What’s determining a product’s shelf-life today is its affordability and type of features that can be added. Capabilities with the option to scale up at no extra cost is perceived as beneficial in the long run. At the end of the day, the software trial that you’re signing up for should let you experience the full range of features that works according to your business. After all, no one wants to be racked with buyer’s remorse in times of uncertainty.

The extent of configuration, or in other words what all comes with the software you’re in the market wields considerable influence on your final decision. From plugins and portals to custom analytics, decision-makers want the freedom to configure the software. Let us dive deep into the merits of having it done for you beforehand!

What is Software Configuration Management?

Software configuration management refers to how well a system takes changes while still retaining its integrity. In other words, new functionalities added to the existing set don’t result in data loss or erroneous transmissions during transitive periods.

Configuration is done via artificial intelligence applications to enable the system to reach a desired state of performance while remaining power-efficient.

The minimum requirement for standard configuration is to have both a web and database server. This lets your web browser request pages from the server, enabling fast load times. The number of machines hooked to this server can be accordingly upsized should you plan to expand the pool of users getting on to the tool. It is possible, albeit a little slower if the absence of these requirements is mitigated with a credible hosting partner. Custom configuration ensures the application is performance-driven and in a running state. Some of the benefits of insisting on it include

1. Universality

Configuration management systems store your data in a central location, making it easier for you to find what you’re looking for. Moving from static spreadsheets to a more dynamic system of records lets you view, update and restrict access to data with security rights. Put simply, your data is visible only to you as per role and seniority in the organization, enabling you to reach decisions without concerns of it being doctored.

Universality facilitates a seamless migration of data from previous information systems and slots it into the right places. It captures your enterprise and comes with prebuilt templates that can be populated according to the parameters entered into the system.

2. Reduced ownership costs

Configuration and customization are often mistaken to mean the same, but the distinction lies in the pricing value. Besides custom dashboards, product updates, user manuals, and training tutorials are all part of the package.

Customization invites additional expenses for the changes requested for and effort hours of the deployed engineer. Configuration, on the other hand, leads to an overall cost reduction of system ownership. Any accompanying software upgrades come free because the underlying code and architecture remains unchanged, allowing you to get more value out of your purchase.

3. Personalization control

Wouldn’t it be great if you got exactly what you asked for?

That is the most obvious benefit of software configuration management tools. It puts the user at the very center of building the tool. Saviom, for example, takes a business’ configuration requirements into consideration and lets owners take charge of personalizing it further.

Weaving this versatility into the tool from the start ensures that your business isn’t left behind in a disruptive landscape. Personalized dashboards let you plug and play with components. Even better, you can have any number of dimensions to generate the reporting format of your choosing. That is, the data you view is contextual to your action, outcome, and decisions.

4. Delivery at scale

We’re conditioned to be risk-averse. Change comes with its own set of risks, from displacing teams to switching up processes, roles, and duties. As such, leaders would be concerned about the impact it has on delivery and whether your resource pool would be able to keep up.

With portal configuration, you get to select only those screens, dashboards and sections you require, letting you scale up and shape your industry for organization-specific needs without external help. Better still departmental teams can converge on one platform and be able to mark work as done, in progress or unfinished which enables continuous delivery in line with time-criticality.

5. Insightful analytics

The custom analytics dashboard within an enterprise-grade resource management software comprises multidimensional sort bys. It divides the enterprise into distinct viewing panes, with the facility to search and apply role, team or project-specific dimensions.

While history can only tell you what went wrong and right, forecast analytics help you take back control of the situation. You can unify resource and project workflows to generate intelligence on skills availability, utilization levels and the capacity in effect. This drill-down can be weighed against the load and hours of work, ensuring the decisions you take in the future to maximize profitability. For instance, if you’re running low on skills and have an influx of work, the net availability and capacity would dip, signifying the need for corrective action. Or, an unfavorable variance between actual and booked hours can be revised for future work, thus driving up the billability.

6. Quicker recovery

Custom configuration facilitates quicker recovery from critical events. For instance, if one of the offices dispersed globally experiences downtime or is offline for an indefinite period of time, other offices can switch to a replacement server.

In the meantime, a copy of this data will persist on the server in the form of a backup, for later use. The risk of a data loss during the migration of system information is then greatly minimized. No one will lose track of what they and their officemates were/will be working on, given that relevant files, records, screengrabs, and exports are on hand to help bridge the gap. Additionally, recurrences of downtime can be avoided by upgrading that server on which the application is running. This way, more users can be added to the pool while getting the expected level of speed and performance.

Now that you know what configuration entails, isn’t it about time you experienced it for real on an instance of the tool? Sign up for a full-length trial pack of Saviom’s products and let our product experts do the rest!

In the interest of time, it’s better to have one solid foundation than several separate systems. It’s always an added bonus to access the information on a centralized platform. This is where professional services automation (PSA) software comes into the picture. So,

What is PSA all about?

PSA, or Professional services automation is a system developed to keep everything in one place. Designed to manage and automate business tasks, PSA is an end-to-end solution for running a service-based business.

The ultimate goal of PSA is to provide an operational framework that is required to run an efficient professional business. It maps out the path to profitability for enterprises by controlling every aspect of project financials. It automates invoicing and revenue recognition. Not only that, it has the facility to empower team collaboration by unifying conversations, updates and actions. The kind of business intelligence you get forewarns you of deviations to t project KPIs, thereby helping you steer clear of difficulties down the line. After all, the financial gains brought in from a project hinges on what you do with the data you have.

PSA is a compilation of several features. Here’s a list of some of them:

Business Intelligence

Turning data into valuable information is imperative for managers to make strategic decisions. It should let you determine actions or steps to be taken in your project management life cycle. Performing this task manually is tedious and time-consuming. Hence, smart business intelligence tools that can accomplish the same with higher accuracy play an important role in PSA.

BI helps you reinvent your business with precise and actionable real-time insights. From information on KPIs to forecasting project attributes, BI has it all. It facilitates PSA with enhanced capabilities to predict and analyze resourcing strategies by department, team, location, offices and business units. It forewarns you about excess and shortage of resources ahead of time that gives you enough leeway to apply appropriate resourcing treatments.

Project management relies on predictability and advanced analytics of a business intelligence software that has the ability to integrate, perceive and display the data on one centralized hub. This information is then consolidated and displayed on dynamic project management dashboards. Owing to the advancements of technology, these dashboards are highly configured and are role-specific to multiple stakeholders.

BI reports give you the gist of project progress against various comparable attributes like forecast v/s actual utilization of resources. This, in turn, helps you enhance demand forecasting and overall accuracy of workforce planning.

Project Accounting

Controlling project budgets and avoiding cost overruns is one of the challenges faced by project managers. If due diligence isn’t undertaken early on, it can block cash flows. Worse, expenses left unchecked can cause you to invest in the wrong areas, and that too more than what would have been required. To prevent this from happening, having complete visibility of project costs from bid to bill is crucial. Project accounting in PSA helps you regulate these project costs by providing early warnings at every stage of the project cycle.

To gather information on financial accounting, PSA enables employees to record their time and tasks in customized timesheets. It also helps managers determine the contribution of billable hours by a resource. Besides financial accounting, it also reduces administrative costs by helping you track the expenses.

Project accounting software helps you to maximize billable utilization by giving complete visibility of the time and tasks of employees. Furthermore, it keeps you informed of project status at every stage and enables you to take necessary actions if goals and actuals aren’t aligned. This tremendously enhances project profitability.

Smart project management accounting also automates certain tasks and gives you enough space to focus on strategic decision making. You can automate invoicing and also minimize outstanding work in progress (WIP). This will eventually help you deliver projects faster than ever and make your business profitable.

Team collaboration

With the increasing geographical dispersion, coordinating with distributed teams can be vexing. In the time taken to reach a concerned member, tasks being worked on can fall through the cracks, causing you to spend more time investigating rather than getting the project back on track. Further, the lack of communication can lead to inefficiency in task management. To keep them engaged and motivated, cooperation and coordination between teams are crucial.

In the digital era, team collaboration tools are a boon for organizations to break silos of communication. These tools provide a unified platform to the resources to collaborate efficiently and accomplish goals within time and budget. Team members can reach out to the right person a certain task and finish it well on time. They can seek help from expertise via communication channels and take corrective measures if necessary.

PSA has integrated team collaboration with a goal to centralize communication and seamlessly complete project tasks. There are different channels of communication for different teams, departments or offices. With advanced role-based security, the right information is delivered to the right person which eliminates the likelihood of information overload.

Chaotic email trails can be prevented by using structured messaging platforms like social media ones which are user-friendly. This bridges the communication gap between teams and enhances the productivity of employees. Team collaboration software hence empowers your team to provide experiential insights and lessons learned.

Final thoughts

Along with these powerful features, PSA also compiles resource management, project portfolio management and forecast, and early warning systems. This strengthens the project lifecycle and increases the profitability of your organization. Hence, a resource-centric PSA enables you to utilize your talent pool most effectively and improve client satisfaction. Improved productivity and timely delivery of projects help you outstand in the business industry and increase your brand value.

As we bid farewell to another successful year, there is no better time like the present to reflect on how far we’ve come, and what lies in store for us in 2020 and the years to follow.

2019 began on a high note, with Saviom in attendance for the 7th PMO leadership Summit in February, sponsored by Liquid Learning in Melbourne. As a project manager turned business owner, I have always carried the belief that the best way to learn is to exchange notes with industry leaders.

After all, the mark of an experienced leader lies in one’s ability to absorb new information without losing sight of the original vision.

I consider myself fortunate to have been in the thick of discussions concerning trends that will impact global Project Management Offices, from leveraging agility rightfully to optimizing resources.

On the business front, It gives me great pleasure to reveal that our enterprise-grade products have caught the eye of both new and existing clients, who have upscaled their usage of resource management. From notable defense contracts to multinational giants like Fujitsu Australia, KLA Tencor, Aurecon, and Cegeka, we are happy to have played a pivotal role in helping enterprises realize actual value on high-return projects while reducing resourcing expenditure by 20%.

A sure sign that you’re running your business right is the talent pool attracted to your organization. Since 2018, our numbers have doubled, with collaborative teams comprising of the best minds in software development, design, operations, and marketing.

One of the joys an entrepreneur experience is using his, or her market expertise to tap into a broader business landscape. And on this note, Saviom is currently running several key projects, which include modeling a highly customizable, PMO-centric Project Portfolio Management tool and launching a Professional Services Automation tool for global enterprises. These initiatives fall in line with our endeavor to deliver unmatched product quality and will be unveiled in February 2020. More on this to follow!

I end my musings with the certainty that 2020 will be a year to remember for project leaders around the globe. Here is wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year!

Resource planning is a convoluted part of business that aids in scaling predictability and future performances. Business expansion involves distinctive planning and management focusing on- inventory, human skills, production resources, information, and technology, financial resources.

Resource Management Software initiates planning, scaling the company’s competencies, and scheduling projects based on obtainable resources. Resource management has emerged as a discipline at par with project management, given how it contributes to generating historical reports and enabling project managers to take corrective actions where required.

About SAVIOM

“Maximise Productivity, Smart Optimisation with Robust Planning and Scheduled Task”

Saviom is synonymous with resource efficiency. The company’s flagship for Enterprise Resource Management software has enabled businesses in over 50 countries to capitalize on profitability and productivity. The tool lets leaders anticipate resource requirements and optimize best utilization.

This software is a proprietary solution to plan resources, prepare pipeline projects, retrain, reallocate resources, and provides a Gantt scheduler for real-time visibility and planning. Saviom engenders optimal amount of work through its tracking report and activity management. With user-friendly design and drag-drop feature, Saviom’s resource management software is the unanimous choice for businesses working in a disruptive landscape.

With a plethora of customizable screens, reports, portals, and dashboards, Saviom’s business intelligence analytics helps businesses accomplish their long-term goals.

Benefits of Implementing Saviom

Resource Scheduling

Saviom enables real-time visibility into workloads and skills being used. Even the most complex schedules can be easily managed with Saviom’s multidimensional and interactive tools. The Gantt scheduler enhances optimized work by allocating resources and making it easier for your team to grab new projects without worrying about conflicting dates, time, and resources.

Optimized Capacity Planning

Project planning is crucial for business development. With Saviom ERM, management gets a 360-degree view of available resources, resulting in better planning, task scheduling, and utilizing human skills. The software generates insightful reports on past operations, forecasting business capacity to meet demands. Enterprises can easily identify shortfalls and excesses of resources that enable in forwarding planning, reducing risk, costs, and achieving success.

Highly Customizable

Project requirements change constantly, and hence requires thoughtful processing of an existing system. Saviom offers commissioned reports and handling of resources with its multi-dimensional tools, justifying business requirements for user-configured reports. The customizable resource management software allows users to export data to an excel spreadsheet, allowing them to pick their own sorting dimensions.

Seamless Integration

Saviom’s resource allocation software is powerful, yet easily integrates into the system. It controls sync frequency and offers only the type of data required, thus eliminating time wastage and better project handling. Saviom is customizable, highly scalable software that seamlessly integrates with multiple data sources, ERP software, existing BI, and reporting systems.

Why We Chose Saviom as Top Resource Management Software?

SoftwareWorld proudly accredits Saviom as the top resource management software for the way it assists business enterprises achieve goals through resource optimization. Saviom is designated as a robust Resource Management Software that enables business to fulfil utilization of resources and maximizing human skills.

Through intricate research, it has been found that corporate and technology giants have recorded approximately 20% cost reduction and effective utilization of resources after integrating Saviom in the management.

As the operational cost reduces, overall revenue rise has been the main reason behind the success of integrating Saviom. This user-friendly resource management tool comes with light-weight architecture, profound features, scalable, and personalized platform. Saviom is smartly optimized resource allocation tool that saves time, manages data, utilizes resources and leverage productive workforce strategically.

About SoftwareWorld

SoftwareWorld helps millions of people find the best business software through its undulated ratings and reviews. We provide vetted and verified reviews on latest software that allows our users to make more informed decisions. We are an inevitable technology indulged in finding solution for business enhancement and effective growth.

Find latest guide to boost productivity and optimize your workflow with software tips, tricks, and trends. SoftwareWorld is a podium that provides convenient comparison of the latest software that you need to set up your business.

Saviom was conceived with the endeavor to end operational inefficiencies that arise from untapped potential, resulting in a truly mobilized workforce that empowers global multinational enterprises today.

The year 2018 has brought a slew of interesting conventions with it. Given the growing concern revolving around sustaining an agile PMO’s excellence across the project management landscape, I was glad that Saviom, as a sponsor participated in the 6th PMO Leadership Summit in partnership with Liquid Learning and the AIPM National Conference. Both events featured an esteemed panel of project leaders who elaborated on navigating the PMO landscape and the challenges of unifying people and performance with precision.

After comparing notes with reputable PMO leaders from different sectors, it was interesting to find everyone concur on resource management being the missing link between business strategy and the subsequent alignment of projects. After all, the best project management initiatives are devised by the right brains.

However, the challenges in doing so are plenty.

For one, filling the project pipeline with as many projects as possible results in the right priorities and resources getting overlooked. Which simply means that your projects are staffed without the certainty of deploying the right and available competencies in the right places. And for another, the lack of data-driven insights into both projects and resources causes a mismatch in the project’s promised benefits and actual value.

With the view to minimize these risks and their associated costs, I’m pleased to announce the inclusion of a dedicated PMO-centric tool to our intuitive product suites; Saviom Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. Built on the premise of unifying the principles of project portfolio and resource management, global PMO leaders will not only convert data to insights with enhanced resource forecasting intelligence but will also be in the position to record demonstrable value in the future.

Ushering new and familiar faces alike is one of the several joys of being in the Director’s Chair, more so knowing that business ties are strengthened by the trust in quality and service. Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to announce the expansion of our client base with the likes of Deloitte, BlueScope Buildings, Honeywell (US), Fuji Xerox, Fujitsu (Australia and New Zealand), Apple Inc, Columbia Helicopters and Oakley on board. There’s no satisfaction greater than knowing that the Saviom ERM suite has boosted resource efficiency scales, helping our clients record a cost savings of 20% bi-annually.

The next event I’ll be at is the 7th PMO leadership Summit slated to take place in Melbourne between 19-21 Feb 2019. I am looking forward to discussing the topics under the radar, from leveraging agility rightfully to partnering the PMO with decision-making drivers.

I end my musings with the certainty that no challenge in 2019 is too big for us to take on, particularly when it comes to building robust product suites that optimize efficiency to the best possible extent.

Here’s wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !

However, the extent of the tool’s business intelligence functionalities do not end with the reports you might be currently using. Designed to help you constantly achieve more with fewer resources and lesser time, each of our reports provides unique tracking functionalities that cater to the little details that go on to make the larger picture successful.

Here’s looking at few ‘other’ reports that you may not have configured within your system yet –

1. People on the bench Report

Use – When you know the last set of bookings you have made for your resources on the bench, it is a great starting point to see how to go about this additional bandwidth that you have within your workforce. This report is designed to help you do just that!

Functions – It lets you accurately see the last booking status of individual employees in terms of department, location, with respect to the duration and types of bookings. The additional information about the bookings and the projects may also be found by drilling it down further with the filter detail (that is a standard feature of all Saviom reports). In addition, other default functionalities include restructuring this information to suit different purposes – project-centric bookings, departmental booking and primary role based bookings.

2. Project portfolio Report

Use – The report gives you an overview of your project portfolio in terms of your different projects and their statuses. Since it shows your budget as well as financial statuses at one go, it comes as a great platform to track some of your important KPIs.

Functions – Your projects themselves or the bifurcations you may have for them can be tracked all at once through this report. This includes both forecasts made for the projects as well as the actual execution undertaken. In addition, the project manager assigned, the difference or the variance between the forecast and actuals are other crucial details that you can choose to forecast. You may choose to configure this one to suit your key goals for the month. Further, timesheet integration also gives the report a very strong data-centric perspective.

3. Resource training Report

Use – Wanting to upskill staff but having to stay within payroll budget is one of the many ongoing battles program managers fight. This can very well change when you can track the status of your different training programmes at one go. With this report, you can quickly drill down into your training module to differentiate crucial ones from those that are not so. Besides, this also helps make availability statuses clear enough.

Features – Based on the from and to dates, you can drill down to find the actual list of employees in different locations and departments who are slated to go on training programmes. In addition, you could potentially integrate it with the alerts that you have on the resource detail screen so your training initiatives are in tandem with certifications that may expire.

4. Time detail analysis Report

Use – Where did time go….? Be a project manager who can successfully answer this question with a report that helps deconstruct timesheets and puts information into different buckets. When you know exactly where your team’s time is spent, it helps create healthier schedules that take into account price and time efficiency scales.

Features – Hours spent on different tasks, the cost rate of the employees on the tasks and the status of the timesheets are just some of the information you can track through this report. You can choose to restructure and procure information from different viewpoints and get a bird’s eye view or a worm’s eye view based on your planning principles.

5. Baseline Report

Use – If you think that the only thing certain about your projects is uncertainty, measuring variances with baseline reports can help track your projects and minimize the differences you see in your plans and their execution timelines. Also, you can set goals and track them at a later date to see whether or not they were successful.

Features – Besides the baseline comparison for the selected project, you can also extract graphs and excel sheet outputs for this report. In addition, it is possible to also have a separate baseline list that tracks resource bookings for the project all at one go. This comprehensive assessments helps sustain accuracy.

All these reports can be easily configured through the system administration portal. For further information, reach out to your account manager right away!

It is only fitting that word of a feature-rich, intuitive tool like Saviom ERM web would get out. The tool’s web-only version has not only made it easier to access and generate the core reports but comes with the configurability to let you have the solution you really need. The core reports sitting within the software are the Utilisation, Capacity Versus Demand and Availability reports.

1. Utilisation Reports

The utilisation report generates a record of the number of hours or the percentage of resources spent over a given time. The colour codes for utilisation thresholds lets you see how and where the workforce or team in question have been allocated an appropriate amount of work. The utilisation levels can be filtered based on teams, project and job title in order to determine where and in what task a particular resource is engaged in. It effectively lets you optimise utilisation and prevent both over and under utilisation.

2. Capacity versus Demand Reports

Capacity refers to the total supply of resources while demand reflects current, upcoming and non-project related activities that resources are allocated on to. Comparing the two components generates actionable insights that aid in internal restructuring and hiring decisions. The capacity versus demand reports let you map the two parameters in a single report with insights that get updated in real-time.

Whilst the inbuilt scales of days, hours and percentages offer clarity, Full-time Equivalent (FTE) is far more promising when drawing these reports as it is a widely accepted method to map utilization levels across the organization.

3. The Availability Report

This is essentially the opposite of a utilization report. It shows the amount of time each resource is available for over a given period which prevents resource overbooking, especially in cases where multiple projects run simultaneously or the said resource is involved in non-project activities.

There’s good news for those of you finding graphs easier to interpret than crunching numbers- the reports are graphically readable and flexible within a single click!

Did you like what you read? If this has gotten you wanting more, our product experts are just a click away from explaining how we can help!

In our latest update, we redefine the intuitive nature of our ERM solution with an advanced ‘What if Analysis Tool’ and a comprehensive ‘Leave Module’, in a bid to make the software all the more effective, efficient and user-centric.

WHAT IF  you had a crystal ball?

What-if scenario analysis is a business planning methodology used to derive different  predictions for a given outcome based on selectively varying inputs.  It is one of the best ways to predict the outcome of different actions and is particularly popular in Project Management units.

Introduced as a new Functional Item within Saviom, the different causes and their due effects can easily be gauged by the click of a button. Saviom gives you the option to change variables like the timeline of the project, and easily analyse its impact on the status of the reports as a virtue of changes to this variable.

You can choose an individual project, extend or shorten its timeline and immediately see how the reports change based on that. The options of reports that you can choose from include the Utilization Report, Availability Report, Capacity vs. Demand Report and the Cost Reports. For example, when you extend the timeline of a project through our Cost Report, you can see how that directly impacts the cost associated with it.

Information for which you would have to spend hours toiling over a spreadsheet can now be unlocked in minutes. Added to this, your forecasting becomes stronger than ever, allowing you to exactly know what can affect your project and how.

LEAVE  the worries behind…

The leave module enables you to collate your leave application and its subsequent approval all at one go. Not only does it let you choose the duration and the type of leave but you can instantly get the associated resource manager as well as supervisor on-board thus having never to worry about integrating leave statuses of different employees.

Besides, you can assign ‘My Approval’ as a Functional Item for supervisors in their respective portal, thus letting them see individual leave requests and assign them the required status ( approved or rejected).

While these two aspects are the core features that this update introduces, it also brings in various other features, that have been designed to help you achieve maximum utilization of Saviom and make your journey fruitful.

To old friends and new!

Every new customer journey feels like a new milestone and 2016 brought us a slew of them. As more companies unleash their true potential with the Saviom software, our ride becomes a lot more fulfilling. Here are a few of our new friends!

• Department of Finance Australia: Another government body joins the Saviom clientele!
• Grant Thornton : We are proud to be associated with this accounting firm of world repute!
• Mckinstry Co : A prestigious DBOM firm we are happy to cater to!
• PPB Advisory: A professional advisory company that’s a new client of ours!
• Telstra: Australia’s leading provider of mobile phones, mobile devices, home phones and broadband internet is now a Saviom client!
• ThyssenKrupp: We are proud to add this diversified industrial group to our list of clients.

We couldn’t be more jubilant about the fact that some of our most reputed clients chose to expand their use of Saviom this year. The list includes ABB, Siemens and Fujitsu.

Webbed Feet

The highlight from the product development desk is our major move into an all-web software solution that is a lot more faster and far more flexible. Besides allowing much greater configurability and powerful functionalities, it also has phenomenally high levels of resource scheduling efficiency. We also moved onto mobile app-based solutions for android, which is at the forefront of our expansion plans for the upcoming year.

Cards Speak?

Further, our agenda includes foray into newer verticals and intense business development. So we take our move into workforce and talent management as one of the biggest highlights in this regard. With a new logo that reaffirms our commitment to the Management industry, we will also be launching our new website. Integrated into it, is a bank of invaluable resources designed to help managers master the tricks of their trade. Creating and distributing fresh content will be one of the core highlights for the year.

2017 wish list

This year we vow to make our journey all the more about our customers. For the last decade, we have always measured our success in metrics of customer satisfaction and happiness. Taking it a little ahead this year, we would love to create more customized products for individual customers and trace our footsteps in the stellar levels of efficiency they achieve. We are thankful for every connection forged, every little opportunity 2016 unlocked. A New Year is only as promising as one’s perspective towards it is, and we believe that 2017 could be the year that makes every dream come true! We would like to wish each one of you a delightful New Year!