If you don’t know if your project is truly successful and profitable until after it’s complete, you’re doing things all wrong. When delivering projects is how you directly serve your customers and make money, you need to know the status of your projects immediately.
Project business executives need real-time project insight that is accurate, reliable, and up to date to make important business decisions. When it comes to project analytics, most project businesses are manually consolidating reports that are outdated by the time they are produced, leaving many executives in the dark about how their projects are doing.
[This is the eighth blog in a series that provides a comprehensive high-level overview of the project business functionality found in Dynamics 365 Project Operations and PlanAutomate. See the seventh blog here.]
This blog discusses the project insight and analytics functionality in Dynamics 365 Project Operations (D365PO) and PlanAutomate.
Download this Quick Guide: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations vs PlanAutomate to gain a detailed understanding of the capabilities of both systems and when to use them.
Dynamics 365 D365PO
While D365PO has several of out-of-the-box transactional project reports, it has little in terms of detailed project metrics and KPIs. More importantly, D365PO lacks managed processes and functional scope to provide reliable metrics and holistic project and portfolio reporting.
One of the newest reports in D365PO(F+CE) is a profitability analysis, which displays total revenue compared to contract and gross margin. It also includes analysis on resource utilization and task completions.
Keep in mind, the simplistic graphs and reports are good for smaller organizations with relatively simple projects. However, large project-based companies with sophisticated reporting requirements will need enhanced business intelligence capabilities.
PlanAutomate
PlanAutomate provides holistic project insight in real-time based on managed and repeatable processes. The analytical scope includes financial as well as operational KPIs. The solution comes with ten workspaces, five of which contain embedded Power BI project analytics dashboards. Our proprietary sensor point framework serves as an early detection mechanism against more than 25 project health indicators. Project Automation has various dashboards and views report on diverse areas including risks, issues and deadlines, budgets, variances and margins, resource utilization, cashflow and pipelines and more.
Above and beyond D365PO, PlanAutomate adds the following capabilities and more to project insight:
- Sensor points
- Project Autopilot
- Enterprise performance index
- Portfolio analytics
- Project breakdown analytics
- Earned value analytics
- Cost code reporting
- 10 project centric workspaces
- 5 project centric analytical workspaces
- PlanAutomate reporting cube for Power BI
Real-Time Project Insight Enables Proactive Business Management
Reacting to disruptions or problems that may arise is no way to run a business. You need a solution that gives you real-time insights into your projects so you can improve efficiency, timelines and risk management. Ultimately, this gives executives the visibility and control they need to transform their companies into high-performing enterprises.
Project businesses must incorporate both operational and financial performance indicators in order to generate meaningful project analytics. With Project Automation, you can manage your project operations and project financials within a single, comprehensive solution providing holistic project intelligence in real time.
Download the Project Automation Quick Guide to learn how Project Automation creates a streamlined, comprehensive system for project-driven companies.
