BCS is single source of truth
Success story from ONTEC AG
With Projektron BCS, a solution was recommended to us by a cooperation partner that already fulfilled almost all our requirements out-of-the-box and offered much more besides. We can unconditionally recommend the tool to all companies that work in a project-oriented manner.
Agile and self-learning – ONTEC AG
ONTEC AG is an ISO 27001-certified IT company with over 20 years of experience in the digitalisation of business-critical processes. Founded in Vienna in 2001, ONTEC AG has been one of the leading specialists in the development of individual software systems, managed IT services and AI solutions for business-critical processes for years.
Organisationally, our approximately 100 employees have relied for years on the concept of Holacracy, which stands for agility and self-learning organisation. By distributing authority among role holders with the corresponding expertise, we create a space for personal and professional development with the Holacracy philosophy, which is becoming increasingly important, especially for dedicated specialists.
Our long-standing customers include well-known companies such as OMV, ÖBB Rail Cargo Austria, VNG Gasspeicher GmbH, Gasconnect Austria GmbH and X-Rail AG, which place their business-critical processes in the hands of ONTEC AG specialists.
In the field of developing individual software systems, ONTEC AG has specialised in the digitalisation of complex and critical business processes. Our solutions are high-performance, scalable and can be seamlessly integrated into existing infrastructures.
Project management software for a growing company
Until 2015, we managed our projects with a self-developed database application. Due to our company growth and the increasing complexity of our projects, more and more requirements for this application arose. Our projects are quite diverse in size, shape and turnaround time. They range from 10 person-days, carried out by one person, to 3,000 person-days and a team size of 15 people. We charge a fixed price (at fixed or success-dependent milestones) or periodically (monthly or quarterly) according to time and effort.
Since our software development team was always well occupied with customer projects, we decided to concentrate fully on our core business and went in search of a standard software for project handling. With Projektron BCS, a solution was recommended to us by a cooperation partner that already fulfilled almost all our requirements out-of-the-box and offered much more besides.
In real operation, Projektron BCS convinced
It was important for us that it was a browser-based application that could be adapted to our needs and set up flexibly. A cloud application was out of the question for us, as we wanted to have control over our project data at all times and did not want to give it out of our hands.
So in 2015 we started with the installation and mapping of the first projects for one team. The other departments continued to work with the tool that was to be replaced later. We were thus able to experience Projektron BCS in real operation, and it quickly became clear that we actually found almost all of our requirements fulfilled in an excellent way. As we did not want to go through a lengthy process of searching for and comparing different tools, the management quickly decided to use Projektron BCS and thus replace our self-written tool.
We commissioned a few adaptations and received them promptly. These included the mapping of our postponed business year (01.07. - 30.06.).
Little by little, all teams began to handle their projects in Projektron BCS. We transferred the data from ongoing projects from the legacy system to Projektron BCS. As database experts, this was not difficult for us with the interface provided, and from 2016 all active projects were mapped in Projektron BCS. The projects that had already been completed at this point were not imported.
Use of Projektron BCS
All of our employees and most of our external development partners are currently working with our Projektron BCS. The external partners are limited to time recording their services. In total there are around 100 employees at various locations who record their time and the type of service seamlessly in Projektron BCS. Therefore, a project in our system is typically created long before an order is placed or even an offer is submitted, namely as soon as the first pre-sales services are available. All of our projects, service and maintenance contracts are mapped in Projektron BCS, together with the associated offers, the expenses incurred and the invoices. Internal and non-commercial projects are recorded in the same way as customer projects. The special function that projects including the associated articles can be copied was commissioned by us as an additional function. This is very helpful because we can map our maintenance contracts and service level agreements as annually recurring projects.
The system serves as a “single source of truth” for our controlling and forecasting. The current and expected sales and costs at the project, customer, organizational unit and overall company levels are determined from Projektron BCS. The quality and meaningfulness of our interim results and forecasts have improved significantly through the introduction of Projektron. Furthermore, it was a big step towards transparency of our success metrics.
Projektron BCS is also the source for all attendances, absences, vacations and special holidays of all employees. As a special additional function, Projektron implemented for us that when working time is recorded, compliance with the statutory break times is automatically checked and suggested, which saves each of our employees a little time every day.
Attendance and absence information is transferred directly from Projektron to payroll. The vacation approval process has been extremely simplified and understandable by Projektron. The transfer of the data relevant to payroll accounting is deliberately carried out manually and not automatically, in order to have a control authority on the one hand and, on the other hand, not to grant external service providers access to the system that is not absolutely necessary. Since the data in Projektron BCS is of essential importance to us, we operate the system on-premise on our database in our own data center.
Conclusion and outlook
Overall, we are very satisfied with Projektron BCS on all levels, both the project employees with the simple and uncomplicated time recording, the project and customer managers with the clear planning and evaluations, and the company management with the complete and comprehensible view of everything entire company.
The support was very helpful at first, but now we hardly need it anymore because the system meets our requirements and always behaves as we expect. We have sovereignty over our data and therefore full access to it, so that we can build interfaces ourselves and carry out comprehensive evaluations.
Although our business and our areas of activity change and develop, we do not see the need for major adjustments in the future. We can unconditionally recommend the tool to all companies that work in a project-oriented manner.
