This document summarizes a study analyzing performance gaps in industrial training at Design Soft Technologies. The study identified delays in project completion as a key performance gap. Data collection methods included observations, discussions, questionnaires, and document analysis. Major findings were that project delays occurred continuously due to high workloads, employee turnover, client delays, and lack of proper project planning. Recommendations to address the gaps included improving project planning, hiring experienced professionals, enacting bidding restrictions, training programs, improving employee retention, setting clear KPIs, and creating a supportive work environment.

1. Performance Gap Analysis on Industrial
Training at
Design soft Technologies Private Limited .
D.M.N.Nadeeshani
Registration Number: 2015/MS/6815
University of Colombo
1

2. Flow of the Presentation
1. Background of the worked organization
2. Performance gap identified during the industrial training
3. Objectives of the Study
4. Methods of Data Collection
5. Data Presentation and Analysis
6. Major Findings related to performance gap
7. Recommendations for reducing the gap
8. Conclusion
2

3. Chapter 1:
Background of the Background of the
worked organization
3

4. Design Soft Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd
• Design Soft Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd floated with a Share Capital of Rs10
Million .
• 12 years in Business in Sri Lanka
• MenSitpi,
• Drastically reduce the cost of the software and would increase the
flexibility and improve the reliability
• Leobiz ERP Plus at a shortest time
4

5. • Design soft Vision
• ‘’Demystify Enterprise Application Software’’
• Design soft Mission
• ‘’To create an environment to make Development, Implementation,
Maintenance and Use of Enterprise Application Software more
efficient.’’
5

6. Industry specific of Design soft
• Trading and Distribution
• Manufacturing
• Apparel Industry
• Newspaper Industry
• Tea blending and Export
• Financial services Industry
• Insurance Industry
6

7. Design Soft Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd Organizational chart
7

8. Major functions and business solutions given to the Design soft
clients
• Business Process Re-Engineering and computerization of efficient
processes
• Change Management during computerization
• Natural processes: Easy to use solutions
• Packaged Solution: least implementation time
8

9. Chapter 2:
Performance Gap
9

10. GAP
• There is a stipulated time period to complete the projects.
• stated in the tender advertisement
• Timely submission of projects is a key element client expects from a
service provider.
• Reflects quality & efficiency of the service provider
• If a project is not submitted within stipulated time period, there is a
performance gap in the company.
‘’Delay in project completion and customer support issue
solving as an enterprise resource planning service provider.’’
Expected date of project
submission
Actual date of project
submission
10

11. Chapter 3:
Objectives of the Study
11

12. • Find the reasons for project delays.
• Find whether project delays happen continuously
• Explore the consequences due to inability of completing
projects
• Identify whether there is a relationship between gap and
employees turnover
• Find solutions for this issue.
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13. Evidence for identified performance gap
• Based on the following circumstances in the work place this performance gap is
identified.
• Current employees in every department have to do more work
• Current employees in every department under stress
• Confusions are happened in the daily working process and arise another
problems
• Difficult to complete the work as per client expected time period
• Supervisors and trainees will be faced some difficulties in developing programs
• Night works, working in holidays and weekends without overtime payments
• Increasing the number of customer complaints regarding late customer service
13

14. Chapter 4:
Methods of Data Collection
14

15. 1. Primary Data
• Observations and direct discussions
• Questionnaires
2. Secondary Data
• Business proposals to the clients
• employee recruitment and turnover records from human
resource department
• Letters of acceptance given by clients
15

16. Chapter 5:
Data Presentation & Analysis
16

17. Table 1- Project submissions
Source: Construction Programs of each project
Project Original
completion
date/time
Actual completion date/time Delay (In
months)
Ceylon Business Appliance
Business Process Re-engineering
(06 months project)
31st July
2019
Ongoing project but exceeding time
limits which specifically mentioned
in the contract
3 months
Express News Paper Business
Process Re-engineering
10weeks 13 weeks 3 weeks
Imashi publications Business
Process Re-engineering(06 months
project)
31st March
2019
30th April 2019 1 month
Associate Newspaper Ceylon
limited
3rd December
2018
3rd December 2018 -
Table 1 Last year project completion pattern of Design soft
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18. • Figure 1 clients’ views on project delay
• Question - Are the projects given to the design soft, handed over to the clients
within a stipulated time period?
Out of 4 clients 3 had a bad impression on company project completion within
the stipulated time line .
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19. • Figure 2: Employees view on night work and Holiday works without
payment
I have to do more night works and working in
holydays to achieve deadlines.
• Disagree with night work
• Agree with night work
• Responses summary of employees to some Questionnaires and
results summary of direct discussions with employees
19

20. Level of satisfaction regarding salary payments and
basic needs fulfillment in working environment
• Strongly satisfied
• Satisfied
• Dissatisfied
• Strongly dissatisfied
• Figure 3: Employee satisfaction towards work
20

21. 2016 2017 2018
Recruitments 10 16 20
Turnover 6 10 14
Turnover As a % of
recruitments 60% 63% 70%
• Table 2 Employee recruitment and turnover analysis over 3 years
During the internship period I found that the company is facing major
problem due to the increasing rate of Labor Turnover ratio during last 3
years. This will be a major reason for the project completion delays as
well
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22. Chapter 6:
Major Findings
22

23. • Project delays are happening continuously during last one year
• High work load to the trainees without proper division of work
will increase the employee turnover ratio
• Factors related to client process and other Procedures badly
affected to the delay of project completions .
as an example in some cases customer side data proving delays
causes to the total project completion delays. Some client’s
security procedures and special permission requirement take
considerable amount of time to complete some tasks will be affect
to the total project completion time.
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24. • Personal factors of trainees and number of trainees assigned to the
project also directly affect to the project completion time.
• Further the number of team members in the development and
implementation team directly affects to the completion of the business
process reengineering projects and computerization of efficient
processes.
• Study leaves for university trainees and professional examination with
special freedom available for university students to go for the lectures
will be affect to project completions time .Design soft is a company
that highly depend on university interns coming from university of
Colombo ,Sri Jayewardenepura, Kelaniya, Peradeniya and Ruhuna.
24

25. • The understanding between senior and junior employees also a key factor to
achieve deadlines of the ERP projects
• Lack of programming and it related knowledge of team members in development
team. This may arise due to less retention of experienced employees in the team.
• Design changes by client affect to the project completions delays (such as
variations of business processes and structures).
• Pay less attention to the proper project planning.
• Less attention to the whole administrative staff in client sites may cause to build
wrong assumptions on business process reengineering process affect to the project
delays.
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26. Chapter 7:
Recommendations
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27. • Pay much attention to project planning.
This has to be done with the proper coordination with the client. If the
service provider advice the client to have the original finalized design at
the commencement of the project, that would minimize the time to time
design changes done by the client which cause planed works to get
delayed. Therefore, having the optimum design with proper project plan
will help to complete the project within the stipulated time period
• Recruit well qualified experienced professionals to project teams and
have a good supervision in office works and field works
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28. • Enacting restrictions for bidding to the ERP contracts.
At present, for any ERP work, any ERP company is able to offer their
bids. Due to this reason, competition among service providers in
bidding stage is high. Due to this high competition, ERP firms offer
their bid at lower prices and then face financial difficulties when the
project starts and continuing.
E.g.: Enacting a law that, ERP firms cannot bid for the projects with low
value.
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29. • A training program should conduct at least once a month to development
team regarding new version upgrades of system
• Organization should retain skillful senior staff who has completed
training period by giving attractive salary packages
• Managers should give consideration for the trainees’ accomplishment,
asking weekly or monthly updates the achievements.
• Improve the communication between supervisors, managers and
trainees. Then the task and responsibility of the trainee well
communicate to them.
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30. • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be given to project team
and supporting divisions.
• Giving KPIs would be effective to do the work efficiently and it also
will motivate employees. For an example, Giving KPIs to development
team to create records, Giving KPIs to implementation team to
identify customer business process .example will be given in the
following implementation schedule.
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31. Process No. of
days
Status Major
Res
Res.(E
NCL)
Res (DS) Original Last Current09 Re
m
ar
ks
Reason
for
Delay
Start End Start End Start End
1. Meeting with the client
– Initiation
0.25 Complet
ed
DS/ENCL Project
Team
Project
Team
20/08 20/08
1. Study and document
processes and methods
30
Marketing Sales 2 26/08 30/08
Circulation Sales 2 27/08 29/08
Commercial Printing Sales 0.25 26/08 28/08
Daily Express 0.25 13/09 13/09
Magazine 1 27/08 30/08
Finance 5 27/08 15/09
Newsroom 1 09/09 10/09
Transport 1 16/09 17/09
IT 1 23/09 24/09
Table 3 : implementation schedule as a
KPI to implementation team 31

32. • Creating a friendly environment to the employees with fulfilment of
their basic needs.
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33. Conclusion
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34. • Through the primary and secondary data analysis, it could be identified
that completion of project delays have happened continuously.
• Major reasons were identified for such delays are under the control of
the organization and those reasons could be avoided by the organization.
• Some reasons are beyond the control of the organization and some of
those are due to client’s issues and others are due to short sight planning
of project evaluation, done by development and implementation teams.
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35. • Finally, few recommendations were given to minimize the
performance gap faced by the company.
• Some of the recommendations can be enacted by the company right
away and recommendation such as, enacting restrictions for bidding to
the ERP vendors by initiating standard minimum value to the bid, has
to be done by having a collective discussion with all the ERP firms
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36. 36