Creating a Firmwide Operations System
Operations is a Data Intensive Problem
Many firms struggle with antiquated processes and systems while they manage their operations.
Workload, revenue and profitability are essentially data-intensive problems to solve, and data analytics is a powerful weapon to reveal trends and patterns in project performance, staff workload and business development data.
The AEC Business Analytics approach to creating a better operations system begins with asking what information already exists and how do you want it reported? The foundation of a robust operations system is to get a strong grasp on the Project List and to ensure that certain fields and pieces of information are included. Once that information is solidified, project burn rates, or daily budget allotments can be created using various data techniques.
Focus on Reporting
But the key strategy to create a successful operation system is to focus on reporting, as mentioned above. While that may seem obvious, it's interesting to see how many firms buy a system, and then start to realize some of the limitations of the reporting in that system. This is true of many of the ERP solutions that are available on the marketplace. While they all have strengths and can certainly do a decent job in creating project and associated data, very many ERPs fail at aggregated reporting, as well as individual tracking.
Aggregated reporting is the kind of thing a firm leader needs to understand the overall performance of the firm, while individual tracking allows that same leader to look at each separate project and track its progress.
A huge component of the AEC Business Analytics approach is the use of Power BI or other data analytics programs like Tableau. Leveraging a general purpose data analytic solution has several advantages:
it usually has a range of tools that are unmatched in more proprietary ERP systems.
It often has an entire ecosystem of add-ons that can greatly enhance the basic functionality of the solution so that custom visualizations and solutions can be generated.
It allows for the aggregation of information from several sources, not just the proprietary ERP but also individual ‘outlier’ Excel spreadsheets that might exist in certain individuals.
Our extensive previous experience has been in creating visualizations that extract data from more opaque data sources, and enhance that data with extra fields as well as better visualization of current status and future projections. Common visualizations are revenue projections, staff workload projections, business development tracking and financial profitability and growth.
If you are interested in hearing more about our solution to business analytics with AEC firms connect you can connect here.