Approach

Initial investigation revealed that the majority of the practices work was derived from fixed price projects but that it had no means of identify the profitability of individual jobs. More specifically there was a need to identify actual costs incurred in delivering each job vs the costs originally estimated.

Our Solution

Red Arrow recommended the practice implement a job management application to track job profitability and assisted with the selection and implementation of a job management application.

The application selected was WorkflowMax which integrated the quote process with job management and invoicing. It specifically allowed for staff to input time associated with each job in a quick and efficient interface.

The Result

The implementation of WorkflowMax allowed the practice to clearly identify the performance of each job. As a result of this insight the practice identified that there were certain types of work that were continually overrunning budget. Further analyses revealed:

• Lack of technical skill in key areas
• Poor project management skills relating to:
  • Supervision of staff
  • Contract administration
  • Client liaison
• Staff productivity issues

In addition the job management system streamlined business processes and reduced the duplicated of data entry