In the previous article we discussed the basics of managing scope using deliverables and looked at the simple project scenario. In that scenario a project manager used Exact PSA to create a set of deliverables to define the scope of his project to implement Synergy Enterprise at a customer site.

This allowed the project manager to see what needs to be delivered on the project; however, he is also interested in how much time and money it will take to deliver it. In Exact PSA he can define tasks (or, in other words, activities) that need to be carried out in order to build a certain deliverable.

Let’s take another look at our example. The project manager wants to add more implementation details to the deliverable Requirements analysis. He conjures the following list of activities, and enters them one by one:

What does he see after completing this exercise?

• that he has estimated that 36 hours (32 hours of consultancy and 4 hours of project management) are needed to complete Requirements analysis;
• that the cost and the sales price per hour for each activity are calculated according to the rate rules in Exact PSA;
• the total cost and the total sales price of the whole deliverable are clear to him.

After having done exactly the same for every deliverable in the project, he will arrive at a complete work breakdown structure (or simply WBS) for the project, that will:

• give him confidence that every single activity that needs to be done on the project is captured in the system and is linked to a correct deliverable (based on the scope that he has defined);
• provide him with the project schedule, where each deliverable and each activity is plotted against a time range;
• let him see the total cost and total sales price of the whole project (based on the applicable rates, but not including any personal rates);
• allow him to share this calculation with the sales in order to create a final calculation for the customer, or to validate the original quotation.

In essence, that means a firm grasp of all estimated work on the project and its financials — something that a project manager is responsible for.

There are two additional features of Exact PSA that make work breakdown structures particularly convenient:

1. It is possible to list not only activities for each deliverable, but also material, in case goods are procured and shipped to the customer. In our example (as shown in the previous article), a deliverable Hardware installation might include some equipment that will be billed to the customer together with installation hours.
2. It is possible to plan hours directly from a WBS line, and, starting from release 249/404 it is possible to allocate material in the same way.

And last, in the release 249/404 the project manager will be able to see directly from a WBS line what hour planning or material & expenses requests are linked to it, that will give him insight into progress of the project. We will review these grand possibilities in the next article of the series.

Managing project scope remains one of the most important responsibilities of  any project manager who works on a project of larger than trivial size. A successful project is a project that is completed on time and within budget; and completed means that the scope of the project is delivered to its stakeholders as expected.

To be sure that this goal is indeed achievable, a project manager needs to have absolute clarity on what is in the scope of the project, and especially, what is not. Failing to see the difference often results in projects falling prey to scope creep, that is, when requirements get added to the scope without modifications to schedule or budget.

There are multiple tools and techniques to define and manage scope; almost all of them are based on the divide and conquer principle. That is, the scope should be broken into individual, smaller deliverables. PRINCE2, for example, calls them products and specifies a dedicated product breakdown structure tool that is a part of overall project planning.

We have reviewed such scope management tools with our existing customers, and after adding a few modifications to make them easier to use, we introduced this project management best practice to Exact PSA.

In an nutshell, the sequence of steps that a project manager will take looks like this:

1) Once a project is created in Synergy Enterprise, the project manager will define the scope by entering one by one deliverables that will be built. Sometimes they are very easy to spot, like reports, or installations of equipment and software, or agreed milestones.

2) Sometimes deliverables are less tangible, like testing or integration, and need to be broken down further – into smaller deliverables. The rule of the thumb is that a project manager should stop when he can comfortably estimate the amount of work and material it will take to deliver the deliverable.

A resulting parent-child structure in Exact PSA will similar to this:

In this example, in a project to implement Synergy Enterprise, there is a main project deliverable — the overall outcome of the project. It is called Complete implementation and it’s lifespan is the same as the lifespan of the project.

This main deliverable is broken down into three other deliverables: Requirements analysis, Onsite implementation and Final testing & acceptance. Each of these deliverables has its own start time and start date, that will define the schedule of the project.

The project manager considered Onsite implementation to be still quite large, and split it into two more deliverables: Hardware installation and Software installation. He also decided to that work on this large deliverable should be managed via a child project, since different team members will be writing hours on it.

All this information is displayed in a single screen, so that the project manager to see the complete scope of the project in one glance. (Special columns like Item, WBS cost and revenue, and Margin we shall discuss in the next article).

In release 248, to allow project managers to using deliverables to scope the project, the administrator should enable a central switch in the settings of Exact PSA. However, based on customer feedback, in release 249 we delegated this choice to project managers, since they know best when to use deliverables to manage scope and when not to.

Often, in small projects centered around realizing, approving and invoicing a few billable activities, there is little incentive for a project manager to actively manage scope. However, interviews with customers showed that many disciplined project managers use deliverables on all their projects, regardless of size, so that they have the scope very clearly defined and managed.

In the next article we will discuss how the project manager can define individual activities and tasks that are needed to build an actual deliverable., and how he can track their progress. Stay tuned!

Pivot analysis provides a powerful tool to analyze information. With pivot analysis, you can filter out the data you are interested in and sort it by different criteria. In Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 248 we have introduced the possibility to save templates for opportunity pivot analysis.

Are you a sales manager who needs to see up-to-date information on opportunity management?
A sales professional who is looking for an overview of all open opportunities? Or a sales professional who wants to compare his/her results with other sales professionals?

The below video will show you how for example a sales manager can create templates for opportunity pivot analysis, use them and share with other colleagues.

Take a look at the video, and let us know how you use pivot templates in your everyday work with Exact Synergy Enterprise. Share your tips in the comments!

Photo credit: Bill Frymire

In Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 248 (general available) we have improved the ease of use and speed of Exact Synergy Office Integration. We have also took a direct customer feedback into consideration which resulted in the following improvements. As of now Synergy Office Integration allows you to automatically save emails from certain folders directly to Exact Synergy Enterprise, based on a template set for those folders. You also have a possibility to deactivate option of automatic mapping of a contact person when saving an email. Moreover, Synergy Office Integration has been enhanced with numerous features, such as option to save multiple emails at once and pop-up notification to ask user to save an outgoing email.

Please watch the video below, to see how the new enhancements work.

Please let us know if you have any feedback.

As of today, Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 248 is generally available, which marks the end of the controlled release period which started in the mid of December 2011.

Please see below what the main highlights of this product update are:

• Realigning features for users with the CRM role, that offers now full functionality in the CRM module. Please watch this video to learn about other improvements to this role.
• Numerous enhancements to Exact Synergy Office Integration based on direct customer feedback. For a complete overview of enhancements, please click here and choose tab ‘General’; you can also watch this video to find out more.
• Improvements to the Exact PSA solution, among others by enhancing the project planning board that offers a more interactive way of planning with a drag-and-drop interface. The Work Breakdown Structure is now merged with budgets to simplify work of a project controller and project managers. Please watch this series of videos to find out more.
• With Central Master Data Management you can now easily centrally manage people, in follow-up of the earlier introduction of supporting accounts, items and general ledger accounts (video)
• The possibility to save pivot analysis for opportunities as templates based on a direct customer feedback (video)

Moreover, the new Exact Service Management solution that helps wholesale and manufacturing companies who service the products they sell to optimize their service activities is currently in extended controlled release. Please watch our introduction video to find out more about this solution.

The Exact Synergy Enterprise Configurator will remain in controlled release with this product update until the end of January. Please read more about Exact Synergy Enterprise Configurator in the previous announcement.

For a full overview of all new functionalities, please refer to the release notes for product update 248 and the Product Update News page.

Should you have any questions regarding this announcement, please do not hesitate to comment on this blog post.

Service Activities explained

The service activity is used to register the whole process from entering the request until the invoicing. The service activity is an Exact Synergy Enterprise request with extra options. You can view the configurations of a customer, and choose the service that is required. In addition, you can create one service activity or multiple service activities.

In the service activity, you can register what needs to be done, including linking standard problems and standard solutions to help in the process. The service activity can be created automatically from the Exact Globe sales order screen, or by the preventive maintenance generator. It can also be created manually.

You have the option to select one engineer or more who will do the job, and when they will do it. However, it is more efficient to leave this blank, and use the dispatch board for the planning. On the dispatch board, you will have a bucket with all the to-be-planned service activities, and you can use the drag-and-drop feature to plan which engineer(s) will be working on that date. You will be able to view the relevant information, which you can customize, so planning for the right engineer at the right time will be faster and easier.

You can also plan for the items that are required for the service activity, which can be pre-filled from the contract. Discounts can be used for the contracts. When planning the items required, stock information from Exact Globe is visible, and the stock is automatically planned in Exact Globe so the purchase orders can be generated or available stock can be allocated.

The engineer can realize the hours and used items based on the planned activities. After authorization, the invoice can be created. When the invoice is sent from Exact Globe, the detailed documents from Exact Synergy Enterprise will be automatically printed or emailed. This will all be in the Exact Synergy Enterprise software, and integrated in all the relevant master data and menu paths.

Okay, enough talk, you can watch the video and see for yourself by clicking the image below:

Feedback is highly appreciated!

Hi all,

When you are using the Exact Integration solution you sometimes want to to re-send your data from Exact Synergy Enterprise to Exact Globe vice versa. As previously stated you can do this in the background monitor by hitting the re-send button for selected messages.

We also supply you with a tool that can re-send your data based on the entities and the ‘date last modified’.

In your installation folder of Exact Integration (p.e. c:\program files\exact software\exact integration\synchronization framework\bin) you can start up an executable called SendToQueue.exe. This tool allows you to select the entity that you want to re-send and from which date.

This tool makes use of the Integration solution that uses the Web Services on Exact Synergy Enterprise and Entity Windows Services on Exact Globe to exchange data between the two products.

In the upper part of the screen you enter your connection settings, after pressing the button connect, it will fill your list with entities that are currently supported. These settings will be automatically pre-filled based upon your installation of Exact Integration. Please note that you have to point to the services directory when you use the web address.

In the options section you can either select synchronize from ESE (Exact Synergy Enterprise) to Exact Globe or from EG (Exact Globe) to Exact Synergy Enterprise.

With the date filters you can select your range based on the modified data.

In the entities section you can select the entities you want to re-synchronize. You can set the priority with the buttons on the right side of the selected entitiy. When you press the button ‘Retrieve to queue’ the synchronization will be started. Ultimately on the right you can see the progress of your entities selected.

When you decide to use this tool please bare in mind that it’s best to synchronize entities on an individual basis and that you schedule this outside of business hours so that there is no interference with your normal daily activities. And of course we recommend that you make a backup of your database before you start this process so that you can always go back to the situation you had and you don’t loose any valuable information.

When the process in completed you can view the results in your background monitor.

And for the technical people amongst us, you can also view this on a database level in SQL via the following query.
SELECT ID, StartDate, Source, Destination, Success, Message,
EntityName, Action, PrimaryKey,LogicalKey,TransformationProvider
FROM [esf].dbo.SyncResult
WHERE Message <> ‘echo’
ORDER BY StartDate DESC

Should you have any questions about this solution, do not hesitate to contact me at ruud.aalders@exact.com or add comments to this post.

Hi all,

Environments are getting more and more complex these days. As a system administrator you see yourself faced with many challenges of keeping important data up to date in all enviroments.

As Exact we have two main products which are many times seen in one enviroment. Exact Synergy Enterprise for your front office, web browser application and Exact Globe as your back office system.

Of course you want to keep your data in line between Exact Globe and Exact Synergy Enterprise and you don’t want to run extensive scripts to keep your data synchronized.

We anticipated this situation and released the product of Exact Integration. This product basically communicates between Exact Synergy Enterprise and Exact Globe, keeping the data aligned.

However, since these are two different products with their own history, often they have their own validation to make sure the individual product data is guaranteed.

As Exact Integration communicates between the two main products the data entered in each system will be validated by both products. And sometimes, data entered into one product does not meet the requirements for the other product.

In order to facilitate in keeping your data entry correct, we have created a background monitor which allows you to see the results of the validation, enabling you to correct this data and keep the data between the products synchronized.

In the System-Report-Background Monitor menu in Exact Synergy Enterprise the administrator can see the results and take action if necessary.

In this monitor you see, besides the failed synchronization, also when your synchronization went well. The results are consolidated from your middleware database that you have created upon installation of Exact Integration.

Should you have any questions about this solution, do not hesitate to contact me at ruud.aalders@exact.com or add comments to this post.

Over last year we’ve been busy developing Central Master Data Management solution (CMDM) that allows you to create a structured process for entering and maintaining information at a central location. As a result, you have a clear overview of your entire organization’s information that can be used for company-wide decision making. With each product update we enabled CMDM for additional entities within the software. CMDM already supports accounts, items and general ledger accounts, and as of Exact Globe product update 403 and Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 248 you can also centrally manage people.

To find out more about synchronizing people from Exact Synergy Enterprise to Exact Globe, please watch the video below (you can also find there other videos related to CMDM solution).

Next to the video you can also read the release note.  Should you have any questions about Central Master Data Management, please comment on this blog post.

On behalf of product management I’m happy to announce that as of today, Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 248 is in controlled release. This new product update is planned to be generally available in the mid of January 2012.

The main highlights of this product update are as following:

• Realigned features for the CRM role, that offers now full functionality in the module CRM. An important addition to the CRM role is the ability to perform delegation.
• Improved ease of use and speed of Exact Synergy Office Integration. You can now automatically save emails from certain folders directly to Exact Synergy Enterprise, based on a template set for those folders. You also have a possibility to deactivate option of automatic mapping of a contact person when saving an email. Moreover, Synergy Office Integration has been enhanced with numerous features, such as option to save multiple emails at once and pop-up notification to ask user to save an outgoing email. For a complete overview of enhancements, please click here and choose tab ‘General’
• Changes to the Exact PSA solution, among others enhanced project planning board that offers a more interactive way of planning with drag-and-drop interface; Work Breakdown Structure merged with budgets to simplify work of a project controller and project manager.
• Additional features in the new design of Exact Synergy Enterprise, such as expanding self-service wizards, ability to select themes, SDK support on mega menu, top right menu and search entities
• People supported in Central Master Data Management, please see this video to find out more

Based on a direct feedback from our customers, we are continuously improving our products. This product update includes features mentioned above for CRM role and Exact Synergy Office Integration. Moreover, we offer now possibility to save pivot analysis for opportunities as templates.

As of this product update Exact Synergy Enterprise Configurator will be available. This toolset is meant for consultants and partners. It can be used to create and implement pre-configured templates, in pre-sales trajectories to ‘quickly’ realize a demo showing the Exact Synergy Enterprise features. Moreover, it can also be used in configuration of customer specific solutions to support the primary and secondary business processes. 

For a full overview of all new functionalities, please refer to the release notes for product update 248 as well as articles on our Product Blog.

Should you have any questions regarding this announcement, please do not hesitate to comment on this blog post.