Companies involved in manufacturing and supplying industrial and commercial building materials, machinery and equipment need to deliver the right products quickly and retrieve real-time information about engineering, schedules, and costs. With decreased margins, increased competition, and the need to be flexible to accommodate changing demands, companies are under pressure to automate and to maximize the use of their assets. The Project Module of Priority, which is fully interoperable with MS-Project, manages the entire project life-cycle: from the loading into Priority of RFI and RFP requirements to the linkage of requirements to project activities from within Priority. Track changes and versions of requirements through the negotiations phase, connect requirements to a project WBS, define rates, generate cost estimates and project time tables, milestone tracking, delivery schedules, proposals, contract reviews, project contract management and the service agreement and its own life cycle all within the system because every aspect of the project is interconnected. Priority will help you coordinate complex projects, manage vendors and subcontractors, and track and maintain procurement, construction operations and material management. Coupled with strong security and tracking capabilities, Priority can help you manage waste materials and maintain safety regulations.
- Industry Targeted Functionality
- Priority Building Materials & Machinery Customers
- Issues & Solutions for the Building Materials & Machinery Industry
Industry Targeted Functionality
- Equipment rental and leasing management
- Service contract management
- Customer service and support management
- Powerful CRM capabilities; tight integration with MS-Outlook for pre- and post-sale activities
- Requirement management with load capabilities from original Word RFP document to Scope of Work (SOW) documents
- Automatic generation of price proposals into Word templates
- Project management strengths coupled with powerful budget and P&L capabilities
- Built-in stage gate processes and issue management
- Contract management supporting various billing schemes - time and materials, milestones, retainer
- Time and attendance as well as expense reporting
- Advanced payment against order balance
- Inventory management with "hard" project allocations
Priority Building Materials & Machinery Industry Customers
Following are some of the customers using Priority in the Building Materials & Machinery Industry:
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Issues & Solutions for the Building Materials & Machinery Industry Interface for weighing trucks as they enter and exit loading areas.
You can interface with a truck-weighing utility as trucks enter and exit loading areas, thereby affecting shipping documents, warehouse transfer documents, customer return documents, and goods receiving vouchers (GRVs).
- Input the (tare) weight of incoming trucks, obtained via the interface, by activating a hot button in the upper-level form of the relevant inventory transaction document. The weight appears automatically in a special Entry Weight column.
- Input the (gross) weight of outgoing trucks by activating another hot button in the upper-level form of the relevant document. The weight appears automatically in a special Exit Weight column.
- The net weight of the transferred goods is calculated automatically when the exit weight is recorded.
- You can run comparisons between the defined standard weight of the goods recorded in the document and their actual net weight.
Priority provides a viable solution that is fully customized for additional components (configurator) sold with truck-mounted concrete mixers and pumps, and for their maintenance.
Managing Projects for Concrete Mold Rentals, Including Monthly AccountingPriority provides a project management module for working at the building site level, and a dedicated accounting module for the calculation of monthly charges accrued.
Managing & Tracking an Extended, Multi-Stage Sales ProcessPriority allows you to manage a sales opportunity as a "sales project."
A sales opportunity consolidates the various tasks that need to be
completed by the different units in your organization.
The sales BPM utility directs the progress of the opportunity through
its various stages, and ensures that relevant personnel are notified of
the opportunity status, as well as any delays that may occur, in an
organized and methodical fashion.
The likelihood of closing the deal is updated according to the odds of
closing defined for each stage of the process, and company managers
receive up-to-date information on the pipeline, in terms of the
financial scope of the deal versus the odds of closing, per sales rep,
customer, and/or product.
In companies where income is distributed over a given time frame (e.g., for rental agreements, ongoing support), Priority enables automatic management of income distribution according to accepted accounting procedures over the period in question (the rental period, the service agreement). By reporting the period covered when billing the customer, the system divides the total income into fiscal periods and at the same time records the payment under Deferred Income. Periodically, you run a program which moves the correct proportional amount from the total Deferred Income payment to the appropriate income entry.
Handling Prepaid ExpensesThere are certain types of expenses which by nature are spread out over a set period of time (e.g. rent, service charges, insurance). Priority allows for the automatic management of these types of expenses, distributing them according to accepted accounting procedures over the expense period (duration of the rental or service contract). By reporting the period covered when recording the vendor invoice, the system divides the total expense into fiscal periods and at the same time records it under Prepaid Expenses. Periodically, you run a program which transfers the correct proportional amount from Prepaid Expenses to the appropriate expense item.
Comparing Vendor Price QuotationsPriority enables you to link a number of price quotes to a purchase requisition (PR) document and compare them, in order to choose the best proposal. In addition, linking the quotes to a PR enables supervision within public institutions, to ensure that the winning vendor for the PR is chosen properly.
Advance Payment InvoicesYou can produce an invoice that will act as advance payment for a sales order, indicating the amount advanced and without indicating order items. Upon finalizing the invoice, the Advance Payment Balance field for the sales order is updated. Each additional invoice opened for this order will have a certain percentage deducted against the advance payment (as per the percentage defined in the order), until its balance is cleared.
Interfacing With MS ProjectYou can create project plans in MS-Project, import them into Priority, and update the Priority project with imported data. MS-Project files are imported from within the project. The program imports the hierarchical activity structure (WBS), including start and end dates, human resources assigned to each activity, and additional details. In Priority's Projects module, you can link activities to planned resources, such as work hours and materials taken directly from the Purchasing and Financials modules. This integration enables the production of Planning and Execution reports at all levels of the project, as well as the Revenue and Profit per Project report.
Automatic Preparation of Project InvoicesPriority enables automatic creation of invoices for projects. Project
customers will be billed for:
- Project payments whose due date has arrived and that have been released for collection
- Reported hours flagged as billable (work hours and reported expenses)
- Customer shipments for projects flagged as billable
- Service calls for projects flagged as billable
- Payments due for service contracts for the project
You can record payments that a customer owes for a project in a special form. Payments can be linked to WBS activities flagged as milestones. When reporting 100% completion of an activity linked to a payment, the payment is released for collection. When invoices for the project are automatically prepared, the program will prepare invoices for the released payments.
Requests for Vendor Price QuotationsRequests for quotes (RFQs) can be generated automatically from purchase requisitions, for select groups of vendors: the preferred vendor for each item, or all vendors that meet a certain standard of quality. The receipt of quotes based on the same RFQ enables you to compare them, select the best one, and convert it to an order.
Taking Proactive (Rather Than Retroactive) Steps to Avoid Deviation from the Purchasing BudgetPriority allows you to activate online budgeting from the very first stages of purchasing. Upon generating a purchase requisition, users will be asked to specify the budget item for which the desired part or service is being requested. Before the PR can be passed on to the organization's purchasing department, the following conditions must be met:
- The budget allows for orders to be placed
- The user is authorized to place orders for the specified budget item
This mechanism accompanies all subsequent purchasing stages, right up to final authorization of the order and submission to the vendor.
Project CostingPriority enables you to record planned costs of human resources and materials for each activity, which are updated automatically from system documents such as journal entries, orders, shipments, invoices, etc. In addition, every activity displays its cumulative cost (the total planned cost of its sub-activities), which is calculated by a special program.
Managing Customer Requests for a Proposal (RFPs) in the Projects ModuleBefore planning a project, record the customer's objectives as you
understand them, or as recorded in the RFP document you received with
the Scope of Work (SOW) document. The SOW document consists of a
numbered hierarchy of requirements and sub-requirements, which can
include extensive remarks explaining each requirement. Each requirement
can also be linked to its own final product, where the price of the
product determines the price of the requirement (e.g., how much a
specific development activity in the project will cost).
During project planning, you can link each activity to the requirement
it is intended to fulfill, and thus calculate the requirement's
projected cost and profit. If you are working with planning versions,
you can then create sub-activities automatically from the sub-levels of
the linked requirement.
SOW documents can be imported from MS-Word files provided by the
customer. You can maintain versions of each SOW document, as well as
versions of the remarks recorded for individual requirements.
Priority allows you to determine project milestones by flagging project activities (WBS) as milestones for payment. Once 100% of a given activity is completed, the planned charge is released and an invoice is created billing the customer. This invoice, which is created as a draft, undergoes a separate authorization process.
Profit & Loss Analysis for ProjectsPriority's Projects module is integrated with all forms and documents in the system, enabling you to view a form displaying the current profitability of any project, including projected profit. This form takes into account all actual and projected revenue and expenses recorded for the project.
Project Planning and ExecutionPriority's Project Management module enables you to calculate planned costs of a project at the activity (WBS) level, including material and labor costs, and subcontractor costs. Total planned costs of all activities are collectively added to the projected cost of the project. As the project progresses and resources are invested, you can receive a continuous report of how well its actual execution conforms to its planning, from the project level down to its individual activities, so that if there is any deviation, it will be recognized as soon as possible.
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