]po[ is a Web-based ERP/Project Management software for organizations with 2-200 users. ]po[ integrates areas such as CRM, sales, project planning, project tracking, collaboration, timesheet, ...
]po[ is a Web-based ERP/Project Management software for organizations with 2-200 users. ]po[ integrates areas such as CRM, sales, project planning, project tracking, collaboration, timesheet, invoicing and payments.
] project-open [ Open Source Enterprise Business Application Project Controlling Project Management Collaboration Human Ressource Management Customer Relationship Management Knowledge Management Financial Controlling Project Management
Project Management Project Management is the discipline of planning , organizing , and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. A project is a finite endeavor —having specific start and completion dates—undertaken to create a unique product or service which brings about beneficial change or added value . The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while adhering to classic project constraints —usually scope , quality , time and budget . The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives. a
] project-open [ in a Nutshell ] po [ is an OSS Web-based "Enterprise Project Management" software for project-based organizations. It integrates areas such as CRM, sales, project planning, project controlling, collaboration, timesheet, invoicing and payments. As one of the largest open-source based web applications in the world with more then 1,000,000 lines of code, ] po [ is used by more then 1000 companies in 25 countries to run their business a
The lack of a central repository makes the identification, selection and prioritization of the right strategic initiatives and projects a cumbersome task.
Many companies can't list all their ongoing projects which makes concurrent projects or projects that oppose each other more likely
If the initiation of projects is not formalized and companies doesn't have defined processes in place for reviewing project proposals, chances are high that projects are not aligned with general business strategy.
a Challenges:
Project Initiation and Integration Central project repository:
] po [ includes a number of modules to support the processes of capturing project proposals, evaluating profit/risk of each project and to schedule resources for concurrent project execution
Comprehensive list of projects with configurable list views and various list filters
Project Templates enforce standards and best practices
CSV Export allows integration with other applications
Project Initiation and Integration Manage project proposals with workflows
A powerful Workflow engine allows to build customized approval workflows depending on rules such as project volume, company department etc
Predefined workflows for project proposals are available and can be adjusted to particular business needs
Recruiting and building the team requiries up-to-date data about disposability and profile of ressources
Only if project attributes, responsibilities, schedules, etc. are facilitated in a central place, access to information
Communicating the project to all parties involved etc.
Challenges:
Project Planning Using the Skill Manager
The integrated "freelance file" allows PMs and Freelance Managers to see all information about a freelancer in one page. This saves time and allows for better decisions when staffing a project.
The provider is able to maintain his own skills. All changes are subject of confirmation by in-house staff
The freelance database contains a list of freelancers together with their "skills" and their "freelance files" (similar to employee files). This database is useful if your organization relies heavily participation of freelancers and contract worker such as translation agencies and certain IT organizations.
Project Planning Assignments and utilization across projects:
Reports support determining assignmnets for each resource across a given time frame and a llow project managers to layout approximate resource consumption of planned projects
Budget Planning
] po [ supports both top-down and bottom up budget planning
Budget numbers can be protected so that only users with special permissions are allowed to set budgets. A workflow component can dispatch a proposed project to one or more managers for budget confirmation
Project Planning Schedule your project tasks with Gantt Charts
Integrated Gantt-Charts allow to determine assignments for each resource across a given time frame
Integration with 3 rd party Project Scheduling applications ensures availability of project data in GanttProject or MS Project
For many project managers determining if a project is on track or getting real time data about profit and loss is a laborious and time consuming task.
Therefore most of the time they don't dispose of reliable data for their management decisions.
Effects such as VAT and currency exchange in international projects add additional complexity.
Furthermore costs of shared resources often needs to be split up to a number of tasks, projects and other units.
Challenge:
] project-open [ Project Controlling
] po [ includes a number of modules to capture different types of financial items on a per-project level, allowing the controller to determine organization profitability per project, customer and resources employed. ] po [ supports both Activity Based Costing (ABC) and Compound Costing.
] po [ allows to capture all important financial information about a project and to analyze them according to a variety of criteria
Financial Tracking
] project-open [ Project Controlling
] po [ tracks employee's hours on projects, tasks and other activities and assigns the cost of the time to the respective project.
Users can log hours on projects. Timesheet information is combined with different cost rates (per user, per department, ...) to calculate various types of cost measures
Timesheet Management
Project Controlling
] po [ allows to capture all important financial information about a project and to analyze them according to a variety of criteria.
P&L calculation is based on the "compound cost model" to incorporate fixed costs Budgets for both timesheet and absolute costs Timesheet controlling (for unprivileged employees and project managers) and financial controlling (for employees with financial responsibility)
Reporting
Project Controlling
Provider bills can be captured in ] po [ and be interchanged with accounting application
Project tracking done in the conventional way usually is a time consuming process. Often regular status meetings take longer than needed and don't produce precise information.
Frequently status reports requested automatically removes uncertainty about the project status and saves project managers time pointing them straight to the tasks that require attention.
Project Tasks can be attributed with a financial value. This value together with the completion % of the task allow to calculate the ratio between spent resource and project progress, allowing the senior management to detect project deviations early in the project cycle.
Automatic project advance calculation from feedback on project tasks
Executive status reporting using "traffic lights"
] po [ can track both internal and external costs and compare them with planned time and resource consumption and the project progress.
] project-open [ Project Tracking Manage other project costs
Capturing Travel Costs and other project expenses: A specific self-service enabled module allows project members to capture travel and other costs.
A workflow involving accounting ensures the validity of the captured information
Project collaboration becomes more challenging when projects extend beyond organizational boundaries
Extended use of Email as communication instrument leads to cluttered inboxes, tedious recovery and archiving procedures.
Each project member needs to be informed about tasks, issues, priorities and due dates
Information is often distributed over multiple locations and therefore neither consistent nor up-to-date
Challenges:
Project Collaboration Project rooms:
Project Rooms concentrate all project resources in a single location
Configuration of access permissions of project resources is based on roles or profiles of project members
] po [ emphasizes the possibility to integrate clients and providers into the planning and execution of projects
Project Collaboration Forum
The ] po [ Forum module formalizes the communication amongst project members and offers a central and easy-to access space where project –related communication can take place
Communication can happen in protected “Communication Spheres” among sub-groups of the project team
Creating tasks and incidents holds project members accountable for the progress
Moving communication away from email towards Forums ensures easy archiving and fast recovery when needed
Project Collaboration File Manager
] po [ makes it easy to integrate exiting file servers and provides a Web interface to allow convenient, permission based access over the web
Permisions can be set on a folder level to allows limited access for clients, providers ad other collaborators
Project managers and need visibility and control over resources available. Information on how effectively valuable resources are used, which resources become available and what projects have consumed them, is needed throughout the entire project lifecycle.
Instant availability of information about the status of resources is necessary to deliver the project within the specified time and budget parameters.
Challenge:
Resource Management Centralized HR information:
The "employee file" brings together all information about an employee such as: - Contact information
- The list of projects she has worked in - Previous experiences
- Payroll information
Access to these information requires a number of "privileges" which can be flexilby assigned to employees and employee groups.
Resource Management Managing of absences – “Vacation Approval Workflow”
Every ] po [ installation can be extended with Dynamic Workflows.
Pre-configured Workflows are available that cover common processes, such as “Vacation Approval”, “Timesheet Approval” and “Expense Approval”
Resource Management Skill Management
The freelance "Skills Component" defines several generic skill types that consist of a number of skills. Each Skill can be valuated as "high", "medium" and "low". This information is available to Project Managers and Freelance Managers "at your fingertip" when they need to staff their project with external resources.
All major ] po [ objects provide a collaboration space ("e-Room") featuring Discussion Forums and Filestorage related to the specific Project, Customer or User. This functionality may support Project Management, CRM or Provider Management
Knowledge Management Permission based “Full text search”
The ] po [ FTI (Full-Text Search Engine) indexes all major objects in the system and allows users to retrieve them quickly and easily. Security is the first priority in ] po [ . So this functionality will present a user only those objects that are within the permission scope of the user.
Knowledge Management Wiki and Blog Publishing
The ]project-open[ Wiki module is a standard implementation of a Wiki engine. A "Wiki" is a kind of Content Management System (CMS) with very low barriers for users to create an edit contents.
Every major business object (Project, Customer, User, ...) is mapped to a Wiki page, allowing for seamless integration between structured and unstructured information of a business object.
Learned lessons document to be written at the end of each project are stored in such a Wiki
Knowledge Management Portrait and brief presentation
The use of this module increases the knowledge about the members of distributed offices and lowers communication barriers.
] po [ automatically tracks past company contacts and projects a user has been involved in
Project and companies history
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![]project-open[ OSS Project Mangement](http://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/ss_thumbnails/poprojectmangement080522-1211906174541304-8-thumbnail-2.jpg?1211899107){kind=small}