Account4 PSO Service Delivery

The key to delivering work on time and under budget is effective workforce management. Account4 software helps you monitor existing commitments and optimize the resources that you have, by providing a way to track all work and resources in a single place. The resulting gains in productivity and utilization will translate into greater profitability and customer satisfaction.

Scroll down to see forecasting and planning, schedules and assignments, skills and resource management, time and expense reporting, and project management.

Forecasting & Planning
With an eye on the opportunity pipeline, your organization can forecast revenue and resource requirements based on the likelihood of new business opportunities closing. This alleviates the common challenge of balancing the supply of skilled workers with the demand for services.

• View capacity — in terms of skills and availability — at the individual or group level
• Manage the gap between resource availability and the services pipeline
• Forecast resource needs and revenue based on proposed and in-progress work
• Match resource supply with the demand for incoming work

Scheduling & Assignments
The goal is to be confident that the right people are performing the right work at the right time. This is the key to optimizing the use of available talent. Account4 offers powerful resource search capabilities and convenient online access to schedules to assist you with this process.

Whether you need to assign people to specific dates and tasks, or only track work at a higher level, Account4 provides a variety of ways to account for your staff's time and identify room for improvement.

• Search for resources by skills, availability, and location
• Assign people to high-level items such as projects, or to specific activities
• Create one-time, as well as recurring assignments
• Assign work to individuals, or to entire groups at once
• Create assignments with or without specifying a schedule
• E-mail new assignments to workers
• Have time and expense reports automatically reflect assignments; improving accuracy
• View daily and weekly assignment summaries by manager, resource, or customer

Skills & Resource Management
Who's on the Bench? In a resource-constrained organization, having the answer to this question could very well be the key to success. Account4 is focused on providing this information, so you can proactively optimize your workforce to meet future demand.

With Account4 — a fully integrated work and resource management system — you can view capacity, estimate delivery dates, and even reserve resources when work is requested. Furthermore, resource managers can view the services pipeline and procure, train, and deploy resources in a way that maximizes productivity.

• Compare the availability of required skills to the schedule of upcoming work
• Improve employee morale and support career development and training programs
• Search for qualified resources by skills (from within and outside your group) when assigning work
• Match qualified resources to jobs based on proficiency levels and find available people across departments
• Increase utilization by forecasting resources' downtime between projects
• Reserve resources for work that is pending, without committing them
• Commit resources based on "true" availability, which considers administrative and other unavailable time

Time & Expense Reporting
Time and expense reporting should be more than a weekly formality. It should be an integral part of how managers and staff communicate about assignments, status, and performance. Combine that with browser-only access from virtually anywhere, and participation and compliance is bound to improve.

With Account4, new work assignments automatically flow to individuals' time and expense sheets, and as those people submit their progress, the information is immediately available for approval and status reporting. As a result, time and expenses are processed more quickly, and information is more current.

• New assignments automatically flow to individuals' time and expense sheets
• Streamline status reporting and billing procedures
• Web accessibility means that information is more current, accurate, and complete
• Intuitive design and complete online help system minimizes training
• Server-centric install means that deployment to thousands of users can be fast and inexpensive

Project Management
Managing projects and other work in a resource-driven organization is not possible with desktop planning tools. This is because your resources do not spend 100% of their time on a single project, and stand-alone projects are not all that you do. Account4 supports the only approach to enterprise-wide project management that works.

At the organization level, it streamlines the work approval process; takes advantage of best practices; integrates reported time and expense information; and supports reporting across departments and customers. In essence, it provides a place to see the big picture — all work and resources — so that you can direct and control the workforce.

At the project or work manager level, project status can be automatically updated by team members (see time and expense reporting) so you can see how things are actually progressing — much more valuable than a static snapshot of how things were supposed to go. The work directory provides support for all of the necessary work breakdowns, data, and documents. It even has a portal for sharing assignments and other information with MS Project.

• Plan and report across multiple projects simultaneously
• Assign resources from a central database based on skills and overall availability
• View potential engagements and service requests in advance
• Forward assignments to resources via email and/or your Intranet
• Monitor actual hours and costs as consultants report them