Managing Without Excel Quintiq Switches to Maconomy

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Managing without Excel Quintiq switches to Maconomy

Previously, contract management at IT company 3. Eliminate instances of project Quintiq was mainly based on Excel. However, with communications ‘bypassing the system’. All coordination must go through defined the company’s rapid growth, it had become clear workflows that generate to-do items for those to everyone that the situation would become involved. “Why would you automate, other untenable in two or three years’ time. With this in than to get away from the hassle and the risk of mind, management drew up a wish list as the first errors?” asks Arts. “While people can manage step to remodelling its administration. Quintiq’s to coordinate across ten projects, perhaps even twenty in a pinch, if they try to organize manager for strategic projects, Claudio Arts, sums more than fifty projects by e-mail, then you up the key requirements they were looking for in have a real problem.” the central business system: 4. Support for intercompany transactions. By: Rolf Zaal 1. Support for three income streams All the consultants work for their own country »» Click here to read with substantially different structures. organization, but because of pressure of work the original article These income streams are licenses (almost or in order to exploit valuable expertise, they in Dutch exclusively ‘upfront sales’), maintenance are also regularly used in the projects of other (requires login) (recurring income) and implementation country offices. That needs to be rebilled projects (labour intensive and administratively without too much complexity. complex, while representing a substantial proportion of the total turnover). On average, 5. Additional aspects. between 50 and 100 projects may be running To avoid the inertia and lethargy which comes in parallel. Projects are normally completed with large regional offices, Quintiq regularly within 12 months, and involve around five to splits up local offices and business units when seven consultants. they threaten to become too large. In turn, this creates smaller business units that are able to 2. Capable of being implemented worldwide, focus on specific market segments. However, with adjustments for local features, using this ‘splitting up’ can only really be useful if you just a single central database. can then differentiate your business units in Globalization has, in fact, been the prime driver your reporting, i.e. from each other but also for this project. The company now has offices from country-based organizations. This means in ten countries that enjoy a considerable the need for an extra layer in the setup. amount of autonomy in how they deal with their local markets. Quintiq is growing by about 35 percent per year. At the start of the project, in mid-2010, there were 300 employees; by the end of 2012, there will be around 600. If Article printed in Dutch IT this growth continues, then the number of media Automatiseringgids.nl Quintiq’s employees is expected to hit the one thousand mark within another two years. December 2012

1 deltek.com Qintiq’s list of requirements meant that it could That is hugely cumbersome. There is a good not be automatically presumed that an off-the- reason why many multinationals have a whole shelf solution would work. Yet, Quintiq knew department just working on the management they could handle it. As Arts explains, “We are of intercompany transactions. It is not just a IT experts ourselves, so we understand what is question of rebilling hours, they also need to be needed.” linked to the right project. The reconciliation of “First of all, we asked ten vendors to reply internal records is an endless task in practice, to 25 questions. These questions related to but is actually totally unnecessary. Instead, what the technical and functional features of their you need to do is create the internal transactions solution. However, there were also questions in a single place and have them approved by about the vendors’ organizations and on how both parties. But that is a very different process, they would be able to provide support world- and of course that needs to be supported by the wide. Based on their answers, we invited five of software,” Arts finishes by saying. them to come and tell us about their solutions. Just two of the vendors interviewed by At which point, we asked them to go into Quintiq seemed to have that supporting detail about both their organization and the software. Likewise, Arts says, the same degree functionality of their solution. From the point of of thought needed to go into the requirement view of organization—the ‘soft’ side, as I call it— for support for reporting and analysis, both at they all had good answers.” Arts recalls. the country office level and at the level of the business units within the country organizations. Yes, we can? Arts states that, more often than not, a sales The real differences came to light with regard team will trot out something like: “Well, I’m sure to functionality. Quintiq’s IT-insider knowledge we’ve got an unused field in there that you could began to show its value during these sessions. use for that”—even if the requirement is not “When you ask them, they all say they can supported at all. do it. But if you keep on asking, there are, in fact, “Be that as it may, a sticking-plaster solution major differences,” Arts says. As an example of like that obviously means sacrificing everything in the dubious ‘yes, we can’ reflexes of some of the terms of user-friendliness. The result is that you vendors, Arts mentions the claims they made are very rapidly back to working in a way which about support for intercompany transactions. only a few key users understand. And that was “Intercompany transactions can be rebilled exactly what we wanted to get away from.” by you treating the country organizations as Once again, only two vendors seemed to internal customers who receive an internal pass the test of this critical factor: a large ERP invoice. But with that, you unleash a fairly vendor we need not name and Deltek, with its complex procedure for something that is Maconomy product. Maconomy is an ‘ERP’ essentially very simple. This means that both solution for project-based organizations that business units will need to record who did what have no need to deal with physical logistics - i.e. for who’ and then make sure that they can primarily consultancy businesses. This form of reconcile the administrative part with each other ERP is widely known as PSA (Project Services after the event. Automation) or as SRP (Service Resource

2 Planning), and is fundamentally different from Client: Quintiq ERP for manufacturing companies. For example Object: Management information without production and delivery do not occur at the using Excel same time, in contrast to what is generally Technology: Maconomy the case in manufacturing. Similarly, the ‘Work Service provider: Deltek Breakdown Structures’ widely used in project- Critical aspects: Fit-to-business based planning are generally unheard of in other Unusual feature: The IT company finds ERP systems. itself in the client’s seat ROI: This is not a factor if you can see that We picked what we liked the look of your business will grind to a halt within the So,what tipped the balance in the end? Arts next two to three years without it states that it came down to “Feelings. We just liked Maconomy’s presentation better; it provided examples of situations we could identify with. It was probably helped by the fact that a former Quintiq employee now works in the Deltek sales team. But it doesn’t really matter how they did it; it is the result that matters.” In the end, Quintiq bought the Deltek Maconomy Financials and Projects modules, with time recording, costs and use of externals.

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