Without BCS we would not be where we are today
User report from ic-solution GmbH
We use Projektron BCS comprehensively. Without these all-encompassing possibilities, we would not be where we are today. The strength of BCS lies in the combination of its many modules. Without BCS, our company would have a need for probably five to six different software applications. BCS simply covers these completely. That makes it very easy for us.
ic-solution GmbH - leading system integrator
Founded in 2009 as a startup by two people, we have established ourselves as a leading specialized system integrator for input management, business process management and robotic process automation using artificial intelligence. Our team of now 18 employees develops and sells customized software solutions that serve the digitalization of all business processes.
Our products include multi-channel input management solutions to connect different input channels such as scan, fax, email or social media using OCR and AI. The incoming transactions are converted into processable information for our customers' business processes, ERP system or ECM solutions. We offer our solutions on-prem, but now also increasingly in the SaaS segment.
Our solutions are valued across all industries and are used in manufacturing (mechanical engineering, automotive suppliers) as well as in banking and the public sector. The size of our customer companies ranges from small medium-sized enterprises with 20 employees to global corporations with up to 80,000 employees. We currently handle well over 100 projects per year with a wide variety of durations, ranging from two days to three years.
Word, Excel and SharePoint were no longer enough
Prior to the BCS implementation, we organized all of our work processes and collaboration using common Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and SharePoint. However, as our team grew in size and the complexity of our services increased, we quickly reached a point where these applications could no longer meet our needs.
First and foremost, we lacked a system to track our billable services. Lists that we had previously kept in SharePoint were simply no longer sufficient. So we started looking around for cloud services for time tracking. However, it quickly became clear during our search that our needs in the foreseeable future would require much more functionality than these tools could provide. If we were going to track our hours worked, it seemed reasonable that the software would also allow for invoicing.
Since we not only provide services and bill for hours worked, but also bill for products and maintenance contracts, the system logically also had to be able to fully capture our range of products and services.
It quickly became clear to us that we needed the much-vaunted "eierlegende Wollmilchsau" - a software solution that is capable of mapping all the processes relevant to us. Pure project management functions were not enough. It was important to us that the software could also map the entire sales process from quoting to invoicing as well as our expense and time recording, both external and internal processes. The introduction of several specialized individual solutions was never an option for us.
BCS as the "eierlegende Wollmilchsau" (egg-laying willow sow)
A key criterion in the selection process was that the software had to be purely web-based. Everything had to be accessible via the browser, since we work internally partly with macOS and partly with Windows. In addition, our team works decentrally - about 50% of the employees are not in the office.
We became aware of Projektron BCS through our collaboration with Westernacher Products & Services AG. As part of our collaboration, we recorded our time worked in their BCS instance. Our interest was aroused and an initial search showed: BCS combines all the functions that we just needed. In addition, Projektron is a German company, which is advantageous in that local regulations and legal peculiarities, such as in expense reporting, vacation requests, or invoicing (example XInvoice), are optimally implemented by the software.
Consequently, we introduced Projektron BCS in 2015 and are still enthusiastic users today. All of our employees use BCS on a daily basis.
At the beginning, we opted for the SaaS variant of BCS.start, which is low in administration and requirements, in order to be able to use all functions as quickly as possible. In order to be able to use the full range of functions as quickly as possible, some colleagues attended the various training courses offered by Projektron GmbH and then trained the rest of our team in BCS use. To this day, we regularly refresh the knowledge of all team members.
Only over time and with daily use did the desire to make our own adjustments and configurations to our BCS instance, for example, to add or rename fields, increasingly arise. Therefore, in 2019, we switched to the on-prem license purchase model without any complications. In 2020, we switched just as smoothly from BCS.start to the full version Projektron BCS. We have been pleasantly surprised by how little administration has been required to run our own BCS instance so far and enjoy the additional configuration scope offered by the license purchase variant.
BCS Deployment: We work with BCS and Microsoft 365 100%!
The introduction of BCS paid off quickly and sustainably, especially in the area of team collaboration on projects. The central management and planning of projects ensure that processing is structured, coordinated and plannable. Everyone involved has central access to the latest information, knows who is responsible for which tasks and can see the processing status. This is an absolute prerequisite, especially for our software development. But it also makes sense for our finance department to see at a glance whether a delinquent invoice has already been dunned or not.
Projektron BCS is ultimately the reason why we have changed our internal organization from a chaos system to a company structure that is organized from the ground up. This has had a considerable impact on our service quality. Thanks to BCS, the responsible employee is reminded in good time when a deadline relevant to him is approaching, for example when a customer's maintenance contract is due to expire. The customer service representative in charge can thus take the initiative in good time. Ultimately, this benefits not only us, but also our customers.
The BCS ticket system plays a central role in our day-to-day work. We not only use it externally to provide a support portal for our customers, but we also generate an enormous number of tickets internally. For example, an order ticket is generated for every incoming order. This way, all information and the processing status are tracked throughout the entire processing process up to invoicing.
We also rely on tickets in the sales process. We translate a customer question into a sales ticket. We use this ticket to track all to-dos and record the time we spend on them. The ticket history provides maximum transparency about the various agents and the processing history of each individual ticket and makes collaboration in the team much easier.
Since we started using BCS, we also record our working hours with the daily booking. This allows us to evaluate in detail how much time we have spent on the development of a software solution. This, in turn, makes it easier for our sales department to present transparent and well-founded pricing to the customer.
In addition to BCS, we currently use Microsoft 365 in particular, and we are fully operational with these two tools. Therefore, the dovetailing of both tools is an important topic for us. What I personally really appreciate is the appointment synchronization of BCS with Microsoft 365 and the associated possibility of booking times on an appointment.
Even more automated in the future with BCS
We are very happy to have chosen BCS and to have implemented the software. We are very satisfied both with the software itself, which still surprises us positively from time to time with its possibilities, and with the service quality and customer support of Projektron GmbH.
We use Projektron BCS comprehensively. Without these all-encompassing possibilities, we would not be where we are now. The strength of BCS lies in the combination of its many modules. Without BCS, our company would have a need for probably five to six different software applications. BCS simply covers these completely. That makes it very easy for us.
We will soon be looking at automated invoicing. We also plan to link BCS even more closely with other tools. Therefore, we have a test license for the web services in use at the moment, which we will probably buy soon. We would soon like to have tickets or incoming invoices created automatically via a web service, for example. Release processes and status tracking of incoming invoices are also exciting topics that we would like to implement in BCS soon.
