Large-scale capital projects, known as capital expenditures or CapEx, can involve enormous financial resources. Due to their long-term purpose and capital yields, capital expenditures can be challenging to manage and regulate. If this occurs, mismanaged capital projects could cost your organization thousands of dollars.

However, it is possible to manage capital spending and budget effectively, particularly if you have budgeting software and the appropriate tools. A workflow management system that incorporates CapEx management is an excellent starting point. This approach will assist in budget tracking and spending planning.

Overview of Workflow Management Software

Workflow management tools are essential for keeping teams aligned and on pace, especially in light of the growing complexity associated with rapid expansion. This program can assist you in scheduling activities, collaborating with your team, managing workloads, and evaluating the progress so that your project is completed correctly and its quality is maintained.

According to Grand View Research, the global market for workflow management systems was estimated at over USD 6 billion in 2020 and is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 30.6% between 2021 to 2028.

The business world is in a perpetual state of change, and in such a growth-worthy environment, it is even more vital that every financial choice is subject to several approvals. CapEx requests are an important aspect of fund management that must undergo a rigorous examination and approval procedure to seize new growth opportunities while maintaining the firm’s financial security.

An adaptable CapEx approval system that includes workflow automation for safeguarding investments and requiring shorter process cycles can facilitate fund management. With the right workflow management software for CapEx project management, you can automate your existing process in a matter of days or hours, guaranteeing that each request undergoes a thorough examination quickly and gaining a competitive edge for your firm.

Key Features to Look for in Workflow Management Software for CapEx Project Management

Capital management may also generate time and monetary savings that can be used for other high-priority projects and operations. Owners desire to maximize their financial resources, from site selection to building completion.

However, many owner businesses confront obstacles to achieving this state, including disconnected manual processes and systems that hinder productivity. Moreover, implementing many conventional financial program management systems can take months or longer, making resolving these issues challenging.

Technology can help, and choosing a solution that aligns with your organization’s profile, goals, and timetable is essential.

Using project management tools and techniques, every business owner can control project expenses and risks, share documentation, and collaborate in real-time. Project management tools can help companies organize and complete their projects on schedule and within budget. When the pandemic drove many teams to operate remotely, the need for robust project management tools became even more apparent. Browse through Zoho Sprints reviews to see how it can assist teams in project planning, progress monitoring, and timely product delivery.

Effective CapEx management solutions digitize, standardize, and automate capital asset preparation and execution processes. This technology provides a unified system to control cost, timeline, data, and risk that connects building owners and general contractors throughout their entire project portfolio. Correct execution can expedite the delivery of results that improve collaboration, increase predictability, and decrease risks.

Here are some key aspects you need to consider when looking for the right workflow management software for CapEx project management.

1. Unified System

According to a study by McKinsey, across all surveyed industries, most businesses struggle to complete projects on time. Compared to initial predictions, schedule and expense overruns usually exceed 50%.

Effective CapEx project management necessitates a comprehensive understanding of cost, timeline, scope, and risk.

As a result of combining enterprise resource planning (ERP) system capability with other financial systems, point solutions, emails, and spreadsheets, many owner organizations’ present methodologies do not produce ideal capital program outcomes. This can cause incoherent data, manual processes, restricted project visibility, and inconsistency. Decisions are made based on fragmented data and frequently without all required inputs.

By utilizing a unified system that provides a picture of the data set at the project level, owners may make quicker and more informed choices across cost, timeline, and scope. This methodology facilitates informed, consistent, and high-quality decision-making across projects.

Look into this model’s advantages when managers evaluate a change in scope and weigh the associated cost and schedule tradeoffs.

2. Portfolio Level Visibility

During a project’s evaluation and prioritization phase, it is ineffective to rely on disconnected systems and processes. Establishing a company-wide solution ensures that all project proposals experience the same examination and standardized processes.

Using the best workflow app, everybody accesses the same project data structure and format irrespective of the type, contractor, or location. According to The State of Process Automation Report 2020, 51% of workflow automation efforts are intended to boost efficiency and productivity. This is why choosing a solution that provides company-wide consistency while still addressing project-specific requirements is crucial.

On the other hand, a standardized system guarantees uniformity and fairness and assists in coordinating capital planning choices with organizational strategic goals.

Management is drawn to portfolio-level capabilities because they offer a higher-level perspective. Lessons learned, and the capacity to apply cutting-edge best practices across all initiatives benefit the entire organization. Look for a solution that permits project-to-project comparisons to facilitate portfolio-wide reporting and continuous improvement.

3. Data Insights

Owners no longer have to base their judgments exclusively on past, backward-looking data or wait until an issue emerges. Modern management tools include cost and schedule analytics, including forecasting and configurable rules that highlight instances where costs or schedules are out of budget and demand remedial action.

These standards and governance enable project owners to take preventative measures before affecting their initiatives. Using historical information and actual results to construct projections and to report within a single solution improves forecasting skills.

Owners prefer to spend their time studying and acting on information rather than accumulating data and creating reports. Standard reports and dashboards enable users and management to quickly understand and share what is happening at the portfolio and project levels.

Reporting should include cost, timeline, scope, and risk information. Owners must ensure that the chosen system meets the needed degree of reporting, covering daily action summaries, management, and third-party requirements.

4. Scalability and Stability

Owner organizations evolve and expand with time. Ensure that your solution is flexible and scalable enough to satisfy your future demands, even if you do not yet recognize them.

In addition, the kinds of projects that business owners undertake may vary based on various factors, such as the business climate, legislative change, customer behavior, etc. It is likely that the kind of project and the business process needed to plan and carry out this work will evolve.

Vendor and system reliability and stability are essential for future-proofing your solution; therefore, when selecting a product workflow management solution, you should evaluate your vendors’ market profile, experience, and longevity, along with their product development effort, system uptime, and hosting.

5. Transparent Pricing

The top workflow management solutions function monthly pay-as-you-go, where rates include all operating costs, and you pay for the number of users who access the system.

Choose a tool whose upfront pricing will not cause sticker shock when the initial invoice arrives. When maintaining swift and flawless workflows, don’t settle for anything less than extraordinary.

Improve Your Business Operations with the Right Workflow Management Solutions

In today’s fast-paced world, the best workflow management tools are essential for being structured and on the edge of your business and boosting productivity.

A “one-stop shop” solution with a rapid ROI that integrates teams, procedures, and data into a single system is advantageous for project managers. A centralized system assists owners in prioritizing and selecting the proper projects, maintaining schedule visibility, control expenses, collaborating on projects across their portfolio, and concluding their projects effectively.

As a result, owners can be certain that they are selecting the proper projects, completing them on schedule and budget, and handing over a comprehensive project record to support operations.

The post How to Choose the Right Workflow Management Software for CapEx Project Management appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.

With the advent of the cloud and advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, automation software is now incredibly powerful and can provide an immense benefit to businesses large and small. These are powerful and innovative suites of software that take a lot of the tedium and headaches out of managing business expenses.

How to choose expense management software

To choose the best software for one’s company and its specific needs, you will need to do a bit of planning and consideration. What types of business does the company do? Is in national or international? Is there a lot of employee travel? What types of expenses does the business most often deal with? These and other questions are vital to helping guide your ultimate decision. You want to make sure that the software you choose is up to the task, but you also don’t want to spend a ton of extra money on features or elements that aren’t relevant or useful to the business.

You will also need to consider the technological capabilities of the company, as well as how employees typically interact with business functions. For employees that still use a lot of paper in their tracking and management may require different software than those who are already using smartphones or tablets to do parts of their work.

You must be familiar with the accounting software, if any, that is used by the organization to ensure that any expense tracking software you get is compatible with what you already use.

Benefits and features of expense management software

Regardless of the product you ultimately choose, there is a learning curve involved in the implementation of expense tracking software. It has to be integrated into your overall business operations in a way that is not only useful and effective, but that also makes sense to everyone tasked with using it. That can be a lot easier said than done.

Any software suite you consider should be one that is a quality service that can meet the needs and technical aptitude of the people who will be tasked with using it. The point of using this type of software is to save time, money, and reduce errors, so those are vital things that any software was chosen will need to provide.

Any software you choose will need to abide by current laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which addresses expense abuse and manipulation. Most expense management tools comply with this and other important and relevant legislation, but anything chosen must take these rules and laws into account.

Expense management software should dramatically simplify the expense reporting and management workflow. Say, for example, you have a company that does a lot of business travel and thus manages travel expense reports regularly, good software that will allow for mobile integration such as through the use of smartphones to input receipts and other spending, takes multiple people and layers of bureaucracy out of the reimbursement process.

This software will reduce error, help resolve expenses far faster than when multiple people have to be involved, reduces error, and streamlines the entire workflow with the use and integration of basic technologies most already use like smartphones and other mobile devices. There are a lot of options out there at different price points and levels of sophistication and it does take some reflection about the individual needs of the company to make the right choice. With our workflow management software, a business can easily manage their expenses simply and efficiently.

In closing

Managing expenses is one of the most vital aspects of running a successful business. This process needs to be efficient, transparent, and flexible to the needs of the future. Doing this with paper and pencil or on a computer manually by a person not only reduces the efficiency of the process but leaves room open for error and delays. With quality expense management software, the process can be managed automatically and with dramatically reduced lag time. With many of expense management software options, you can easily integrate the software into your existing structure and expand its use for greater remote availability, such as via a smartphone.

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• Crisp workflow design
• Integrated cloud-based services
• A timely based report for analyzing and identifying loopholes for possible solutions
• An automated notification.

What is ERP Workflow Software?

An example of a common workflow built and automated with drag and drop simplicity using Comindware Tracker

How ERP Streamlines Workflow Management?

1. Create a purchase order for an inventory
2. Generate a sales invoice for each purchase made
3. Email customers invoices automatically
4. Email response to customers who are questioning about products and services rendered by such companies
5. Generate reports based on information pulled from the different departments about the availability of certain products
6. Review sales orders
7. Receive inventory into storehouses and warehouses with barcode scanners
8. Generate reports based on workflow criteria and email reports to the appropriate member of a team automatically
9. Track every receivable within the organization with the automatic voice update feature.
10. Monitor sales report and analyze products in the inventory
11. Reduce the need for manual decision making and handling of the business rules engine
12. Identify performance trends, growth statistics over time
13. Automate employee life-cycle and shifts
14. Manage human resources personnel, including employee, pays
15. Create quotes
16. And much more

Conclusion

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For example, let’s say you have two offices in two countries. The first team deals with US clients while the second team drills into the European market. You also have two managers supervising the process in each office and thus you have a question you need an answer for: how can you make each manager monitor his own team’s requests only when all of them are running in the same system? This task is not a complicated one if you have Comindware Tracker in place.

You could go for creating separate “containers” for requests in different locations but what if you have other context-specific data points you want to use for filtering (e.g. request type, priority etc.)? The number of your containers will grow exponentially and the system will become unusable and non-maintainable at the blink of an eye. There is a more elegant (and time-saving) solution for that. Comindware Tracker lets you set user roles and permissions contextually, based on data you have in each particular request. That means you can make US requests with “Critical” priority visible to one manager, requests from Europe with “Medium” priority to another. Any combination of factors can be used to define view/edit/assignment permissions, while all of your requests logically reside all in one place.

Setting that up is also very easy – you just need to have all of your data fields you will use for filtering (e.g. request region, priority etc.) in your request form, then map those fields’ values to the corresponding users/user groups through calculating them in separate fields, and then add those user fields to corresponding workflow roles. When done, the system will automatically calculate all of the permissions dynamically and your managers will see the requests they are supposed to only, without having to set up any complicated lists and messing with different request “folders”.

This is one of the unique features of Comindware Tracker and once again, you won’t need a developer to set that up.

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Unstructured processes involve decision taking, discussion, and professional collaboration in order to deliver process results. Due to the nature of the process, its structure can be slightly different each time so it is quite difficult to describe this process once, set corporate rules on it, or automate this process inside business software as is the case with structured business processes which are largely automated with the help of ERP and CRM software.

For example, your company plans to adapt the BYOD policy which describes how your employees can use their own devices for work, including corporate rules, IT security requirements and so on. How exactly will the CIO, HR and CTO collaborate on this task? There is definitely some process behind it, yet you cannot say what it will look like until it’s over.

However unstructured the process is, it doesn’t mean that the process cannot be described, optimized or automated. It simply needs a different approach which adapts to the unpredictability of the process.

Managing structured processes by email or with the help of Excel files has proven to be inefficient and we see these kind of processes automated in large companies with the help of ERP and CRM systems. Meanwhile, unstructured process are quite often left ‘untouched’ and just ‘happen’ ad-hoc, without any possible optimization. Why? Unstructured processes can be managed, controlled, optimized and improved as well as any other kind of processes it’s just a matter of the right approach which has to include three basic steps:

• discover the process
• optimize it
• choose the right software for its automation

Discovering unstructured processes

Unstructured processes are harder than structured processes to discover and manage. This is not only due to their unpredictability, but because they lack transparency too: they are done with the help of emails and meetings. Of course you can analyze the emails and meetings that you have to manage, yet an easier way is to take a closer look at the activities that most often imply unstructured processes.

“However unstructured the process is, it doesn’t mean that the process cannot be described, optimized or automated.”

An important part of unstructured processes (and what basically makes them unstructured) is decision taking. Unstructured processes involve collaboration and, sometimes, crowdsourcing, and they are always the human-driven processes. Typically, you can find unstructured processes in the following areas:

• Compliance and policy
• Exceptions and Escalation processes
• Audit processes
• Complex Project Management processes
• Decision Implementation processes

Optimization of unstructured processes

Unstructured processes, after they are detected, cannot be optimized in a one single way that must be obeyed by all of the process participants. Its optimization should be done in an advisory manor. Yet there might be iterations that are carried out by email and could be cut out with the help of one brief meeting or by using any online collaboration tool. An important part of the optimization of unstructured processes would be the use of special process management software.

Software for unstructured processes

Enterprise-scale systems for ERP and CRM traditionally come with hard-coded processes which can be implemented once and forever because their further modifications are impossible or are time-consuming and expensive. That can be explained by the nature of databases used by these systems: they are not only big, they are highly complicated which results in their heaviness and lack of flexibility.

Comindware Tracker is an enterprise-scale process management system which is based on a completely different type of database. As a result, it adapts to the process on the fly and it is almost ideal for unstructured processes management: whenever you need a new step in your process workflow, or a new task, a new participant, a new workflow form field – you can simply add it with no coding, and the process will keep running.

As for the structured processes, Comindware Tracker offers a set of professional templates and solutions.

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Transparency is an insight into your daily operations that you can achieve by different means. Whatever you chose, bear in mind that investigating the real state of things needs to be as simple and easy as possible because a time-consuming action aimed at process improvement can compromise the value of the targeted process. Discovering how everything is working can make you face the sad fact of how inefficiently everything is optimized. Don’t get upset – just accept the challenge to improve things.

Transparency: how do we achieve it?

Meetings

You can gather your team in the meeting room once a week and let everyone speak about the achievements of the past week and the plans for the upcoming week. The great thing about this method is collaboration, the weak point is the lack of analytical data. The main thing about these kinds of meetings is to keep them brief and not to hold them more often than once a week. Also, meetings can ‘kill’ productivity.

Status reports and emails

Keep them brief and implement some sort of standard for them. If your team players need to spend hours to generate those reports, it’s better not to use this practice: they could have used this time for work. If it is possible, replace reports by work management software and time tracking features. Reports are sent by email which is also a weak point of this method because you get the additional work of dealing with those emails.

Shared files

It’s possible to share a file via one of numerous services with key points that need to be achieved by the end of the week and month. Either you, as a manager, can update this file yourself taking updates from the reports sent by emails, or – you can ask each on your team to update the file. The shared version of it brings transparency for everyone into what’s going on.

Process Management Audit

You can hire a company which can audit your processes, interview your team and make workflow charts of how things are going. Needless to say that this method is one of the most expensive ones compared to the methods above.

Transparency for daily operations

The methods describe above can help you gather data about your daily routine yet they all have their disadvantages:

• either you spend your team time on maintaining transparency: they could have used this time for work
• or you hire special professionals: you need to pay for their services

Comindware sees the way out of this situation – you can move forward with Comindware Tracker. When you just start using it, make it the task management software organizer for your team and create a task for any activity that your team players perform. By the end of the week you are going to have some data that Comindware Tracker can present in the form of dashboard statistics for you. By the end of the month you can analyze your current processes.

Taking into consideration that Comindware Tracker offers free 30-day trial, this time is more than enough for this kind of activity. The difference with shared reports or updated Microsoft Excel status files is that information about the activity is requested by the software while this activity is being performed. Unlike usual Outlook tasks, this information is available online for each employee and the manager and is perfectly analyzable.

Comindware Tracker gives you insight into what is going on in your company and collects data for you to find out about your processes – first step to their improvement. And this insight demands minimal effort from you and your team. When you have enough analytical data on your processes, Comindware Tracker offers you the means to proceed straight to the next step: automate those processes with workflow coupled with task management.

Once you set up automated processes for your daily routine, if you keep using Comindware Tracker, you can bring smaller changes to your processes even when they are running. This is the explanation behind the word ‘flexibility’ that is scattered all over Comindware.com. This way, the cost of process improvement and transparency with Comindware Tracker is reduced to minimum.

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Issue tracking system or bug tracking system are word combinations familiar to any programmer: when developing a software product, they got used to those systems for team task management. The software development routine consists of repeating cycles “made part of the software – tested how it works – improved it”. The issue tracking system helps keep it under precise control.

To be honest, such cycles can be found in almost any other business activity: purchases, contracts approvals, budgeting and so on. We all deal with them in some way and they are routine processes. Even at school: “do homework (student) – check it (teacher) – make corrections (student)”.

At the same time, the final goal of the numerous routine processes lies in more global indicators. If we continue the example with school routine, the final result is the knowledge level which is checked at specific milestones (semester, annual exams). For the software development routine the final result is how quickly the product is delivered and how good it is.

While the developer needs to track how much has been done and how much time they need to finish the project, the customer needs to know where the project currently stands. That is when reports are created.

And it takes time:

1. find data,
2. find out who’s been doing what,
3. find what the status is for each development cycle (make – test – improve).

Making reports can sometimes take as much time as the work itself, and, while you’re making the report you “borrow” time from your project which is profusion, in most cases.

It’s much better when an automated system gathers data from you on each task status while you work on it and then you hit the ‘complete’ button and then it generates project progress reports with the live status on each team player. That is the reason why software development guys started to use issue tracking systems.

Here is when an automated issue tracking system comes to the rescue which, with the help of task management and email notifications asks your co-workers and team players to input short pieces of data each time they begin\end a task or, sometimes, during task progression.

And even though issue tracking systems came to us from the software development industry, now you can manage your work with the help of issue tracking whatever your field of activity. If it has routine workflows and if you want to have clarity on what’s going on, issue tracking software is made for you.

Usually, when marketers position this kind of software they appeal to you to ‘orchestrate your team work’ with the help of an issue tracking solution. One of those solutions, Comindware Tracker, is made with the best issue tracking practices by software development gurus and it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

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Problem: customer data is scattered over different applications

“I want to have more efficient team collaboration between departments that work with customers: Sales, Marketing and Support.”

“I want to have more efficient team collaboration between departments that work with customers: Sales, Marketing and Support. I guess it could be done if they had a common source of information about leads, prospects, end users. How can we orchestrate the work of these departments to improve customer experience?“ – Alexander Borodich, co-founder and CDO, MyWishBoard.com

This problem can be solved when we use a powerful CMW Tracker feature: API integration based on web-services. With its help, we can unite different solutions, for example, SalesForce and CMW Tracker IT Help Desk. This way, the solutions will use shared data, and all the three departments you mention will have access to it. This topic will tell you how we made it.

Solution

CMW Web-Services API integration feature makes it possible to connect your solution with other systems and applications. This way, the new system or application becomes an integral part of your existing infrastructure. Different departments will use shared data. That is what can be called your left hand knows what your right hand is doing.

“It doesn’t take me long to think it over when a customer calls us and says: “I’ve purchased products from you and I need some help.”. I don’t need to ask him what exactly he bought. I just take a glance at his Customer Record which contains his products, contacts, previous support cases, everything. In other words, we keep to the point right from the start.“ – Denis Kuznetsov, CMW Support Team.

“It was in his Customer Record in CMW Tracker along with his contact and lead information from SalesForce. So I knew what he was interested in. It helped us to have a much more productive dialogue.“

“It happened just yesterday when we were on the phone with a customer. He’d mentioned that he had recently had a chat with the support team. I saw at once what it was about. It was in his Customer Record in CMW Tracker along with his contact and lead information from SalesForce. So I knew what he was interested in. It helped us to have a much more productive dialogue.“ – Chris Scorazzi, Sr. Sales Executive, CMW

Our Marketing and Sales departments use SalesForce. This solution stores information on the same customer in two separate objects: lead and opportunity. The Support team uses the our IT Help Desk solution. This way, information about one customer was split until we integrated the two solutions. When the all that data is pulled into CMW Tracker, you can see it in a single Customer Record. There is no need to switch between applications for you to see it all in one view. Updates are available globally across the applications. This way, you can use, monitor, track, analyze and report global data about the customer and the prospect’s way through the sales funnel. Take a look at a Customer Record screenshot below:

Benefits

CMW Tracker integration with SalesForce has a wide range of substantial benefits:

• Orchestrated team work
• Ensured customer satisfaction
• Shared, synchronized data for all departments
• Your current infrastructure isn’t affected
• Better data analysis because you have data from all departments in a single place
• Reliability: cloud storage for your data (with CMW Cloud)

CMW Tracker Web-Services API integration with SalesForce enables different departments to use synchronized data from different solutions. When you need to analyze and monitor data collected inside CMW Tracker, you can see it in the form of lists and dashboard widgets. Customize your dashboards and widgets so that they analyze and compare data the way you want it.

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