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we'll go ahead and get started thank you all very much for joining us today we're going to be covering the project service module of dynamics crm this is an incredible addition for any organization looking to be able to manage long-term project deliveries which can apply to many different industries including construction through what we do here as software developers and we're actually going to walk through a number of examples you're going to show how to be able to maximize the capability of this exciting module let's go ahead and begin what we're going to accomplish today is an overview of the system all of its components and how each intertwines secondly we'll be looking at how that actually benefits the operations how this module will actually increase visibility and organization resource allocation milestone billing allowing customers to be able to be better serviced and better informed with less overhead on being able to deliver these projects will take a look at when is the best time to use project service and also we'll get into the nuts and bolts about how to actually use the project service itself including building projects the tasks dissociated milestones we'll look at automated resource allocation soft booking and hard booking look at time tracking and how individuals who are assigned to a project we're able to say that they've completed their tasks and how that actually rolls into invoicing and then also we'll take a look at the feedback loop being dashboards there's already a couple out-of-the-box dashboards included with this module but of course if you're familiar with the dynamic CRM platform you know that whenever you have data within the system you can always create your own customized dashboard to reflect the KPIs that are specific to your needs finally we will also look at who lily is involved in the project service lifecycle it's not always going to be something like salespeople or marketing so well identify exactly who this is going to benefit within your organization first let me give you a little bit of an introduction about me I've been doing business analytics for 14 years a wide variety of industries actually started from a snack delivery organization and that was my first foray into the business analytics and as I became a consultant I have been around the world looking at multinational multi departmental type of organizations where they need to have visibility restrictions between each department and so forth as well as conglomerates within multiple organizations trying to share information as they need to operate from one platform I've been doing database architecture and management for the last eight years starting with very simple systems to becoming proficient with sequel which is the backend for dynamic CRM and i also have five years of CRM experience specifically so setting up the architecture on these types of platforms how everything fits in for operations how to do the collaboration workflows and everything else that's associated with the dynamics platform I have been system administrator and a consultant for the last five years from my education that carry an MBA and multiple certifications in both Dynamics CRM as well as the ancillary systems that expand the capabilities of the platform let's take a look at the overview project management now often if you don't have a single platform to be able to operate from collaboration with team members allocation of appropriate resources scheduling time monitoring forecasting of costs understanding with the delivery of the timelines are going to be for milestones tracking all this information is very difficult to do you can become a very inefficient process which has drops in productivity as well as a lack of communication to customers which make them feel that the organization is not organized we want to eliminate all of those challenges we want to breathe confidence from our customers into this platform so let's take a look at some of the benefits here from project service we are actually able to use subject matter experts to build project timelines which are then allocated to very detailed quote so when we're looking at deploying software for example and we're looking at the different types of customizations analysis development deployment training all of these different sections we're able to have a very detailed understanding of what the resource costs will be what the timeline will be we're able to deliver all of this within a quote so that way the customer has a complete understanding of what they're evaluating instead of having unknowns this increases that customer confidence as well as gives everybody on task we also have assisted resource scheduling so when trying to decide who to apply to a task within a project looking at different schedules and seeing who has what certifications or capabilities to be able to deliver on that project can be very cumbersome and disorganized because everything is within CRM with this platform we are able to automate that process we're able to have complete visibility and collaboration as soon as somebody is assigned to a project task there then communicated and involved in a group which allows them to be able to share documents notes as well as activities that are going on in regards to that project we can also forecast or profitability so we can take a look at is this going to be a lucrative project for us so that also helps us with the quoting process for many times people have gone into projects where they had underestimated the cost internally and this type of a platform gives you the ability to have the foresight before you engage with that project about exactly what resource costs they will be involved to be able to deliver that project that product or whatever it is and that way when we're going to the quoting cycle we can estimate those things very accurately and make sure that everybody is in the same page we also are able to do all of this from a centralized location so this enhances visibility as well as management giving project managers the ability to reach out to different resources within the organization and assign them to the tasks and also see the feedback as to whether or not they're actually available to be able to get on to that project so sometimes there may be extenuating circumstances in which resources allocated to a different some type of effort that's going on maybe some type of change has come in a previous project with this type of system you're able to see exactly what they've been assigned to at any given time and it allows for incredible visibility into the project planning process so let's take a look at when this actually applies now as mentioned when doing construction projects or anything of a lengthy period of time which requires multiple people in multiple stages with different milestones that are going to be accrued throughout the project delivery cycle this is a great application for that for our particular needs here we deliver CRM implementations or ERP implementation which require analysis and development design deployment training is all part of any given project lifecycle this allows a huge advantage for us to be able to do that within this type of a platform it also gives us the ability to schedule the specialized resources that are needed at each stage within that project delivery so for example when looking at doing any development work we need to have customer custom programmers that are certified and capable to be able to deliver quality code making it an efficient system and those three sources can cost a little more than somebody who's doing Visio diagrams for example and so what we can do is have the specialized resources required for each stage applied to the appropriate time during that project lifecycle well when we actually look at the milestones with an our projects we're able to set up contractual billing this gives us the advantage of being able to define at what stages we're going to actually be expecting payment for the services provided as we go through a six-month long engagement delivering all the different aspects to one of our software solutions also we have the ability for both products and services to be allocated within the project build so that allows us to have product line items such as licenses for different types of software as well as the different resources that we use to be able to create that software environment that's going to be useful for an organization so let's go ahead get into the nuts and bolts now we're going to actually take a tour through the environment itself we're going to see how we can actually perform in the CRM platform using project service first we begin with designing a project template this gives us a cookie cutter model on ability to create certain tasks and timelines with contract milestones that we can apply to multiple projects so as we acquire new contracts new customers who would like to have the CRM implementation we're able to use that same template over and over again and modify that template as needed but it really gives us a leg up to get started from that type of a template after the customizations of those tasks we can then provide quilt estimates for the project so this allows SME subject matter experts to clearly identify all of the expected costs within the entire project delivery and be able to roll that up into a quote that then is presented to the customer now the project itself has what's called a work breakdown structure or a Gantt chart we'll take a look at this in just a moment but it's a graphical representation of exactly what we're going to be doing at any given time and we can create dependencies and predecessors we can do Co Co stream work we're simultaneously multiple things are happening and we can also organize all those teams that everybody is sharing the information as they go throughout the build and everybody is on the same page about where they are with their tasks going to assign resources using the soft book and hard book method we're also going to take a look at the skill allocations for our resources available so I think that's going to be very exciting for you we're also going to be able to take a look at how we can track the project progress and where we are with the cost estimates as we deliver on those we're also going to look at how approval of time and expenses is performed and then finally how the invoicing based on contract requirements of mouse and billing looks like within the CRM system and as mentioned we're also going to be taking a look at the feedback loop so all of these activities are being tracked within one platform and that gives us the ability to do dashboard reporting as well as monthly weekly quarterly reporting that static but dashboards are a big advantage of dynamics crm so we're going to take a look at exactly how those work so let's go ahead and go into our CRM environment after familiar with CRM this is the typical dashboard layout we have our drop-down of the different main categories for this environment being sales service marketing project service and field service so if we take a look at project service you can see that this is the module that we've installed within the environment to facilitate doing project development and deployment from project templates as mentioned you're able to create a work breakdown structure which has the layout of all the different tasks expected for a certain type of delivery so we use an agile method here for our project delivery which is also in combination with Microsoft surestep surestep as the standard process of doing analysis design development deployment and maintenance but we've combined that as a hybrid to agile so that way we can move flexibly through the development process and take the low-hanging fruit as it becomes available as well as adjust what our overall target point is as customers sometimes change their mind about what they actually want to be able to get so in this template we take a look at the work breakdown structure and this will actually show is again a Gantt chart that has that same type of deployment or looking at the sprint one versus sprint 2 and here's our analysis and discovery our design our development and end and testing let me go to training and then project completion and on the right hand side we have this Gantt chart which then shows our dependencies with the yellow lines so this predecessor of this task is actually the project kickoff so that's actually going to bring us into sprint one now once we're in sprint one we can go through the different tasks required but as you can see once we have the design in place we can do development and testing simultaneously because as we create different sections within the software we can then do the testing right after it's done so we might not build out the entire platform all at once and do testing we might just want to build out say the sales section and then do some testing for how the business process flows and collaborations and other workflows kickoff so this gives us the ability to have that flexibility as well as the visibility throughout now once i have project templates and i know that i'm going to be applying them to the different projects that i'm going to be creating i can then go ahead and go into projects which will show all of the different ones that i have on as an active project now of course i can have ownership this is much like any other CRM sub-grid where I've got all the different projects listed I can do a filtered view I can change the columns of the information that's presented and I can also sort off them additionally we have the ability to filter based on the first letter within the project name I've got one here that I'd like to show you so is an ERP implementation I think this is very indicative of the type of things that we do here so I wanted to illustrate for you how this would actually work for us to deliver for you a project with all the visibility that we expect this is a modern day and age we have the capability to have collaboration visibility and granular breakdowns exactly everything that's going to be a part of our project so here this is again our Gantt chart this is actually built specifically for this erp deployment and as you can see i can add tasks i can delete I can make parents or children of these tasks so that way they fit within different categories I can move up and down the sequence of them I can also change the dependencies of them here I can take a look at what type of view to I need for the different tasks is there completed that way if I need to get a clear picture about exactly how many hours we respect to be utilized for staffing plan I'm able to do that using that filter now once i'm ready i'm able to generate the project team and this is based on the different roles that i have assigned so for example if i open up this task you can see that I've got this role setting here and all of these rolls are predefined within the platform so I know that I have resources that will be used in all of the different developments that we do and by assigning those different roles I can then allocate those two individuals within my organization and I'm able to say that each one of these tasks has a role that's going to be filled now once i'm ready i can generate the project team and this will look through all of those roles and find all the people in my organization to match up for each one of these tasks this is what I'm talking about as far as an advantage for being able to organize your team sufficiently and not have to worry about looking through outlook calendars and whether or not they've been updated to see if people are available oh this is looking through the entire organization so it will be scrubbing all of the parameters being also certifications which is listed in our resource skills and then also the role types that have been applied to the people that I have on staff and while this is going through i also want to show you we have the ability to look at all the different hours that are required for each one of these groups so i have eight hours allocated for project proposal and so that's going to roll up into this project planning phase of 284 so what this means is that i can create milestones at each one of these different phases and I would be expecting to have 640 hours of paid services delivered on integration phase for example now my project team has been generated you can see my resources have now been populated it shows me for each one of the rules who is involved on this project and I can click ok now let's take a look at what our resource utilization looks like this is where I have my team and who when and where they're assigned to different projects now we've set goals in this system as being 75% utilized and that's because we have to have the flexibility to move people around to different projects as they come in we can't have people one hundred percent booked otherwise we wouldn't be able to deliver on new projects until everything else is closed down so we have this margin where people are expected to be able to be used for a certain capability if I hover over any one of these people within my organization I'm brought this pop-up which shows me the skills that they have the utilization including target their billable hours their non billable hours and what that percentage of non utilized is I have the cost rate which is how much it's costing me to have this person available to be able to apply to different projects then I have my bill rate which is what's going to actually be used to deliver that quote so i can say that if somebody for example is utilized for 10 hours and I'm billing for a hundred and fifty dollars I'm going to say that's going to be it $1,500 is going to be applied to the quote in this way we can be very granular very specific and also we're able to be protected and we're able to protect our customers now when looking at project contract milestones we can take a look at how the billing will actually be used to deliver two customer as we walk through the project so as we're inside of this lube and grease erp project and I look at my work breakdown structure I'm able to identify which areas are going to be milestones now by selecting from the different categories we can have milestone billing and that would actually say that this test once it's identified as being a milestone moment with then trigger on the dashboard that we have gotten to all the various stages and have contracting invoicing delivered to the customer for this project automatically when we're looking at how all this is coming back to us we can take the practice management dashboard which shows us the actual projects that we're billing for so this gives us a monthly view of all the different costs to me the billable resources utilization I've also got cost to the customer what we're actually billing what our margins are for profitability also I'm able to see different types of views be it a month over month or quarter over quarter I can do comparables from year over year now I can also take a look at my teams so that last dashboard was showing how we've got different billable Ruiz are different bills to be expected we're going to be expecting certain revenue and we're able to monitor the performance of our fiscal capabilities and then from here I can actually take a look at my teams and see where do I need to apply people more so in this upper left I've got it listed by role and here we have developer functional consultant program manager and technical consultant so this then shows me what I have for the different types of resource allocation for this person for this for this type of technical consultant role so it gives me the ability to do to drill into all of the different parameters that are actually driving all of this great data so this way i can see whether or not i'm for example need to hire more functional consultants or if i have too many program managers for example I can also not only look at it for individual role types but it can also look at month-over-month so this helps me with forecasting and trend planning on the upper right we actually have a gold chart so this is going to show us what the target utilization percentage is being at seventy-five percent and where each one of these rules are falling into that target so I always want to maintain a healthy utilization parameters so that way I don't overwork the teams and I know that my projects are going to be delivered on time and under budget also have a section here which keeps me in the loop about any type of activities opportunities task completions anything that's going on within any one of the projects I can follow these records I can follow people and I'm able to have that as a scrolling dashboard that allows me to stay in touch with everything that's going on we had a phone call record or a contact record that's been created anything that I want to be able to be informed about I can keep here on my dashboard that's a great way to use CRM is to always come to a splash screen that's going to give you high-level information as well as granular information and allows you to drill in even farther so you can really understand how to best work your day now we also have from our resource availability the capacitors C on a calendar view what times people have booked in general not just for specific projects but their overall utilization by person now when they're actually assigned to a project you can automatically create a group within office 365 which allows for everyone to be able to collaborate and keep the data off of CRM which allows for much more cost-effective storage of all those images and reports so that way we're only using CRM to organize and collaborate not to store the information now I've got the ability to change how I'm looking at my utilization as well or my resource so I'm able to drill away from a calendar but actually see what they are capable of what the utilization rate is and then also my costs and my bill rate for any one of these people and I'm able to also instantly chat or email them from this screen with a VoIP interface you can even make a one click dial so that way you can call them to find out about if they have something that they may be prospecting on that hasn't actually been hard booked now when you're actually setting up these systems you're going to be looking at resource roles as we talked about as well as resource skills and all of this is customizable so you're not locked into any type of pre-formatted limitation about who is in your system or what is involved with any type of skill set so this forum that's coming up complete completely customized and also drive workflows so as for example I've got a characteristic type of a skill and I've got the description as agile methodologies when that is brought when that skill set is brought into a project i can have workflows kickoff which would then allow for collaboration with other people with this agile methodology skill set so that way they can feed off one another outside of an individual project to be able to help build those teams and increase the synergy and intellectual sharing for all of your organization so that means now instead of having one really good resource and a couple mediocre ones and maybe some people that are coming up to speed it allows for the sharing of knowledge from your experts throughout all of the organization for people who are fulfilling those types of roles within any of your given projects so we're also able to identify when people are actually going to be available so that way you don't book them outside of their actual available work time so if for example you have holiday schedules or nobody's working on weekends you can set these things in place so that way you always know exactly how long they're going to be working on the project so if it's 80 hour cycle that you have somebody assigned to for a specific task it's not going to accumulate those 80 hours outside of business operating hours now when somebody is assigned the task and they want to indicate that they've completed it there's multiple ways that they can do that they can do it from the 0 mobile app they can do it from Outlook and they can also do it from the project itself so from an operating dashboard for a project resource somebody is able to go to their specific dashboard for them and see exactly what they need to address that day so if we take a look at the dynamic serum overview dashboard you'll see there's several activities assigned so you're able to deliver to the person who is assigned to each task that would be able to be able to address whatever is needed for that day so that way they can deliver on the project now in addition as a manager you're able to see as people are completing those tasks inside of your management dashboard my apologies with resource management dashboard would give us what people are actually doing and again you can customize these so if I have a team for example that's working underneath me and I'm running multiple projects and I know that I've got several people listed who have expected tasks and completed tasks you'd be able to track those as they complete them as an aggregate as well as drill into those different people's activities to determine what has been done per project now time when these tasks are completed are also approved so a project manager is able to control billing in a way that is not available through other types of systems without a laborious process in this we're able to have the task be a sign is being completed and then it's delivered to the project manager who can then verify that the code is working or that it has been tested that the documentation is adequate and then allow for that time to be approved which then applies towards the contract invoicing so not only are you able to have visibility into what's projected costs are but you're also able to control the quality of the work all the way through and not bill your customers for work that it will have to be redone or wasn't expected wasn't to expectations anything along those lines you're able to make sure that anything that goes to the customer is controlled now when we're looking at opportunities and how they turn into our projects we can actually set it up so that as they go through the business process flow for the opportunity and they get to a certain section in which they're ready to be able to create a project you can simply have a drop-down of the different types of project templates that you like and then close that opportunity as one and that can actually trigger the creation of your project pulling over all the information about the product line items and anything else that's set forth in that type of a project so once you're in the actual project itself you would have visibility to all of the product lines that are being used as well as the different services so here we have an example of what the project contract fields be where the project quotes related to this looming greasy our PR and the associated opportunity you can look at the team that's going to be fulfilling all the work and you can also see the status of where you are within the project deliverable so this again gives you granular visibility to the performance of your team's the specific actions that are being conducted how much is left to do and also control costs so if for example you notice that you're coming to the end of your budget and you haven't delivered the entire project at you're able to move resources around control what invoices are sent to your customers and that way we can create long-term relationships by providing the service as expected for the expected cost now upon project completion all that information is then rolled into the ERP systems so therefore you have the ability to integrate the CRM directly into a GP platform for example and allocate all of your accounts receivable and accounts payable through that system completely seamlessly so therefore there's no manual entry there's no fat finger errors you're able to ensure that everything is clean in your data set and that there's no over there's no oversight there's no mrs. within your process now we also have different types of financial capabilities within CRM itself so if for example you want to be able to have your invoicing created within CRM system instead of an ERP you're able to do that and generate it with one click document generation using typical word templates you're also able to have those in fact automatically sent with your logo and your links all of the different pieces that you would want for your invoices that way your customers are seeing a quality deliverable and also a professional invoice to be paid as you can see we have various transaction categories and expense categories so when we're looking at say for example travel expenses to be able to go on site do the analysis we can allocate for those outside of the actual project timeline so if for example there needs to be some cross-country travel and we need to be able to roll that into our overall project costs based on contract parameters we're able to allocate those within the invoicing process the contracting process and allow for people to see exactly what's been spent where now these statuses actually allow you to create a report that can then be delivered to the customer and you can do this both from a printed report as well as through the customer portal so for example I would be able to provide all of the data that you see here in regards to this looming grease ERP deployment and be able to have somebody bit give them access to be able to log in with their own secure login with username and password which would then give them up to the minute information about the various tasks and where you are in the stage of the actual project deliverables and how much of the overall budget has been consumed without even having to wait for the weekly meetings that typically happen with project managers usually these projects are set up where you're spending time and money to be able to have a project manager sit down and give you updates about where you are within the project with this platform we can empower our customers to go in and see for themselves at any given time where they are with that project which eliminates the cost and it eliminates the lag time in seeing where you are with that project this this is an incredible feature which enables customers then also do other projects in tandem and have the ability from our deliverable to adjust their timelines for other types of projects that they might have that would have dependencies or relationships to this project timeline that we're working on for them and again the ability for us to be able to do this without actually creating any costs or lag times for those meetings is a large advantage and it would be for anybody who adopts this type of system to their to their operations so let's take a look at how to get started so a quick architecture overview starts the process off with marketing this is the funnel that brings in all the new leads which then become opportunities which then you become projects now when these opportunities are converted to projects again we can use the quoting built up from the project timeline itself and are able to deliver that to our customers with visibility into all the different resources that are going to be used at what levels are going to be used how many hours are going to be used and also when they expect to have their milestones completed by outlook integration allows for the task completion directly from the task list out of outlook so when they check the flag saying that they've completed a task that feeds directly back into CRM so that way that tasks within that work breakdown structure is showing as being complete and the billable time is then set for approval finally an external ERP system integrates for the billing based on deliverables so as we're actually accruing these invoices and we're getting this payment collected those payments for them being received through an ERP system which there's a wide array of ERP systems which can integrate with CRM however Microsoft Dynamics GP is something that is out-of-the-box integrated and has the ability to save time and money with that development and gives you a fully functional ERP platform that you can run an enterprise level business off of so as a quick recap here what we have for project services it was released in may of this year so this is brand new and the quicker you can get this into your operations the faster you're going to get ahead of your competition and be able to deliver projects on time under budget with greater visibility to not only all the people internally within the organization but also to the customers as well the project management UI is integrated directly into CRM dynamics as you saw so this gives us a seamless training experience for anybody who uses this system everybody is working in the same environment of course this is also available within the office 365 environment for integration into other ms systems such as SharePoint as mentioned before or skype for business when you want to use the VoIP calling or there's other things that are coming on the horizon to such as madeira so for a small enterprise an ERP online system this is a great boon for a lack of start-up costs ease of deployment and automatic integration there's just nothing else out there like that finally it captures all of the time and the progress of the project all the resources that are associated and allows for the contractual billing to be set up for any type of milestone billing or under task completion or under maybe it's a phase that's going on you can define how you want to build your customers you can set the expectations and you can deliver on them so now I would like to open it up for a little Q&A we've covered quite a bit and I'm sure that there's some questions out there since I can workflows be triggered by project service data absolutely this is a fantastic feature where any of the data that's captured within the system can be used as a trigger or be used as captured for delivery of a workflow so when you want to be able to save for example call out to different management teams upon completion of projects and be it that you want to set it up on a dashboard or you want to notify customers automatically about different types of milestones so that way you could set forth in the system whenever you get through the analysis phase you want to be able to give a project delivery report to your customer so they don't have to log in to the customer portal to see where they are with that project you can actually set all that up automatically which then saves the project manager lots of time trying to track down all the different tasks that were part of that analysis phase ensure that they're all completed get all the reporting together for the actual deliverables be it Visio diagrams or requirements lists and then have all of that pre packaged into a report that's then delivered to the customer without any further work than the initial setup this is a great feature of having everything within Dynamics CRM then also it looks like can project service would be used in conjunction with field services yes actually this is a great advantage again to having all of these things within the dynamic CRM platform we're able to take a look at how when a project is going through a delivery cycle say for example a solar panel installation array we're looking at how they would need to schedule for the the pylons to be put in for the ground mount the racking system to be built on top of it the solar panels to be installed on top of the racks and then for everything to be plugged together so this would allow for those teams to be automatically scheduled as you go through that project life cycle this again gives you all the visibility and all the control throughout the entire process and automates the communication to your field teams that way they're able to then deliver on that installation we have one more here how is project license what is the cost great question so it's actually a thirty-five dollars a month per user that would actually be part of the project delivery so once you actually have Dynamics CRM in place is just an additional user license fee for the people who are going to be involved in development or any part of these project life cycles as well as project managers so that doesn't include sales staff for example or marketing staff you're able to limit the licensing requirement based on who's actually using the features of project service okay well here's some additional resources for you to be able to follow up please check out our blog we're always updating it we're providing a lot of quality content that helps explain these types of products as well as giving some tips and tricks on how to use them what long-term engagement with our customers we want them to be very satisfied with what they get from us so that they'll refer us and also come back to more as their business grows there's also what's new guide available for all the projects service features and then also a set-up guide that helps you be able to get the basics of how to be able to operate these systems on your own where our goal here is to empower you to be able to take control of your business we want to be able to set you on the path in the right direction and then be there for you whenever you need help so thank you all for attending here's my contact information please feel free to reach out to me anytime any one of our account executives as well love to be able to talk to you about how we can make your business grow be successful more efficient basically make things better all around