Continuing with last month’s overarching theme, we thought it would be a good idea to continue to focus on features within SI that can have a tremendous effect on your team’s success for the New Year.
The motivation here is to introduce concepts to new users while at the same time reminding existing SI users of mechanisms already present in the software that they have not yet utilized. Based on the feedback we have received; the latter is more prevalent than one might realize.
So why should this interest you? As a new or experienced user, the SI platform can offer many ways to enhance your business process while at the same time enabling our users to be more effective and thus more profitable.
If any of this has piqued your interest, then please keep reading (or listening) as we take a look at some these mechanisms in SI that can really help users overachieve in the coming year.
Number 1 consideration above all for New Year’s success with SI – Job Cost Reports!
While there are many features in SI to consider, none are more effective for your firm than fully utilizing Job Cost Reports. And by fully utilized I mean, proper development of your team’s Labor Types, creation of Purchase Orders in SI, and the use of Time Sheets for your field deployment team.
Combined with the SI Project Values, these aforementioned features will enable your team to evaluate (in real time) the effectiveness of your bid estimate pricing, procurement efforts, and deployment team across the segments of Labor Types, Phases, and Products.
What better place to begin this review than with the Labor Types.
- The use of Labor Types – The effective use of SI’s Labor Types can propel your team’s evaluation and assessment of your production efforts accordingly.
While this use will vary for each team, the overall recommended approach is to create unique Labor Types based on what your team actually does during any project bid evaluation with a subsequent production deployment.
Beyond the default Labor Types of Rough-in, Trim, Finish, and Programming, your team may want to include exclusive designations such as Travel, Service Travel, Sub-contractor, Prefabrication, Pre-assembly, or even Emergency Service Call.
Some teams will even consider such designations based on shift variances, experience level, or technical achievement. For example, you could have a Labor Type of Installation for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd shift considerations. Along with this, your team may even create junior versus senior technician Labor Types to distinguish successful deployment based on certain products with varying degrees of associated difficulties. Alternatively, your team might use something along the lines of Certified Programmer for a Labor Type to designate the need for such certifications when including certain products for bid consideration.
More importantly, the overriding reason for your team’s rationale to create additional Labor Types depends solely on what your post-deployment evaluation needs are when using the Job Cost Report mechanism so keep that in mind when considering such usage.
- Purchase Orders – While the inclusion of this feature may seem like a no brainer, there are still many SI teams that do not use the PO mechanism in SI.
If you are one of those teams, you may want to reconsider, even if you are using another software platform for your PO’s, because the Job Cost Report mechanism can show the exact dollars of profit based on your actual cost versus the sold as amount in your SI Project bid.
Now while I would never advocate duplicate effort, there may be a mechanism that will allow the import of PO data from another platform if your team must create PO’s outside of SI.
The point here is that, if you cannot use SI’s PO mechanism, then you should import your actual product purchase cost into the SI Project so the Job Cost Report can access that data accordingly.
Further, the usage of this mechanism then enables SI users to access PO information from related data fields for other reports that need Purchase Order content:
This PO related data could then be shared via the Workflow Rule notifications, where other team members can be made aware of PO activity.
Overall, this usage of SI’s Purchase Orders with the Job Cost Reports in mind, provides a twofold benefit when included in your SI Projects.
- Time Sheets - In the long line of amazing additions to the SI platform comes the recent inclusion of Time Sheets.
A mechanism that now enables SI users to track time, not only for field technicians, but also for any effort towards project completion by any team member in SI.
All these hours (once approved) are then directly applied against the project bid in SI for the Job Cost Report mechanism.
Number 2, what are some features of SI that could really enhance the overall success of teams in the forthcoming year?
- Job Cost Reports – To preface, keep in mind that several other components go into the successful use of the Job Cost report module in SI. They may not all be sighted here so be sure to reach out to our team if you have any questions.
If your team is using the Purchase Order mechanism in SI along with Time Sheets for your field deployment Tasks, then you could be well on your way to enjoying the immense benefits of SI’s Job Cost Reports.
The magic here (if you will) comes about as an analysis mechanism of all pricing data in the SI Project combined with billable hours from your field techs that are incurred against the Project itself.
Therefore, whether you want to review project data while it is still in progress or you are ready for a postmortem on a fully completed project, the Job Cost Reports can give you the numbers you seek.
Applying Purchase Order costs along with approved Time Sheet values in its display, the Job Cost Report allows our users to determine overall profitability of their projects once they have commenced or once they are completed.
Further, this data can be organized by Labor Type or by Phase along with a mechanism enabling users to select to review the amounts filtered by Product, Labor hours, or Labor dollars respectively.
On top of all of that, any of the data presented in the Job Cost Report view can then be exported to either Excel or PDF allowing for the ease of sharing these details with your colleagues.
- Service Plans – Still a relatively newer aspect of SI’s features. The Service Plan module presents one extremely compelling and overarching reason for its use…and that is additional revenue.
That’s right, presenting more service plans will directly correlate to additional revenue. And, the earlier in the process the better.
For those teams that are not already engaged in regular service plan selling, just imagine if you did include a service plan offering on every quote you submitted to a client. This would lead to more revenue per this inclusion and SI makes it very easy.
Once a Service Plan is created in SI, it can be listed as an addendum to the client report you run (and this does include custom SI reports as well). Your client need only look at the end of the document after the Project summation to see this display.
Seeing as how the mechanism is present, is relatively easy to modify, and can readily be included with your client submissions, it behooves your team to begin use of this immediately if you are not already doing so. - SI’s Business Analytics – An oldie but a goody. Initially introduced as Dashboards, this feature was rebranded Business Analytics not long after and rightly so as this mechanism can be critical to many teams when evaluating stress points within process flows that need immediate attention.
Now the great aspect of usage here solely depends upon your perspective in the company. While there is a great variety of data available via this mechanism, the uniqueness of what is displayed is very dependent upon what each user needs to see.
Some areas of interest could include opportunities, Projects, change orders, purchase orders, tasks, or service orders.
Usage of this mechanism cannot be recommended strongly enough. This, along with the usage of other SI mechanism’s and data presentations, can give you that edge you need to start each day effectively or just even to get the data you need when you need it.
BONUS FEATURE PRESENTATION! - Workflow Rules – While certainly appropriate considering the preceding paragraph, this is yet another tool in your SI arsenal to ensure that other team members get the updates they need when the data becomes available in the platform.
Be it a Project, PO, Task, or Service Order, the mechanism is available to be leveraged for all of these considerations. However, the real beauty of this jewel is the ability to fine craft an email message using data from within the source for your given Workflow Rule.
This insert field option is extremely helpful in order to give your various team members incredibly specific details about the reason behind the notification itself:
So not just timely, but also efficient information to help relieve chokepoints and stalls in your process flow.
It has been said on more than one occasion, that knowing is half the battle and SI is well suited to offer assistance towards this end.
Therefore, as I always like to include with such posts, I cannot recommend strongly enough for teams that are not already taking advantage of this amazing mechanism, to do so post haste.
For many more highlights of what SI delivered for our users last year, be sure to check our tech bulletin and tip of the month posts at www.d-tools.com/resource-center.
As we often say here, there just is not enough space or time here to cover all the relevant features and mechanisms of SI’s v22 that can enhance your earnings and profitability. For more information on that, please visit our online wiki and website.
Now, while we have covered a few usage scenarios and methodologies here, this is merely scratching the surface of what SI can achieve for users now and in the future!
Further, since we know each team will leverage and utilize these aforementioned features in their own unique method, it is recommended for new (as well as experienced) SI users to reach out to our PSG division to gain further insight from our team of industry professionals with extensive SI experience themselves.
And there it is!
Be sure to tune back in here for future installments on SI’s v22 and beyond.
A Perspective
Our team is continually evaluating ways to improve and enhance your team’s usage of and experience with our SI platform. Therefore, it behooves you and your team to explore these (and other features) as well by securing time with our Professional Services Group of SI and integration industry veterans in order to maximize your team’s ability to succeed with the software.
In Summation…
-Update to v22 if you have not already done so.
-Review, utilize, and deploy these newly added features listed above here to ensure success with D-Tools SI.
-Sign-up for webinars, training, or visit our online documentation “wiki” for tutorial assistance.
And, as always…
-Get focused, get serious, and make money.
Enjoy!
With all of that said, there’s still plenty more in store for you with SI and forthcoming product releases so keep an eye out for future updates.
We are always reviewing your Feature Requests to determine our best step forward and next course of action with future SI product releases so…“keep’em coming”!
In closing…
For more information on these and other features of SI, please see this link: D-Tools v22. You can also review our other videos and our usual support documentation.
You can also get more detailed information about v22 via our upcoming webinars and by enrolling in SI training with our PSG team. Further, please feel free to review our “What’s new in v22” webinar that is now available.
And don’t forget, that’s why we are here…to ensure your success with our product! Be sure to check back here next time for more on v22!!!
