How can integrators accurately forecast in a project-based world?
Welcome to episode two of our OneDashboard video series. Brad Dempsey is joined by Joel Harris of Navigate Management Consulting to discuss this very exciting time for us here at Solutions360.
OneDashboard is one of our biggest innovations, maybe even in the history of the company.
How many times have you heard this in the integration industry?
But I’m too busy to plan. My customers are constantly changing things. I just can’t do it.
If you don’t have time to plan, you should plan on losing money, because that’s what’s going to happen.
“I want to get the owners of this industry to think about how they’re planning their results and then adjusting week by week over the course of the month,” says Harris “For me, the critical planning period is the next 30 days, and that’s what the OneDashboard allows us to do.”
Forecasting by planning
“This was a journey that started with me trying to forecast month end results.” Harris has been working in the systems integration industry since 2000 and prior to that was a professional manager for institutionally held companies.
The most important element of success as a manager for a public company is your ability to forecast,” says Harris. “Shareholders are always demanding that you forecast accurately what the results are going to be.”
The challenge is, how do you accurately forecast your income statement in a project-based world, which is highly variable, depending on how customers change their schedules?
“That’s when we started looking at how to use Q360 as a planning tool, as opposed to a reporting tool, and that’s where life gets really exciting for me,” Harris continues.
The idea of projecting an income statement was a real epiphany. Then instead of being a victim at the month end, 10, 15, 20 days later when the accountants close the books, we’re actually projecting and predicting our business, and adjusting the elements that we can change during the month, to drive our businesses to success.
The issue is that we must be able to make adjustments in order to achieve our targets.
“We thought if we could put a picture together that you could look at for 60 or 90 seconds and really understand where your integration business is going with any amount of accuracy, that would be incredible. That was a big aha moment,” says Dempsey.
Stay tuned for part 3 in this video series, when Brad and Joel give a live demo of OneDashboard.
Watch the full video for all this and much more!
Planning and Forecasting with the OneDashboard
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