Project management remains a crucial component for all businesses. Taking things from a current to an ideal state is often harder than it sounds. Managing tight budgets and deadlines, preparing for unknown variables, navigating setbacks, keeping third-party vendors in check and various other challenges make managing complex projects extremely difficult. Having the right software in place for project management is crucial to success. Fortunately, NetSuite’s project management capabilities along with customizations performed by a top-tier NetSuite consultancy like ScaleNorth, allow you to seamlessly navigate this complex landscape. Let’s take a look at the importance of NetSuite project management:
What is Project Management?
According to the Association for Project Management, project management is defined as “the application of processes, skills, knowledge and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters”.
Efficient project management enables collaboration amongst team members, sets clear guidelines on what is to be accomplished and when, keeps projects within budget and scope, manages outside vendors and more. With Project Management being needed in countless verticals and industries ranging from construction to software, the demand for project management tools is growing faster than ever. Valued at around $5.37 billion in 2020, the Project Management market is set to reach $9.81 billion by 2026. According to Mordor Intelligence, it represents a CAGR of around 10.67%.
Mordor Intelligence believes that the reason for Project Management tools’ sudden demand is the increasing complexity of the modern workplace. The pandemic and the rise of hybrid work has required a more complex strategy for project management. Bringing together all the right components to ensure successful project management can be a challenge, which is where the NetSuite Project Management Module functionality comes to the rescue.
What are Project Management Tools?
Despite the name, project management tools are not just for project managers. The NetSuite Project Management Module features can be customized to fit the needs of teams with different sizes and goals. Simple projects require a straightforward checklist while other complex ones require proper planning, task alignment, setting deadlines, and tracking the man hours and materials spent.
The NetSuite Project Management Module enables teams to collaborate and keeps managers current on the status of projects using real-time data, so companies can proactively identify potential issues that might affect the scope or budget. Employees and vendors can identify what they’re responsible for and when, who they need to be communicating with, and can track key metrics such as inventory amounts, completion levels, upcoming deadlines and more.
With NetSuite being a cloud-based solution, stakeholders and relevant parties gain complete visibility from anywhere in the world. An extremely important feature when you have multiple locations (including internationally), field offices, project sites, and more.
What Do Project Managers Need to Accomplish?
Project managers need to manage requirements, planning, budgeting, and timelines with a heavy focus on collaboration and communication to a variety of audiences. The role of project managers involves many tasks and responsibilities, including:
- Analyzing and managing risks and issues
- Crafting processes
- Creating project plans
- Facilitating communication between relevant stakeholders
- Implementing project management methodologies
- Influencing strategy
- Managing tasks and expectations
- Monitoring and reporting project status
- Planning and defining scope of work
- Providing team leadership
- Resource allocation and planning
- Time/cost estimating
That’s a lot to include in one job description, which is why the appropriate tools are necessary to successfully manage projects. The NetSuite Project Management Module has robust features to ease your project manager’s stress levels and keep your projects on time and under budget.
Top NetSuite Project Management Module Features
Automate Job Creation
Using NetSuite, you can easily automate job creation by identifying service items that will require a job. Sales orders for those items go into a queue where you can assign an ID and a project manager. You can also bulk create numerous jobs with one click.
Organize Tasks and Activities
NetSuite also has the capability to organize tasks, calls and events, which can be linked to projects and records. By keeping data pertaining to communications, events, projects, and clients in one place, resource tracking becomes more accurate and reliable than ever.
Project Tasks
With NetSuite, you can create project tasks with multiple predecessors and finish-to-start (FS), start-to-start (SS), finish-to-finish (FF) and start-to-finish (SF) relationships. Project tasks can also be created with lag time between tasks and a Finish No Later Than (FNLT) constraint.
Project Dashboard
A project dashboard gives NetSuite project managers a visual, graphical analysis of the status of specific projects. Project managers can see important KPIs at a glance to identify which projects are on time, under budget and destined for success.
Project Templates
Reusable project templates are available within NetSuite to allow your organization to quickly kick off complex projects, save time and headaches, and rest assured that best practices are being followed.
Gantt Charts
NetSuite’s project management features include gantt charts to provide better visibility into project schedules. Gantt charts assist you with project scheduling, tracking progress, and visually representing start and finish dates of certain tasks.
Timesheets
Personnel management is a complicated part of managing any project. NetSuite’s Timesheets allow you and project staff to enter and submit weekly timesheets. With NetSuite being a cloud-based and mobile-friendly platform, it’s easier than ever for project staff members to accurately submit and track their time from anywhere in the world. Plus, you can customize your timesheet approval processes to suit your unique business needs.
Payroll Expense Allocation for Jobs
NetSuite’s project management software provides a one-click solution for tracking the actual labor cost of jobs. Earnings can be seamlessly allocated to the jobs each employee worked on during the pay period, according to the time they entered on their timesheets. Some key benefits being less manual labor and improved financial reporting regarding job profitability.
Project-Based Milestones
Project milestones are critical points throughout the life cycle of a project. They might include the completion of a building foundation, the delivery of a key resource, or completing the code for a unique software feature. These milestones are useful for setting of billing dates and completeness of work. NetSuite allows you track and monitor project-based milestones with dashboards, alerts, and automations for improved visibility and control.
Project Billing
NetSuite project management allows you to bill projects based on completion of project work, successfully passing milestones, by schedule, and more. You can also utilize billing forecast capabilities to predict when customers will be billed.
Key Problems The NetSuite Project Management Module Can Alleviate
- Limited Project Status Visibility – With NetSuite, we can easily access up-to-date KPIs and customer data in project dashboards, reports and Gantt charts.
- Manual Project Setup – NetSuite offers automated job creation, project templates and native integrations to drive efficiencies from the start of a project to the final payment.
- Inefficient Tracking – With NetSuite project management, you can organize calls, activities, tasks and events, and link them to specific projects, all in one place, so resource tracking is completed in real time.
- Unreliable Project Budgeting – NetSuite’s P&L, automated job creation and progress-reporting capabilities enable managers to review project profitability based on actuals.
- Hit-or-Miss Resource Assignments – Users can automatically, completely and accurately apply time and expenses to projects while tracking upcoming deadlines.
Scale Your Business with the NetSuite Project Management Module
Whether you’re building skyscrapers, making software, or just trying to keep on top of internal projects, the NetSuite Project Management Module can help you stay on top of timelines and budgets, manage vendors and internal employees, track milestones and more.
If you’re interested in implementing and optimizing NetSuite and its Project Management Module for your business, schedule an introductory call with ScaleNorth by clicking here.