When you want to determine your project’s performance based on KPI’s and earned value, it is critical to obtain a time-phased budget. At each moment you want to be able to compare committed and actual cost data to the planned values. This means that each budget item needs to be scheduled and kept up-to-date with the current baseline plan. The same goes for all changes, forecasts and expected payments, which you can only control when linked to a schedule.
The larger the project becomes, the more effort it takes. Done in tools like Excel, this data handling proves to be quite an effort indeed. You don’t want to spend all your time gathering and formatting incoming data when you could better spend your valuable time on analysis and forecasting. That’s why it is important to have automated interfaces between systems. It speeds up your workflow, prevents mistakes, and makes sure you can report the project’s performance on time for decision making.
Cost Management in Cleopatra Enterprise
Cleopatra Enterprise is a comprehensive solution that offers cost management tools for the full project life cycle. It integrates true estimating, cost control and project analytics in a flexible user-friendly environment.
Cost management starts with setting up the baseline document. This is done by recasting the approved budget estimate in a suitable form that allows for proper analysis, forecasting and reporting. The budget estimate itself can be estimated in Cleopatra using the cost estimating software module. Future changes in costs, hours and quantities can be communicated to the cost management document as well. When executing your project you can easily feedback actual project data back toward the estimation module, establishing a continuous improvement cycle
Interfacing with Primavera P6
When setting up the baseline, the schedule and WBS are synchronised with Primavera. Synchronised, because the budget and subsequent changes, estimated in Cleopatra, can also be send to Primavera P6 in order to schedule them. Other valuable information that Primavera P6 receives and processes, like actuals and remaining units, are brought over to cost management for forecasting purposes. All data transfers can be set up to work completely automated, using the intelligent interfacing functionality of Cleopatra.
With its smart importing capabilities, transferring data from an ERP system is a fast and efficient process. Company specific business rules can be applied to accommodate intelligent exchange of vital financial information. Combining all these powerful features, we get a complete picture of the information flow:
The combination of Cleopatra Enterprise and Oracle Primavera P6 provides an interface that improves the work process: you spend much less time on handling large amounts of data and you are less prone to mistakes. You can now spend your valuable time on the things that really matter: analyzing and forecasting the project’s performance. Bring your cost management to the next level!
Something to add to this article? Contact us.
Accounting is a business language. We can use this language to communicate financial transactions and their results. Cost…
Effective project planning lays the groundwork for success yet challenges often arise beyond the initial blueprint. Among these…
Related resources
Cost Management VS Cost Control
Cost management and cost control are two terms that often get mixed up. If you think about the…
Read blog articleIntegration between cost estimation and cost control
More often than not, cost estimation and cost control are performed by separate divisions of companies or even…
Read blog article