Optimising the five fundamentals of project-centric management is key to greater business efficiency and benefiting from new opportunities during the global downturn and beyond, according to IFS.
Based on 25 years of experience in developing software that supports project-centric businesses, the global enterprise applications company is advising businesses to bring down the barriers inherent in traditional organisational structures to adopt a project-centric approach. It has identified time, risk, cost, cash and resources as the five key performance measures a business must track in order to improve efficiency and remain agile in a globalised marketplace.
Traditional organisational structures and systems make understanding real-time operational situations very difficult, delaying corrections to resourcing and supply, costing the business money and making it almost impossible to decide whether an opportunity will ultimately be profitable. Software applications that record, monitor and optimise these five fundamentals and encourage collaboration are proven to help a business become more agile and better able to respond to global and local challenges.
Structuring a business around a network of integrated projects—rather than outmoded fixed departmental or geographic silos—is fundamental for success, IFS says. The approach enables companies to move from being departmentally constrained to truly embrace end-to-end processes. This provides managers with greater and faster visibility of progress, enables risks to be managed more closely and allows adjustments to be applied instantly, it explains.
“Both employees and organisations are demanding real alternative ways of working that match the changing needs of the 21st century economy and the shorter term imperatives of the downturn,” Ian Fleming, managing director, IFS, Middle East, Africa and South Asia, says.
“Businesses require project-centric capabilities that remove the old-fashioned constraints. Managers need to be able to assemble and re-assemble the best mix of people, assets and resources for particular projects, and employees are demanding ‘individualised’ systems that mirror the realities of their changing work and personal lives.”
IFS has been working closely with its customers in diverse sectors including manufacturing, construction, utilities and oil and gas. The customers include Hertel, Heerema Fabrication Group and Babcock Marine. IFS supports business processes based on project-centric fundamentals.
“The construction and contracting industries have long been project-focused, configuring and re-configuring the whole organisation, contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers to deliver to exacting timeframes and contractual obligations. In order to succeed in the current business environment, CEOs of businesses in many other sectors must adopt a similar approach,” Fleming added. “This will allow a business, whichever market it is in, to be agile enough to respond to the constantly changing risks that result from today’s volatile economic climate.”
IFS has over 600,000 users across seven key vertical sectors: aerospace and defence; automotive; high-tech; industrial manufacturing; process industries; construction, service and facilities management; and utilities and telecom.