How To Choose a Project Management Control tool?

Running a business without management control would be like driving a car without a dashboard: without knowing your speed, if you have any fuel left, or if your engine is overheating.

The role of management control is essential: it allows the proper management of the company and ensures that the project is moving in the right direction to achieve the objectives.
To make this task less tedious and faster, you can use the tools

project management control. While almost all of them include data centralization, real-time data updates or the possibility of integration with third-party tools, other features have been added to this software to save you even more time and help you make the necessary strategic decisions.

But then, how do you make an informed choice among all the software on the market? In this article, we'll provide a guide to choosing the right project management control tool for your business needs.

The Challenges of Choosing the Right Management Control Software

The choice of a project management control tool is a major challenge. Many companies face considerable costs following the adoption of an unsuitable tool. Sometimes, it is even retained, because a new benchmark and testing phase could lead to losses that are difficult to make up. It is therefore in your best interest to study the different selection criteria so as not to fall into these scenarios!

The right complexity level

Choosing your project management control tool involves defining your needs upstream. Indeed, an SME will not have the same needs as a large group, nor the same budget. To reduce your costs, it is therefore essential to select the right tool, both in terms of features and price.

However, you need to consider the long-term vision and consider the scalability of the tool. For example, a tool adapted to an SME can quickly show its limits if the structure grows rapidly. The project management control tool must then be able to support growth.

This type of software usually includes a wide range of features, but not all of these are necessarily useful for your business. Thus, the modularity will allow you to select only the modules (project management, cost monitoring, reporting) that are essential to you. We advise you to select only those that are really essential to your business: the more modules you have, the higher the cost and the more complex it is for your employees to get started.

Generalist ERP or specialized ERP?

Several types of project management control tools exist.

• Generalist tools: highly customizable and adaptable, they adapt

to a large majority of sectors and professions. This is the case with tools such as Pigment or Anaplan.

• Business ERPs: with less customization, they still integrate essential functionalities and are designed to precisely meet business needs. This is the case with Stafiz's business ERP, designed especially for IT Services, consulting firms and service companies.

Integration with other tools

Another aspect to consider is the compatibility of the ERP with the company's current ecosystem. Thus, it is essential to determine the desired scope of the project management control tool. 

• Either the chosen software directly integrates all the functionalities of the sales cycle : from project management to cost analysis, the production of purchase orders to invoicing.
• Or it offers integrations by facilitating links between the different software. This involves the possibility of easily connecting an ERP, a CRM or an accounting management tool.

Explore our integrations

Reliability and information sharing

Two other aspects to consider are governance and collaboration: information must be reliable, designed to flow smoothly within the organization, while providing a high level of security.

• Break down silos with real-time data access

Having access to real-time data is therefore essential: your project management control tool must reduce the latency between the entry (of time, expenses and costs), and the possibility of exploiting this financial information.

This fluidity facilitates collaboration between the different departments, in particular between the operational teams that feed the data, and finance, represented by the management controllers, who use the latter to manage the activity.

• Drive with increased visibility

Project management control software offers data visualization features such as dashboards, which make it easier to manage the company.

The results can thus be shared with managers who use this information as decision-making aids to define the strategy to be adopted but also to think about corrective actions.

• Ensuring traceability and auditability 

Project financial management software has high security stakes. The chosen tool must be able to secure and trace the data, especially in audit, consulting and IT Services where seizures are numerous and carried out by a large number of employees. To ensure privacy and compliance, investing in these aspects is essential.

What Are the Key Features of a Management Control Tool?

Among management control tools, there are three main categories.

1. Forecasting and budgeting tools, focused on planning. They make it possible to establish forecasts and in particular the establishment of a provisional project budget.  
2. Control or analytical software, which allows costs to be broken down and allocated to each department.
3. Management and communication tools. Supported by data visualization, they analyze spending to ensure it is consistent with business goals. In addition, they offer ways to share and communicate with management, who can thus rely on data to make informed decisions. 

Built-in accounting flexibility

As with scope, there are different accounting methods for a project management control tool that need to be compared to make your choice of software.

Define a project accounting strategy

Thus, we recommend that you think about your project accounting strategy, which must take into account the needs of your organization, your sector or your accounting practices or obligations.

For example, a IT Services, a consulting firm or agency does not account for turnover in the same way as a factory specialising in the production of spare parts.

Choosing a revenue accounting method

Indeed, there are at least two methods for accounting for turnover :

• recognition by advancing costs : turnover is recognised as costs are incurred,
• recognition through the valuation of time: the hours spent by employees are counted to estimate turnover.

Choose a method for calculating employee costs

Next, you need to define which method you want to use to calculate employee costs. Do you choose to consider:

• The direct hourly cost? 
• The cost with social security contributions?
• The full cost (premises, training, etc.)?

Choosing a method to calculate allowances

Another question to be clarified is that of the calculation related to the FAE/PCA provisions.

• FAE (Invoices to be established): when the service has been carried out but has not yet been invoiced.
• PCA (Pre-Established Revenue): when the invoice has been collected but the service is forthcoming.

These are all accounting choices that must be reflected in the chosen solution. A relevant project management control tool should take these characteristics into account in order to automatically calculate these allowances and avoid errors. It must offer a representative view of the project's profitability and performance.

Reporting options

While Excel is sometimes used as a reporting tool, it is ultimately difficult to scale. Reduced sharing features, improved ergonomics, lack of real-time visibility: this is a software that can certainly be used, but is not recommended for a large volume of data.

However, project management control software must offer high reporting possibilities. Stafiz, an all-in-one solution, allows you to create different analytical axes and consolidate data under different views: income statement by customer, offer, portfolio, BU.

The different views to track your income statements in Stafiz

As a real control tool, reporting must offer a global vision of a product, an activity, a specific department or the company as a whole at a given time. 

Multi-entity management

The need for multi-entity management concerns situations where a company invoices a service under the same invoice, but several business units or teams within the company perform the service.

This nuance must be transcribed in an accounting manner because the consequences can be serious. Distorted figures could impact the allocation of budgets and bonuses, lead to inappropriate strategic decisions or create internal conflicts.

It is therefore essential to be able to allocate the corresponding share of turnover to the BU concerned. The management of the reallocation of the turnover is essential to avoid distorting the analyses.  A project management control software must therefore offer a consolidated vision with a global view of the project, while offering a fair and reliable reading by BU or team.   

User experience

The user experience must also be considered. 

• Ergonomics: a user interface that is complex to use will require training time, adaptability and may encounter a low adoption rate.
• Decentralized management: Decentralized management and in particular a well-designed management of access rights will further empower project managers, who will be able to monitor the profitability of the projects monitored themselves without having to wait for financial reports from other departments.

Other features: customization, export, and BI

The presence or absence of certain features can help you select the right project management control tool for your needs.

• Customization

Some software takes the level of customization more or less far: while some offer predefined standard reports, others offer the possibility of creating your own personalized reports (for example, by cross-referencing data by customer, by BU or by portfolio).

• Data export

In addition, some tools offer the possibility of exporting data or facilitate sharing to other tools such as Power BI or Tableau to go further in the exploitation of the data.

• Native BI Tools

Project management control tools sometimes offer BI capabilities to provide more accurate forecasts, identify trends, automate alerts, or simulate scenarios. Choosing a project management control tool involves precisely identifying your needs: size of the company, sector of activity, accounting obligations, billing methods, etc.

Finally, selecting project management control software is first and foremost an audit of your needs. Take the time to clearly identify the features that are essential to your business. The more complex you choose a tool, the higher the price is likely to be and the longer the learning curve will be . However, the objective is still to gain fluidity, speed and reliability.