogs, wikis, online pinboards and team websites all fall under the social media umbrella. Organisations are even creating their own in house social media platforms, or adopting software with integrated social media tools to help incorporate this growing trend into their everyday operations.

So how can social media help you manage your projects? Here are four ways:

1. Communication
As Gen Y and Gen Z’s enter the workforce, we are beginning to not only see a trend of multi-generational project teams, but also less reliance on email. As the article I mentioned above shows, many of the younger people entering the workforce don’t like email and prefer a more team oriented communication. As such, some companies such as IBM are adopting Facebook and Twitter style communication platforms, where team members can share project information quickly and collaboratively. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you can find and follow other users in the What’s New section, which gives you a chat-like feature to share comments and insights with team members about projects. This reduces a huge amount of internal email communication in favour of succinct responses.

2. Collaboration
Similarly to helping with communication, products like SharePoint that can be integrated with your project management software allow for the creation of team wikis and websites, where all team members can contribute and store appropriate project information for other team members to access and edit. This really fosters a collaborative approach to managing your project, no matter how far spread your project team members are around the world. The project also ultimately benefits, with ideas and solutions continually evolving as team members contribute their expertise.

3. Keeping up to date with contacts
Another tool that can be integrated with some project management software products such as IPM is the Outlook Social Connector. The Outlook Social Connector enables you to look at your Outlook contacts’ activity in social networks such as Linkedin, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, Viadeo and Xing. This way, you can stay up to date with contacts as the project progresses, build up your network for the future and keep up to date with new projects that may be coming up.

4. Keeping track of lessons learned
This way of using social media has been mentioned on the PMI Voices on Project Management blog as a way of keeping track of lessons learned and project review. Using some of the tools above, internal social media pages can be set up to capture comments for lessons learned. As Bernadine Douglas says, this allows you to reach stakeholders in their habitat, which could result in more candid and useful comments for future projects.

Whilst it has traditionally been viewed as a consumer product or a marketing tool, social media can also have very effective applications in other areas, in particular project management. Can you think of any other way social media can help manage your projects? Feel free to post a comment below.

On a project, documents can be approved, changed, updated and reapproved all the time, often being sent back and forth between multiple people working on a Job. It’s no wonder then that it’s easy to lose track of where a document is at, and who is holding up its progress.

That’s why we’ve added a cool and exciting new feature to all the project documents in IPM. It’s called routing, or otherwise referred to as ‘ball in court’. Now every document in our project management software has a grid where you can add details of each of the people responsible for the document, and at what stage of the process they are responsible for it.

Then, through the power of Microsoft Dynamics workflows, you can set up a whole range of processes that automatically update the routing as the document moves from one stage to the other. This way you can see who’s court the ball is in at any given time – and more importantly, who is holding the process up.

But we’ve not only included the routing feature on the individual document forms – there is also an overall routing view where you can see all the outstanding balls in court for your project. And with the customisability of Microsoft CRM, you can change the view to see whatever you like, including outstanding balls in court, balls in court for one particular user or balls in court for a single spec. section or trade. What’s more, CRM’s conditional formatting also lets you highlight the list in whichever way works for you – we’ve found it works really well to highlight all the overdue balls in court in bold red, so you can see at a glance what needs actioning quickly. You can also choose to view the routing information as part of a dashboard that appears when you first log in.

As you can see from the options above, the combinations of how you can use this new functionality are endless; it’s all down to how you want to customise the workflows, the view, the conditional formatting and your dashboard. You can tweak it so that it best suits the way you manage your projects, and it means you will always know who’s court the ball is in on all your projects.

For more information on this new feature, or to see a demo of it in action, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Many construction companies can often be mistaken in thinking they don’t need a CRM system to help manage their projects – after all they are in the business of managing projects, not customers. However with developments in CRM technology in recent years, CRM tools are no longer just about contact lists and sales leads. That’s why I’ve put together the following reasons why project managers should be using a CRM tool as well as a project management tool to help manage their projects:

1. You can build and manage relationships
Apart from delivering the project on time and on budget, nothing is more important than managing the relationships you form on a project. You never know who you may need on future projects, or how far someone else’s recommendations of your work will take you. Keeping up to date contact details for all your project stakeholders and maintaining a good working relationship can go really far in ensuring the success of your project.
 
2. It helps you stay up-to-date with your outstanding activities 
New features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM such as conditional formatting means you can not only view a list of outstanding project activities in CRM, but it can also automatically highlight those that are due soon, or even overdue.

3. You can easily monitor and manage your supply chain
In order to finish a job on time, you need to have everything delivered on time. With a CRM tool, you know exactly who your suppliers are and have their contact details at your finger tips to keep track of everything that is supplied to site. CRM also lets you integrate with your accounting software, so accounts and payments are kept up to date.

4. It helps you to track your enquiries and tenders
Due to its tight integration with Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has one of the most advanced email tracking facilities available. It can automatically file all your emails relating to a particular enquiry or tender to ensure you also keep track of your project communication.

5. All your customer and project information is in the one place
A CRM system gives you the ability to store all your contacts, accounts and project data in the one database that can be accessed by everyone in your organisation, and from anywhere. It helps everyone stay up to date with everything that’s happening on your project and also ensures there is only one set of data, rather than multiple versions.

6. It gives you a single view of your customer and project data
Not only does having a CRM mean having a single database, features like the dashboards added to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 give you a great overview of the data on your project. You are also able to customise these dashboards so you can see the information that is relevant to you.

7. You can focus on retaining your customers and growing your business
Finally, similarly to what I mentioned in my first point, it’s all about relationships. You can only continue to manage projects if people want to continue working with you and that’s why it’s so important to manage your working relationships as well as your projects. The combination of a CRM system with your project management tools can help you achieve this.

So even though it may feel like a sales tool, a CRM system can be invaluable when it comes to managing your projects. There are many CRM systems out there to choose from, but we believe Microsoft Dynamics CRM has the most features that can translate across to project management, and that is why our project management tool is built on the Microsoft Dynamics platform.

What about you, can you think of any more reasons a project manager might need a CRM tool? Let us know in the comments below.

I recently came across an article on projectmanager.com.au entitled ‘Technology: Friend or Foe?’ and it got me thinking about technology, and also our relationship with technology in our everyday lives. We often marvel at how technology makes things easier for us, particularly when things go like clockwork, but as soon as something doesn’t work for us we berate it and vow and declare never to buy that particular brand or product again.

Being a software company, we are very strong advocates for technology and firmly believe that without it, projects may take twice as long and cost twice as much. So I was pleased to see that one interesting point the article made was that we shouldn’t be looking at technology from a perspective of friend or foe, but rather from an appropriate use perspective.

Technology is designed for a particular purpose, and it is usually only well suited for that purpose. It’s when we try to use technology for something it wasn’t designed to do that we run into problems. We have seen this attitude so often in project management when companies try to use software that was essentially designed for accounting to help manage projects. It doesn’t work, it’s not efficient and they end up hating technology.

If you already know that IPM is a project management system based on Microsoft’s customer relationship management tool, then you may think we are making the same mistake. But the concept of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an example of where some technologies really come to the fore. The thing about Microsoft Dynamics CRM is that is designed specifically in that way, to be used with other applications and to be twisted, tweaked and expanded. This makes it even more appropriate because it can be expanded to fit so many aspects of the one organisation. Microsoft CRM is not like other platforms where one technology is trying to do multiple jobs without the tools or functionality to do so. It has really taken the concept of appropriate use and run with it, making sure we can interact with and utilise technology in a way that matches our exact purpose, rather than hindering us and becoming a foe.

So the next time you may be getting frustrated with your project management technology, try asking yourself – is the software being used the way it was intended to?

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. If there is one remarkable feat in construction, ‘The Coathanger’ as Aussies affectionately call it, would have to be right up there.

As the largest steel arch bridge in the world, it took 1 400 workers, 53 000 tonnes of steel, two creeper cranes, four maintenance cranes, 18 000m3 of granite blocks, 6 million hand driven rivets and eight years to complete.

One of the interesting features of the bridge was the building of two separate arches and joining them in the middle. Leading up to the completion, there as much apprehension from locals who didn’t believe the two sides would match up. But thankfully they did.

When I think about the Sydney Harbour Bridge today, not only does the sheer size of the project impress me, but also the fact it was built without any of the technology we so heavily rely on today. There was no CAD to assist the architects, no BIM, and more importantly, no project management software to manage the thousands of workers and subcontractors involved. The contractors were from England, there were two steel fabrication workshops set up on Sydney’s north shore, and a temporary Australian, Scottish and Italian settlement at Moruya (300km away) to quarry granite. And not a single email or mobile phone call was sent or made to communicate between everyone.

Today, we are so fortunate to have so much useful technology at our fingertips to make managing our projects easier. So as we celebrate the construction of one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks, we also have to celebrate the skill, ingenuity and project management skills of the people who pulled off such an amazing project without any of the technology we have today.

We are very pleased to announce that IPM Global’s project management suite has been named in Constructech Magazine’s Top Products for 2012. The winners were announced on March 1st and the full list can be found on theConstructech Magazine website.

So what does it mean to be named a Top Product? Well according to Constructech, the competition highlights some of the best products tailored for the construction and homebuilding markets. The top products are judged by the Constructech Magazine’s editorial team, who are looking for strong, stable and efficient technologies that are useful and unique to the construction industry. They also take into account the customer growth rate of each product over the past five years when making a decision.

IPM Global was named in the New Products category, for software that has been on the market for two years or less. One of the key features of IPM the judges liked was the way it uses the Microsoft interface to create a familiar and comfortable experience for the user. Mike Carrozzo, the chief editor of Constructech Magazine sums it up well when he says, “Our Top Products winners provide solid solutions in areas from mobility to BIM, and so much more. We truly believe these to be some of the best offerings found in the construction marketplace.”

A big thank you must go to Constructech Magazine for taking the time to review our product. Feel free to review IPM yourself by checking out some of the functionality and user benefits. You can also contact us to arrange a free demo if you'd like to see the software in action.

I’ve talked often on this blog about the benefits a Microsoft platform can bring to a project management application. As a product certified for Microsoft Dynamics, IPM has been able to use the Microsoft Dynamics platform to build on and create a useful, well designed project management solution that is suitable for a number of industries.

However, the Microsoft platform doesn’t just give you a stable base to build on. It also allows you the option of extending your project management capabilities (and also the capabilities of other functions in your organisation) in a number of ways. Firstly, you can apply any number of independent add-ons built specifically for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that can enable expansion in a number of areas, such as marketing, customer and sales management, manufacturing and distribution. 

Not only that, take a look at this list of five Microsoft tools every business should know about. The ability to integrate with Microsoft tools such as Sharepoint and Lync is a serious advantage for any project management application, and being part of the Microsoft Dynamics family, one that IPM can boast. In particular, a tool like Sharepoint gives project managers the ability to collaborate on projects and share information quickly and efficiently.

Not all project management applications have such a flexible, fluid software platform to work with, and one that gives them access to and integration with some of the best applications in the world. With the changing nature of how we operate and communicate in this technology dominated world, having fluid and adaptable software that can extend across various applications and departments is not only a huge advantage now, I believe it will also be commonplace in a few short years.

I just came across this study from Besner and Hobbs on the PMI website, and it was looking at the top 70 tools and techniques project managers use to manage projects in the real world. Interestingly, looking at a broad cross section of project managers from organisations of differing levels of maturity and managing projects of different sizes, one thing remained constant.

The number one tool for both low and high maturity organisations, and for working on projects both under and over $1m was the humble progress report.

The top ten in all categories also included many other tried and true project management tools and techniques such as task scheduling, Gantt charts, change requests and milestone planning, but it was the progress report that stood out as being the most important tool in all four categories. It just goes to show that project managers value knowing exactly where they are at, and where they are heading, at any stage of the project. And no matter the size of the project or the organisation, progress reports have a very significant place in the project management process.

That’s why it’s so important to be able to quickly produce this information with accuracy and reliability. There is so much information and communication surrounding a project, at times it can be difficult for the project manager to draw out the important information about his or her project to make good decisions and manage the project effectively. And as the survey tells us, that is what they really want, and will use often and across a whole range of projects. That’s why solid reporting tools that can produce accurate and reliable progress reports are a paramount addition when it comes to any project manager’s tool set. As a project manager do you have access to reliable reporting tools that can give you excellent progress reports?

Here at IPM we’ve been busy developing a new product in the IPM suite; an integration tool for Oracle Primavera P6. As an additional product in the IPM suite, the integration tool gives you the option of extending your project management capabilities by incorporating features from both systems.

But what exactly does the integration tool do? Primarily, it synchronises all your Primavera P6 job activities with IPM, which gives you a more comprehensive break down of all the work being completed on your job. Within IPM, you then have the ability to manage the job activity completion dates and update resource, purchase order item and subcontract item information for each activity. This gives you a better overall view of each of your projects as you have the ability to link job activities to information that is not available in Primavera P6.

The integration tool also works both ways, so once you have finished adding information to job activities in IPM, you can synch the information back to Primavera P6 to accurately record and track the expenses on your project.

This tool is an exciting addition to the IPM suite as it gives project managers a way to fill small gaps in their project information, and it also means you get a fully encompassing view of exactly what is happening on your project.

We are currently running the Beta version of the Primavera P6 integration tool, so if you’re a current IPM customer and would like to be involved with putting it through its paces, please contact us or leave a comment below. Feel free to contact us too if you’d like more information on the whole IPM suite.