INTRODUCING SHARPOWL

Like the cobblers shoes, IT specialists are

sometimes the last to apply technology to
their own area. But the benefits that you set
out to deliver to your customers are now
available to you using the power of
SharpOWL PSA.
SharpOWL is a key tool in ensuring the
successful running of multi-layered projects.
Any project could involve consultants from
multiple divisions in your organisation
different types, different skill sets, different
charge out rates and in different locations.
How do you track all the effort, report
progress accurately to your own
management and the clients and, above all,
make sure that every item for billing is
invoiced, cross-charged and recognised
against the project?
You need the power only a PSA system like
SharpOWL can offer.
SharpOWL allows you to:
effectively schedule the right resources
accurately record time and expense
ensure accurate, timely billing and
recovery
measure the financial performance of both
projects and people
SharpOWL enables the collection of a
manage currency exchange rates
comprehensive work-in-progress reporting
report on revenue and profitability by
client, project and other measures
report on resource utilisation and recovery
record achievement against project tasks
and key milestones
communicate essential information
regarding project status and performance
RESOURCE MANAGER
This allows resource managers to monitor
and schedule resources in a real-time, web-
based environment.
Resource Manager's extensive skills
database and seamless integration with
Microsoft Outlook enables the optimal
allocation of people to assignments,
delivering improved business performance
through better resource utilisation.
Resource Manager will provide your
organisation with a comprehensive
understanding of resource and skills
deployment, training and recruitment
requirements to enable better forecasting of
service revenues and resource availability.
The functions offered include:
maintain a database of resource skills,
qualifications and attributes
wealth of information about client
relationships, project performance, project
profitability, resource skills and utilisation.
Our solution will ensure that you make
important strategic business decisions
rapidly and with confidence.
ADMINISTRATION
This module allows users to hold and use
all the information relating to projects, the
clients, the expense types and the analysis
codes that will be used to monitor and
report on the project. The functions include:
maintain client and project information
maintain task and activity dictionaries
configure analysis codes / measures to
support business analysis and reporting
capture and maintain organisation
structure
maintain calendars
maintain resource database, including HR
data such as skills, rates etc.
ACCOUNTING
This handles the finance detail in a project,
including currency, cost and resource issues
that affect the project. The functions include:
monitor progress against budget
measure costs by resource and activity
IRIS
SHARPOWL
FOR IT
CONSULTANTS
The IT industry is incredibly competitive. Making
sure your operation is as efficient as possible is
crucial to maximising your profits.
Ensuring the business traps all cost and revenue
items, re-bills and tracks projects closely requires
the support of a serious business system
designed specifically for your industry.
Whether dealing with the implementation of
standard products as part of a project, or the
building of bespoke systems to a pre-defined
specification, you need to have a system in place
that makes your life easy.
PSA for the IT industry
match skills with availability by reference to
Microsoft Outlook Calendars and SharpOWL
Project Calendars
manage booking requests
understand resource constraints or over
capacity
forecast service revenues
identify recruitment and training needs
TIME AND EXPENSE
MANAGEMENT
This provides an easy-to-use, intelligent web-
based solution that promptly and efficiently
records time and expense information. In-built
workflow provides a streamlined process for
approval by managers and ensures project
costs are readily available for analysis and
billing. The functions offered include:
easy to use, fully automated time and
expense capture
workflow for routing & approval of time &
expense
feeds Billing and other applications
web-based and off-line time & expense entry
reduce admin costs associated with heavy
spreadsheet and paper-based systems
eliminate revenue leakage
monitor fee and non-fee earning activities
BILLING MANAGER
This provides a comprehensive solution for
billing and re-charging. It allows your
organisation to manage all potential billing
scenarios and to define multiple billing
document layouts. The functions include:
maintain rate schedules and project or client
overrides
establish billing schedules and milestones
manage complex billing scenarios
online drafting and editing of invoices
manage write-offs, uplifts and incremental
charges
two-stage approval process
shorten the time to cash cycle
INTRA-COMPANY CHARGING
This complementary module to Billing
Manager, for companies that share resources
across multiple locations or profit centres.
This module uses profit centre logic to allow
each office, company, department or region to
have its own rules for charge rates, resource
cost rates and margins.
All employees or resources are assigned to a
specific profit centre and their intra-company
transfer rate established. Intra-Company
Charging automatically ensures the correct
allocation of cost, revenue and profit when an
employee or resource is deployed on a project
on behalf of another profit centre.
REPORTING AND ANALYTICS
SharpOWL provides reporting, business
intelligence and analytics capability through its
embedded use of Microsoft Reporting
Services and the Vision suite.
A range of standard, configurable reports and
a series of pre-configured database views
enable users or consultants to develop all the
reports they need.
Additionally, SharpOWL provides a fully-
detailed database 'schema' that will allow
users to adopt their own reporting strategy
based upon other widely available business
reporting tools.
SharpOWL reporting is complemented by a
customisable 'Alert management tool, to
automate the delivery of event driven email
alerts to managers, ensuring that they have
the information required to take corrective
action immediately.
Key business information is delivered to your
desktop through a fully configurable web
portal, or 'digital dashboard'. This helps
business managers to make timely and
informed decisions, based on accurate and
up-to-date information.
MS PROJECT INTEGRATION
This allows your project managers to work
with MS Project, offering seamless integration
from your project plans into SharpOWL.
This means that MS Project plans can be
uploaded into the SharpOWL project file. It
allows you to automatically create the project
budget, add bookings on the MS Project plan,
update the Resource Manager calendar and
diary and to adjust actual timelines and time
to complete all through this two-way link
between SharpOWL and the project plan.
BUDGET MANAGER
Budget Manager links to Microsoft Excel,
helping users construct budgets for input into
SharpOWL. It makes the budgeting process
easy and intuitive, whilst providing a high level
of functionality.
The additional power that Budget Manager
offers to SharpOWL users delivers an exciting
range of functions, including the following:
create new and amend existing budgets
monitor changes to budget and forecast
over project life cycle
forecast costs and fees
enhance cash flow management
pull data from reports directly into
spreadsheets
REVENUE RECOGNITION
SharpOWL includes full revenue recognition
functionality, allowing users to perform project
accounting according to their agreed rules.
The system allows your organisation to build
in any revenue recognition rules that you use
and apply them to projects accordingly.
The software will generate revenue postings
based on your rule set and allow you to make
revenue adjustments based on current
knowledge of any project status.
Contingencies can be allowed for with the
revenue only being taken once the agreed
stage has been reached.
Users of SharpOWL working
in the IT sector include:
Aspective
Assureweb
Axios
City Practitioners
Coda
Coexis
Evolving Systems
Fidessa plc
Focus Solutions
Misys
Northgate
Open GI
Rolfe & Nolan
SciSys
Touchpaper
uSwitch.com
SharpOWL solutions that deliver
IRIS Business Solutions (SharpOWL) is a trading name of SharpOWL Software International which is part of the IRIS Group. IRIS, IRIS Software and Services and SharpOWL are trade marks. SharpOWL Software International Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
psa@iris.co.uk
www.iris.co.uk/sharpowl