First things first, I work with technophobic luddites. That said, we're (slowly) working our way toward using Sharepoint - in fact, we're going a bit crazy and having a complete reshuffle of the backroom tech., looking at getting Office 365 and (the point of the post) moving accounting, timesheets and resourcing away from Excel...

I used to work at a place that pushed Excel intelligence to crazy levels, it all fed into Sage, drew data from reports generated a web-based timesheet system (ProjectMinder) and it all (appeared) to be very clever. But I didn't set that up (not my skillset) and the girl who did has understandably left for better brighter things - so I can't really quiz her.

So my boss is looking at all the "PIM" software out there; Union Square, Newforma, etc - but I'm sure with a bit of (intelligent) engineering we should be able to do most, if not all, of the things we want to do natively within Sharepoint - especially if we factor it integrated with other MS platforms like Outlook & Project, maybe even InfoPath.

But it's all a bit above/below me - in that I've enough software of my own (architecture wise) to be juggling and managing - but, given they all tie together, I'm involved, and part of the fact finding team. Google returns data-overload on the subject, so I thought I start with you lot to see if you've any (sensibly priced) suggestions/solutions that might suit a 30 strong office.

First question.

What if anything has to integrate. e.g. time sheets to client billing / scheduling?, time sheets to holiday requests etc

Well at present they're all handled individually - and when they need to be compared/aligned/managed they, as best I can tell, are literally done side by side by eye with no field or form informing another.

Of course, it would be easy to say "we'd like it all to integrate!" but realistically, given the vast-knowledge-chasm we're working with, and an abject reluctance to spend money on training or invest any time in improvement, smaller, initial wins, are probably the first on order. But (obviously) it would be good if the functionality can scale in future.

So as a start;

Invoicing/Purchases is/will probably always be handled exclusively from timesheets etc - since our contracts aren't "strictly" time-based.

It would be nice to have annual leave (inc. requests for) and absences relate to the office calendar (even automate out-of-office?)

Resourcing would need to know about annual leave, but (probably) not tracked within the calendar
...with an eye for Project planning (what gets done when by whom) to talk to the calendar (office/project/user)

Best advice I can give you is employ a BA to come in and define your requirements and then come up with a short-list of potential solutions.

If you don't you will buy a short term fix you will then realise its not what you want and cant be made to do what you wish in the future.

Seriously I know its sounds flippant but until you ( your company ) knows what it wants / needs the solution to do then the chances of you spending your money effectively is not good.

I totally get where you're coming from. We've got an IT consultant - but he's more hardware than software (although he's one of the key advocates for change/progress). What's a BA?

+1 And that is what government departments fail to do, so providing excellent examples of failing to resolve these issues before they start the project. Work out exactly what you want and what information you have and how it should work. Planning now saves a fortune later on.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

Oops Sorry
BA = Business Analyst

They will translate between business need and technical specification a solution architect would also do the job. May be if you can hire somebody from Saspro's lot ( or similar consultancy ) for a few days. Money well invested believe me.

All it takes is somebody with an agenda to meet with the key players either in a workshop or individual meetings and tease out of them what they want / what they need, the system to do now and in x period.

( Simon don't forget my 10% if you get the gig )