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It’s that time again: year end.  No, not year-end resolutions, but the time of the year finance is stressing about year-end close and emphasizing that a 2015 marketing budget is needed.

So how many of you look at last year’s numbers and slap on an increase and submit? Be honest! However, how many things have changed since your last budget? The competitive landscape has completely changed for us and many of our clients. So we thought we might do a review to remind firms to get back to the basics when planning your marketing budget. 

Marketing Budget Methods

There are several budgeting methods when putting together your marketing budget. The Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Marketing Handbook for the Construction and Design Professional, 3^rd Edition by BNi Building News, 2014 highlights 4 different methods: 

1. Projection Method – is for steady businesses with well-established marketing approaches and which relies on costs from prior years separated into soft or hard costs.
2. Percentage Method – allocates a fixed amount of resources dedicated to acquisition and total net service revenue to fund activities that support getting work
3. Goal-based Method – bases “bottom up” budget based on revenue goals and the implementation tasks that need to be accomplished to meet them. 
4. Ratio Method – is a more complex method incorporating ROI mentality with a strong ability to meet revenue goals and with every dollar spent being tied to a return.  This is for more mature market segments and fairly large projects.

5 Practical Tips

Developing a marketing plan is more than what conferences will you attend and what cool promotional items can we buy this year. When planning your marketing budget for the year it’s important to think about the long-term financial success of the firm.  Below are 5 practical tips for professional services firms to help guide you as you develop this year’s marketing budget: 

1. Analyze the current state of affairs – Internal and external research should be conducted. This includes doing a SWOT analysis. The SWOT should be conducted with all leaders within your firm and is a great starting place to start your strategic marketing plan.
2. Tie your marketing budget to you marketing plan – The most basic mistake is not understanding what your goals are. Your budget will come from the tactics you plan to take to accomplish your goals. Be sure to translate goals into day-to-day actions. Here is more on how to establish goals or Key Performance Indicators and establish goals based on the SMART guidelines.
3. Budget for nurturing existing clients – Firms are always thinking about how to catch the next big fish and commonly overlook where most of their revenue comes from. At the end of the year evaluate where most of your business came from. What would happen if you lost that business? Firm should budget for client nurturing not only throughout the year, but on a daily basis as they execute their projects. It costs a firm 5-7 times more to gain a new client then to keep an existing one. One way of nurturing clients is to be proactive and institute a client feedback process.  
4. Execution is key – Communicating what is expected and following up monthly and quarterly helps you change course when something isn’t working. It takes everyone understanding what is expected and then executing on their part. This includes billing your time to the right code and evaluating your goals versus actuals. If it doesn’t line up then what needs to change? A budget isn’t set in stone, you can make modifications throughout the year when something isn’t working. Knowing it isn’t working is what is critical.
5. More is not necessarily better – Spending more does not equate to achieving more success. To prove this, Deltek conducted their annual clarity report among its clients and found that high achieving firms did not spend more on their marketing budget then those of their counterparts contrary to belief.  They found that high achieving firms however are able to differentiate themselves by focusing on executing more efficiently.

In planning for the upcoming year, we hope these five tips help you develop your marketing budget. Be sure to check out our past webinar crafting a marketing plan and be sure to add a comment to share your tips! 

We have reached it, the exciting conclusion to our series on Management of Change.  It is here where we will reiterate our most important change messages and send you on your way to successful changes in your organization. 

We started our series defining crucial concepts, i.e. change includes anything that takes a company from its current state to a new, desired state and that it takes the buy-in and adoption of the people in the company in order for change to be successful.

This statement encompasses several ideas and focused areas, each of which we explored during this series.   

• The executive piece focused on the leadership required as company change agents – establishing goals, creating clear direction and modeling the new, desired behaviors.
• Our financial commentary focused on the numbers of change: establishing numerical baselines, checkpoints, and the financial ranges indicating success.
• The project management information recognized your company’s project managers as those best suited to manage and evaluate the change process, since that’s what they already do for your clients.
• The marketing article acknowledged the multifaceted role marketing plays: the industry researcher who sees the need for change; the communicator/positioner for your company, your clients and your employees; and an area that needs to embrace the change themselves.
• Our final focused blog piece from the human resources perspective really explored the people – the most important part – of change.  If the people in your company aren’t clear on change, all the spreadsheets and tools in the world won’t make it work.  

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Premier Partner, is pleased to announce that Kevin Hebblethwaite, FSMPS, CPSM, has joined Full Sail Partners in a full-time capacity as a Senior Consultant. Kevin is familiar with what it takes to help firms improve information sharing and develop reporting capabilities across departments. The recent expansion of the Full Sail Partners’ staff is a reflection of the firm’s dedication to providing clients with the most talented professionals the industry has to offer.

As a Senior Consultant, Kevin will continue to help firms leverage their investments in the Deltek Vision platform to track, manage, and monitor results for their marketing and business development initiatives; streamline the proposal process through automation; and improve their client relationships. He will lead and expand Full Sail Partners’ consulting services for the Client Feedback Tool, which helps professional services firms manage expectations and improve the overall client experience.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the Full Sail Partners’ team," said Kevin. “I’ve spent most of my career developing professional service relationships, helping people improve their systems and processes. I look forward to continuing that tradition with Full Sail’s current and future clients who seek to elevate the value they can extract from good information management.

Kevin Hebblethwaite has been involved in the Deltek community and the professional services industry for more than 15 years. Kevin served as the National President of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) in 2012-2013. His previous experience as an engineering firm executive and familiarity with Deltek Vision across departmental functions allow him to effectively assist professional services firms in taking a more comprehensive and integrated approach to managing their marketing and business development information. According to Kevin, “Marketers have a unique opportunity in the professional services environment to become more data-driven contributors to their firms’ strategic direction, and Deltek Vision provides a great platform to do so.”

“Kevin is an important strategic addition to our team as we look to expand our service practice,” said Sarah Gonnella, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Marketing and Sales. “We are excited to have him take the lead in bridging together our consulting services for Deltek Vision and the Client Feedback Tool. His unique perspective, knowledge, and persistence make him the perfect fit to deliver the best possible results.”

For more information, please email Full Sail Partners’ Marketing Communications Department or visit the Full Sail Partners’ website at www.FullSailPartners.com.

About Full Sail Partners 
Full Sail Partners provides client-focused technology services and solutions for more than 1,000 professional services firms nationwide. As Premier Partners for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, Full Sail Partners helps project-based firms fully integrate their business processes by connecting their front end and backend systems. We seek to help organizations identify the critical resources needed to create a faster, more efficient, and cohesive business infrastructure. 

You are the authority on finance:  You speak in numbers using  words like “return on investment,” “profit,” “revenue,” and, of course “results.”  In this third installment of our Management of Change Series, we explore change management through the eyes of the financial experts who prove the attainment of goals with reliable, empirical evidence … bottom line numbers.  

But how?

Many professionals are capable of creating and clearly defining goals, not the least of whom are the executives in your company, as we explored in our Management of Change – Executive.  But as the financial wizard, your job is to establish clear, numerically defined, indicators of success which start with a distinct baseline.   After all, to know where you are on the journey, you need to know where you have been.

So, back to our initial question:  How do you prove goal attainment once goals have been clearly established?  It is best to use a defined, multi-step program.

1. Establish a baseline – This is not about finding bottom line numbers, somewhere, as some sort of false starting point.  Your baseline must include the numbers which clearly support the defined objectives. 
    
2. Define financial checkpoints – Change is a time intensive process and must therefore be managed as meticulously as the most important project, since implementing change is, in fact, a project.  Your firm’s success is dependent upon this project.  Financial objectives must be managed throughout the change process, through project status reports, so that there are no financial surprises at the end.
    
3. Determine final success numbers – We certainly know that success isn’t always defined by dollars but also by numbers indicating things like percentage increases or decreases.  But, and this is important, don’t be tied to a specific number, instead determine a tolerance range as your indicator of success, your ROI.  Remember, that management of change is not just about processes but also about the people in your organization, and, as we all know, change in people is difficult.  This speaks to user adoption, i.e. how your employees adopt, accept and embrace the changes being proposed. According to “The ‘harder’ side of change.  The What, Why and Ho of change management’” The consequence of not managing the people side of change, i.e. employees and customers, has “tangible and real financial impact on the health of the organization and the project.” Therefore, set an acceptable level of success and celebrate when you’re within a good range of your numbers.
    

Here is your softare toolbox for managing the above steps.

Even more numbers

Management of change for “finance types” is unquestionably about the numbers.  But all good number crunchers know that numbers reflect all sorts of things:  More than just bottom line profit/loss, percentage increase, or improved customer satisfaction numbers. Financial repercussions also must be measured for change that doesn’t occur to account for potential adverse effect of not making a necessary change.  Therefore, numbers have to be analyzed reflecting the “opportunity and efficiency costs of NOT making the change both of which also directly impact ROI” as we discussed in our introductory piece to this series.   

Bottom line

The financial side of the management of change is really where cold numbers meet the warmth of the human ability to accept and adapt to change.  The purpose of this piece is not to immerse you in ROI calculations, number projections, or columns of dollars – all of which you’re thoroughly aware – but, instead, to ensure that all involved in the change management process are aware of the steps to proving the financial effect of change as well as to speak to the financial ramifications NOT making changes.  Those numeric bottom line steps are the solid evidence of change management success.  Our next installment features project managing your change.

Full Sail Partners, a Premier Partner for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, is pleased to announce the recent hire of Peter Nuffer who will join the Full Sail team as the Director of Product Development. In this role, Peter will manage the build-out of next generation integrations that provide advanced functionality like the Client Feedback Tool integration with Deltek Vision, and work with Full Sail Partner’s client’s on initiatives that require development of reports, BI, workflows and integration with other platforms. With a proven record of developing innovative custom solutions, Peter has previously been employed with Full Sail Partners for five years, and spent the last two years focusing on software product management.   

“I am extremely excited about rejoining the Full Sail Partners team and taking on this new position," said Peter Nuffer, Director of Product Development. “I look forward to making an immediate impact for Full Sail Partners, as well as the Deltek ecosystem. We have many innovative extensions to the core product’s functionality that will help professional services firms streamline processes, engage clients, and capitalize on opportunities to build their business. Our development team is committed to providing best in class service and product offerings that will help clients get the most out of their Deltek Vision system while leveraging other technologies crucial to their operations.  The focus on extensibility of the already comprehensive Deltek Vision core product will help the Deltek Vision ERP product remain competitive within new market verticals”

Peter Nuffer rejoins Full Sail Partners with over 20 years of experience in the software and technology field. A creative technology professional, Peter has an enthusiastic focus on developing technology solutions and working with business leaders to identify efficiency centric process improvements through technology. His extensive experience developing solutions that automate, simplify, and improve operations makes him a value-added partner to any professional services organization.

“We welcome Peter back to the Full Sail Partners team and are excited about the opportunity to further enhance our clients experience with Deltek Vision through Peter’s development efforts,” said Scott Seal, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Consulting. “Peter is a long-time ally of Full Sail Partners, and is one of the leading developers for Deltek Vision customization solutions. We believe that Peter offers our professional services user base the ability to take their ERP system to the next level.”

For more information, please email Full Sail Partners’ Marketing Communications Department or visit the Full Sail Partners’ website at www.FullSailPartners.com.

About Full Sail Partners
Full Sail Partners provides client-focused technology services and solutions for more than 1,000 professional services firms nationwide. As Premier Partners for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, Full Sail Partners helps project-based firms fully integrate their business processes by connecting their front end and backend systems. We seek to help organizations identify the critical resources needed to create a faster, more efficient, and cohesive business infrastructure.

Full Sail Partners – Keep Your Business on Course. | For more on Full Sail Partners profile and background on the Full Sail Partners crew, visit us at http://www.fullsailpartners.com.
 

A friend comes to you and asks for your advice regarding a great investment they discovered with a huge money down initial investment but with – and here’s the kicker – no idea of the ROI. 

Your advice?  Never invest unless you know what you’ll get in return, right?

Yet, thousands of companies today are operating their business without knowing if there will be any return on the investments on initiatives or significant purchases each day.   

WHY do companies do this and HOW can they realize the necessary ROI?

They answer is right in front of us - effective management of change.

This article is the first in an exciting and informative series where we focus our attention on this invasive corporate conundrum and how an effectively run Management of Change Program can positively impact your bottom line.  What’s even more engaging about this series is that we will look at the benefits of change management from a variety of perspectives:  Executive, Finance, Project Management, Marketing, and HR. 

In this introduction piece, we will concentrate on two key definitions including change management and user adoption.

Change Management

Change Management is a term often bandied about as the vague yet intended scapegoat for why things don’t go well in an organization.  While many people certainly understand the concept, there is in fact a real definition.  Generally, change management is the process of moving an organization from its current status to a defined desired status.  However, few understand the importance or the specifics as to what makes an effective management of change program. 

According to mindtools.com’s article “Change Management Making Organization Change Happen Effectively,” “Change management is a structured approach for ensuring that changes are thoroughly and smoothly implemented, and that the lasting benefits of change are achieved.  The focus is on the wider impacts of change, particularly on people and how they, as individuals and teams, move from the current situation to the new one.”  I’ve added the boldface font to make two very important points:  1) that change management requires a structured approach for lasting benefits and 2) change management requires not only a change in process but a change in the people involved. 

User Adoption

Which brings us to our next definition regarding the people involved in the change, User Adoption.  Broadly, it means the people in the company using and taking full advantage of the changed environment.  We all know that getting people to change is always a difficult task:  people are naturally resistant to change - even if change means their work lives will be easier - because the initial adjustment to their lives seems too big a barrier.  Now, taking that broad definition into a more specific level, we can clarify it as the following:  successful user adoption requires a clearly defined and financially measured goal requiring training, clear communication/marketing and leadership buy-in in order to be successful. 

Management of Change and ROI

Now, let’s get back to ROI.

For a change to be considered advantageous, there has to be a compelling business case which will look at the cost of the project weighted against the benefits the company will gain. If the benefits outweigh the costs, the ROI is positive.  The formula for calculating Return on Investment (ROI)[2] is:

Have you ever had a moment in your life that stands out as a teaching moment that has made you who you are today? My moment transformed and prepared me as a Project Manager and Owner to tackle difficult conversations. Let’s face it, whether personal or in the workplace, we are constantly faced with resolving conflict.  At the same time, I have learned (or found) that not everyone is comfortable with expressing what needs to be said. So, it really resonated with me when a couple years ago I discovered a tool that has made conflict resolution easier. More about that in a minute. 

My Story

My teaching moment was when I was in sixth grade.  I had a teacher I felt was not being fair. I expressed to my mother my frustration to see if she could help. She told me that she could go to this teacher and have a conversation, but that the teacher would probably respond better if I addressed the issue head on. She coached me on how to have the conversation so I had the tools to handle the conversation on my own.

I was nervous as I entered her classroom. I asked the teacher if she had a moment that we could step outside of the class and talk. I told her how I felt and wanted to bring it to her attention to see how we could resolve the issue. The teacher was impressed and happy that I brought it to her attention. We came up with a solution and each day after I felt that I was respected and developed a better relationship with that teacher.  Each day I look back at that experience, I realize that was the moment I learned to speak up about concerns and not fear the hard conversation to resolve conflict.

Resolving Conflict

By no means am I an expert at resolving conflict. However, I have learned that avoiding the subject and hoping it goes away rarely works. Additionally, conflict doesn’t have to be looked at as negative. Sometimes opportunities flourish from conflict. The other person might be feeling the same way and because you took the time to say something your relationship improved.  A great resource for learning more about conflict resolution is Mindtools. Below are some tips I have learned throughout the years to help resolve client issues:

1. Perception is Reality - The definition of conflict is to be incompatible. So in order to resolve conflict, the first step is to listen and understand the other person’s or group’s point of view.  We all come from different experiences that influence us and can lead us to make assumptions. So it’s important to understand that someone else’s views may have nothing to do with you, but be based on their past experience.  So with that, we must also realize that perception is the truth no matter if you think it’s true or not. Once you put your mind around that fact you can begin to focus on what can be done to resolve the issue.
    
2. Managing Expectations – Managing expectations with a client requires being proactive vs. reactive. Once a client is frustrated with multiple things that have built up over time, it takes a lot more work to resolve the issue and sometimes is too late. For professional services firms that need to manage clients, a great tool to help with this is the Client Feedback Tool. The only way you can really know what a client is thinking is to ask. This tool allows a firm to check-in with their clients using two minute surveys throughout the project. When you do this, you uncover things your firm has done that your clients love (so you can continue to do more of the same) as well as things that your client would like you to change if only slightly. This doesn’t remove the need for picking up the phone and calling, but it is great for letting you know there is an issue before it gets unmanageable. And, it is very comfortable for clients to let you know things you might not think to ask on the phone and that they might feel were perhaps not worth mentioning on a project call. However, knowing allows you to adjust your service delivery and make you even more valuable to them.
    
3. Take Action – When a person does speak up about an issue, it’s important to follow-up, follow-up, follow-up and take action! Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that you go against best practices or things you know are not in the best interest of the client or your firm. The feedback just brings out in the open something that matters to your client. It gives everybody a moment to collect their thoughts and then have a discussion. When you do, it’s important to communicate concerns you have and any consequences after fully understanding the client.  At the end of the discussion and meetings, a recap of action items, who is responsible and due dates can help you get back on track.

So the next time you encounter an issue with a client, I hope my story and tips help you think about ways you can deal with conflict resolution. Be sure to share your conflict resolution tips or stories. Should you want to provide your employees a way to manage expectations, we invite you to take a tour of the Client Feedback Tool. 

Project based ERP.  You’re probably wondering to yourself, “what is this anyway?”  We’ve all heard of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, but now the industry added the words “project based.”  It probably feels like they are just layering more words … and difficulty.  So let me make some sense out of this for you. 

Project Based ERP Straight Talk

Traditionally, ERP’s have primarily been associated with companies manufacturing products: a key factor in ERP is the merging of IT, HR, Finance, and Marketing data with product operations and inventory management. 

In services firms and consulting businesses like yours, however, some alterations must be made for the ERP system to show the data they need to achieve their goal – high profit and high revenue in a skills based environment – hence the addition of “project based” to our discussion about ERP systems.  Your services business deals with a model where intellectual property is what you produce.  You don’t have the evils of shelf life, production lines, or parts departments.  Instead, your lives are geared toward a consistent evaluation of process, of skill, and of running the perfect project.   

Get Down to Business

Project based firms are exceedingly good at running projects.  They can create a GANNT chart that’s a thing of beauty, they can set achievable deliverables, and they meet or exceed every deadline.  But finding an ERP system that’s attuned especially to services and not manufacturing – now that’s tougher.  It takes dedication, knowledge and the focused energy of the right team to get it all together.  

• An ERP Consultant whose job is to master-mind all the necessary pieces to banish redundant, useless old processes and make your project’s business goals a realty.

• A Project Manager focused solely on gathering and maneuvering all the professionals to make achieving your project goals a success.

• Your IT, HR, Marketing/Sales, Finance as the true heroes to making things happen.

So What Are You Going To Get Out Of It?

I know, I know.  “It’s expensive to add new software.”  “It’s a lot of work and we’re already pretty busy.”  I’ve heard this and more.  But let me tell you – you can’t afford NOT to add a project based ERP system!  The table below details those differences:

Brass Tacks

Still need more?  Here’s the slam-dunk.  According to “Managing Your Consulting Firm for Growth,” an IDC Info-doc, ERP systems built from the ground up with projects as a core process give firms the tools to make the most effective decisions in these critical areas:

• Lifecycle process across customers, projects and employees.

• Details on projects that help optimize profitability and lower risks.

• Manage and optimize an integrated portfolio of services – using data to learn how to do more of what “works” and eliminate what isn’t “working” (i.e. what’s not profitable).

• Find the “right” customers and have the data to eliminate unprofitable customers.

• Manage the future by understanding the past and using data to make fast, accurate course corrections.

A project based ERP system will combine the
strengths of Marketing/Sales, IT, HR, Finance together with
project management software to help eliminate project waste.

Bottom Line

Your dedicated employees joined with the support of organizations like Full Sail Partners, Inc.  will make your project based firm as successful as possible by using your greatest resource – a specifically designed project based ERP system.  And while it’s rad here in California to just “ride the waves,” when it comes to running your project based firm, using a project based ERP is your best choice.  Dude. 

It’s not so much that firms don’t already know they aren’t taking advantage of their Deltek Vision system as much as they sometimes just don’t know where to start. I hear it almost every time I’m at a conference talking to clients. “We aren’t utilizing the system to its full potential”. Knowing you aren’t is half the battle. The harder part is figuring out what to focus on and getting the buy-in to do something about it. Below are five tips on how to get the most out of your Deltek Vision system. 

1. Make it a Priority – We see it every day, firms deal with inefficiencies causing them to lose money each day they are not addressed. If you don’t make it a priority, who will?  Make a list of all of the things keeping you from focusing on your job, i.e. inefficiencies, duplication, lack of report, insight on trends, etc.  Then go to each role within the firm and make the same list from them. This is where you start. By applying the 80/20 rule you can reduce that list down to your priority list.
    
2. Take Advantage of New Technology – Is your firm guilty of ignoring technological enhancements? Businesses that stay with the “old way” of doing things fall behind their competition. But change is so hard!  You know what they say, the only thing constant is change. New tools like mobile access to timesheets, expense reports, and CRM are available. Not to mention InDesign integration, expense receipt attachments and so many more enhancements of Deltek Vision. Yet, has your firm taken advantage of these new features? Fear of change, lack of understanding what’s available, inadequate IT support are some of the reasons we tend to hear despite their employees saying they need these new features. To learn about the latest enhancements and take advantage of them. Check out our What’s New in Vision webinar and be sure to read our monthly newsletter. Not receiving it? Contact us.
    
3. Collaborate as a Team – Do you have teammates or are you dealing with the isolation effect? The modern business world is reliant on teams. Ultimately the success of your business is impacted by your teams ability to be productive together.  There is no “I” in team. You have to rely on others while they rely on you and that includes providing accessibility throughout the company. Collaboration can only happen with trust. So identifying where the trust issue sits and resolving it is key. Seek out new and innovative ways to work as team. Contact our collaboration queen for more information. 
    
4. Improve Employee Skills – How can someone learn if you don’t edumacate ‘em? Through Osmosis! Employees typically want to do the right thing, but without the right tools or training, it makes it hard and sometimes impossible. Does your staff have access to the right metrics or information to make quick decisions? Do you know what is included and have you been trained on the latest enhancements? Full Sail Partners can help you train your employees by utilizing the priority list identified in item #1. You don’t know what you don’t know and that sometimes it is a firm’s worst enemy. To learn on demand, view our past archive section or contact us.
    
5. Push the Envelope – Wish there was a feature or way to do something in Vision? You might just find that it’s been tackled before. Your consultant can provide great insight on the possibilities as they have worked with hundreds of firms. It seems every day I run into a client that discovers the awesome power of workflows to accomplish there challenge. Workflows can save time to free you up for more productive activities. They can automate repetitive tasks, alert users of record changes, and enable your firm to streamline process through automation. When something isn’t possible with stored procedures or workflows, there is still an option. In Customer Care, you can also submit a “new idea”. The more people that submit on a topic, the higher up on the priority list is goes.

Put on your walking shoes and “just do it”. Just like you do with a project or a marketing plan, you have to plan out what is needed and the results you expect to see. You don’t have to do it alone. Full Sail Partners is here to help guide you so your firm can get the most out of your Deltek Vision system. 

Becoming a champion of project management is as easy as solving a puzzle. The puzzle is rather complex and requires specialized training with a very specific kind of expertise, but a puzzle nonetheless.  So what does it mean to be a project based firm? What do project managers do? What do project KPI’s have to do with project management?  As with all puzzles, the best way to solve is to take the puzzle apart, piece by piece, and decode it.

Puzzle One: Am I a project based firm?

Interestingly, business theorists debate as to what determines “a project based firm”.  There is not a hard-and-fast rule for defining whether or not you’re project based and would need the services of a project manager. So let’s just stick with the basics.  The most obvious way to decide is if you have a business model where you perform “projects,” “jobs,” or “services” for external clients.  Ultimately, you are offering your expertise – NOT your goods – to an external customer.

The Project Management Institute says that a project “is a temporary group activity designed to produce a unique product, service or result like building a bridge, relief after a natural disaster or expansion of sales into a new market.”  Examples of project based companies include:

• Management Consulting Firms
• Architecture, Engineering or Construction Companies
• System Integrators
• Advertising Agencies

If you’re goods oriented (you sell software or insurance) or operationally oriented (i.e. you manage clients’ IT structure), you are not naturally a project based firm.  We could expand our definition by looking at your business organizational structure – project based firms tend to organize around their projects or jobs.  In a non-project based firm, “a business may include separate departments for manufacturing, accounting, marketing, and human resources because the organization is based around functions, not projects, …” (Miranda Morley, Demand Media, “What Is the Difference Between Project Based & Non-Project Based Organizations?”)

Puzzle Two: Am I a Project Manager?           

Most of us have a general understanding of project management, but we can go to the Project Management Institute (pmi.org) for a good definition – “project management is the application of knowledge, skills and techniques to execute projects effectively and efficiently.  It’s a strategic competency for organizations, enabling them to tie project results to business goals – and thus, better compete in their markets. Project Managers Initiate, Plan, Execute, Monitor and Control, and Close their projects.”  

Many would argue that there is more to being a Project Manager. I would argue that communication and follow-up are key areas required to be a successful Project Manager. However, the basics of being a project manager revolve around the delivery of a project. 

Puzzle Three: What are Project KPI’s for Project Management?

KPI’s are Key Performance Indicators and they are quantifiable, measurable indicators of goal attainment.  They are the very backbone as to what makes projects succeed or fail – which is directly tied, in your project based firm, to your company’s success or failure.  When given a new project, Project Managers create KPI’s to:

• Initiate the project and its deliverables
• Plan project details
• Execute those details
• Monitor and control each step in the project
• Close the project upon completion of the deliverable and the project post-mortem

Some subject examples of project management KPI’s are adherence/deviation of budgets, milestones, and task times.  Here are some sample KPI’s that might be part of a project plan: 

• Determine percent of rework attributable to requirements definitions. 
• Conclude deviation of planned ROI
• Establish cost of managing processes

For more information on writing project KPI’s, refer to “KPIs | Writing, Establishing, and Measuring" by Full Sail Partners, Inc.

Bonus Round…

Although joining a game show is potentially a quick way to make some money, it’s the savvy business owner who aligns his project based firm with project KPI’s. This alignment helps ensure the firm’s bottom line is replete with positive cash flow and employees who are happy, because they know their jobs and how to be professionally successful.  No, we shouldn’t rely on a game show host to guide us to riches, but we can depend on consultants at Full Sail Partners to help guide us to metrics that matter.  And don’t worry about buying a vowel, just turn over your mouse to this webinar and see how achievable all your goals are.