A Guide that Defines a New Category of Business Systems for Project-Based Companies
Today PlanAutomate released the Project Automation Blueprint. The Blueprint presents a comprehensive case for Project Automation as a new software product category designed specifically to support all the business processes of project-driven companies.
Project-based companies, which PlanAutomate refers to as Project Businesses, are companies that provide goods and services to their customers through projects. These companies operate in project-driven industries, including but not limited to architecture, engineering and construction, engineer-to-order/contract manufacturing, and all types of professional services.
The Project Automation Blueprint describes a new type of all-in-one business system for these companies. Typically, these companies operate with many disparate applications and systems, including many different project management and accounting tools. This disjointed application landscape causes significant inefficiencies, lack of visibility and poor business performance. Without a Project Automation approach to technology, these companies have had trouble finding a business system to manage their processes from end-to-end.
As described in the Blueprint, the core components of Project Automation are Project Financials, Project Operations and Project Insight. By integrating these three core areas for Project Businesses, Project Automation creates a system that covers 80 percent of their business processes. From this foundation, Project Businesses can enhance Project Automation in much the same way as an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) with extended functionality for their industry or business requirements.
According to the Blueprint, Project Automation provides many direct business benefits. Major among these benefits are cost savings in the form of eliminating all the disparate applications normally used by Project Businesses and the waste that comes with them.
To support the notion of Project Automation, PlanAutomate has many customers around the world using it. One such customer is Rex Moore, an electrical engineering and installation contractor out of Sacramento, California. Rex Moore eliminated the use of fifteen different applications after implementing PlanAutomate.
Rex Moore – Project Automation Case Study
“It makes the organization more effective having it all in one place,” said Jeremy Grosser, Head of IT for Rex Moore. “Some of the biggest beneficiaries of PlanAutomate is our executive team. Project Automation provides the ability to get the information that they need at the push of a button, so we’re able to make decisions based on true, live data.”
More than a single product, PlanAutomate is promoting Project Automation as a new product category that anyone can develop or adopt. Although PlanAutomate coined the term Project Automation, it encourages other companies to adopt the term to label similar systems and call attention to this need in the market.
“It isn’t just about PlanAutomate,” explains Daniel Bévort, CEO of PlanAutomate. “First and foremost, we want people to adopt this term and this way of thinking, to think of themselves as Project Businesses and recognize that they need a solution to support that.”
The term Project Business and Project Business Management is already in use by project management thought leaders, and PlanAutomate believes this trend will continue to grow. As an example, the Project Business Foundation is a new non-profit dedicated to teaching professionals Project Business Management as a discipline. It is a new area of study driven by the growing project economy that Project Automation supports.
PlanAutomate hopes that by allowing the term Project Automation to be coopted by others it will help change the mindset in the market.
“Project Businesses have been floundering for decades,” said Bévort. “They think that it is normal to operate like this, with all these different systems, with no visibility into what’s going on or how to fix it. Project Automation is really a mindset shift. We want people to know that it is possible to operate as one, integrated business.”
Download the Project Business Automation Blueprint here.
About PlanAutomate
PlanAutomate’s mission is to make enterprise software work for Project Business. To that end, PlanAutomate created Project Automation. With Project Automation, PlanAutomate provides a comprehensive business system to manage all the business processes of project-driven companies in construction and engineering, ETO/contract manufacturing and professional services.
PlanAutomate is an integrated solution embedded into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance ERP. By building upon an existing enterprise ERP, PlanAutomate truly can provide one end-to-end system for project-based companies where everything works together seamlessly.
PlanAutomate has many well-known project-based enterprises using Project Automation including, Northrop Grumman, Johns Hopkins Medicine International, and APi Group.
Learn more at www.planautomate.com.