Project Reporting: Quality over Quantity
Let’s face it, most project managers in small- to mid-sized AEC firms wear many hats. Most likely, your team consists of Engineers, Architects, Design Professionals, RLS Professionals, and various other technical and professional designations. Often, they also have Project Manager responsibilities. After years of experience working with AEC firms, my guess is that those team members are not only juggling all their project responsibilities but also assisting with client management and staff development.
Simply put – your project managers are swamped and their time is precious.
Project Report = Project Success
One of the most valuable features of the Deltek Ajera software is that it offers “real-time” reporting to your team. Having this type of visibility into projects is not only invaluable for project success, but it also makes life much more manageable for the harried project manager. Implementing a robust reporting tool is essential for project managers to keep things running on-time and on-budget. Ajera offers standard reports as well as dashboard reporting with easily customizable widgets. And, while the rich offering of reporting options in Ajera is one of its many benefits, for some users, it makes it easy to overdo a good thing.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Reporting is a fantastic way to provide your team with lots of valuable information in an easy to understand format. But, report overload can confuse and dilute the data; or even worse, results in your employees ignoring the reports altogether. With all the great reporting options in Ajera, how do you select the right one for your firm, and avoid unintentionally offering too many to your team?
Out of the box, Ajera’s standard settings provide access to many reports in the PM (and other) security roles. Most reports in their standard format require a bit of old-fashioned “fiddling with” via the Customize button, to provide meaningful results. Since your average Project Manager isn’t going to remember how to set the options or understand the technical accounting terms in the options, they may become frustrated and avoid the reporting tool altogether. In fact, I’ve been in several firms where project managers confide that reporting is too challenging or they don’t trust the information being pulled.
My diagnosis? They are suffering from report overload.
Next Steps
I’m happy to report some good news! There are many easy solutions that your firm can apply to get rid of report fatigue once and for all. We’ll be covering them in our monthly Deltek Ajera Virtual User Group Meeting. Join us for this free monthly meeting to find out some simple steps to providing meaningful and easy to use reports for your team.
