There’s a vast echoing gap between the mindset of accounting and project management in most businesses. It has a lot to do with time: The PMO works with a today-and-tomorrow mindset – getting the project done, on time, to specs.
“Across our 10 branch offices, last quarter sales are up 7%, on average.” This statement tells you exactly nothing. But it sure sounds like good news in a management meeting. The problem is that seldom does anyone ask the right
Lean is not just for manufacturers anymore, it’s an important concept for integration companies to start thinking about. Lean Methodologies bring together thinking about the delivery of customer value within the … … Read More
Accurate and real-time data is critical to proper cash flow management, and under-billing long-term projects is a leading cause of cash crunches Never fund customer projects with your own money. It’s great advice that can be difficult to heed, especially
Are you good at making decisions? Good management is about making clear and timely decisions so that the business runs smoothly and profitably with as little disruption and drama as possible. Three common deterrents to clear decision making by company
Like it or not, integrators are in the business of selling labor. There came a point in my 40+ year professional sales career when I stopped whining about how “I can’t sell labor for that” due to burdened internal costs.
The project closure process, which as project managers know, simply means closing out a project at its conclusion, can happen many ways. Some project closures are positive; many are negative. In my experience working with many systems integration companies,
What are the best estimating methodologies? In Part I of this series, we looked at the myth of the perfect project estimate and discussed how assumptions and risks factor into an estimate. Today, we continue this conversation and examine the
Is it better for a project estimate to be precise or accurate? It’s my experience, over hundreds of AV integration projects and hundreds more in numerous industries, that most people believe a precise estimate is more accurate — and that
Why Is Job Costing So Important in 2020? Over the last 20 years, Solutions360 has worked with hundreds of businesses to help apply technology that improves business process management and profitability. One of the most complicated issues that Solutions360 has
If you hear the term “Labor Burden” and you want to glaze over a bit, don’t! Understanding Labor Burden, as applied to the direct hourly cost of your billable labor (Technicians, Engineers, Programmers, Project Managers, etc.), may just change your
There are four ways to measure work in your integration business Quantity First are measures of output, starting with Quantity: how much work was produced. You can usually identify and report the number of units, pounds, or other output measures,
How do you manage and forecast resources in you integration business? “One of the biggest problems we see is that integrators aren’t laying out their projects profitably right from the beginning,” says Brad Dempsey, CEO of Solutions360. One of the
It was the 10th year for Solutions360 at InfoComm 19, and another record week in Orlando! With the championship looming, it was a tough week for our team to be away
If the 9th Annual Integration Business Outlook presented by CI and NSCA is any indication, integrators will be focused on increasing profitability in 2019. Some of the biggest takeaways of the CI 2019 State of the Industry report are that
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