Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations connects sales, resourcing, project management, and finance teams within a single application to win more deals, accelerate project delivery, and maximize profitability.
Challenges of Project Management
Different job positions, different challenges:
Project Manager
Redundant workstreams, disconnected tools, and difficult sales hand-offs.
Resource Manager
Lack of visibility across projects and into cost of resources.
Team Members
Misaligned to work and frustrated due to lack of clarity on project.
Finance
Inaccurate budgets and timelines.
Sales
Difficult to accurately quote and zero visibility into project delivery.
Practice Leader
Lack of visibility into success of projects and cash flow.
Resolving project management problems in one application
Unifying our service-centric front office, back office, and project management capabilities into Dynamics 365 Project Operations.
Drive success through enhanced project management capabilities
- Give project managers the tools they need to succeed
Improve productivity with embedded Microsoft Project capabilities including dashboards, task management, scheduling, interactive Gantt charts, and work-breakdown structures.
- Estimate and track projects efficiently
Develop accurate estimates for labor, expenses, and materials, and track planned-to-actual consumption as projects progress.
- Collaborate easily across the project lifecycle
Bring your cross-functional teams together around project plans, scope, and budget while capturing conversations, sharing content, and using apps—all in one place.
- Adapt your project with key insights
Use built-in insights to understand how your projects are trending and drive timely decisions for course correction.
Optimize resource profitability
- Maximize your resource utilization
Easily distribute workloads across your resources for optimal execution on project delivery needs.
- Align the right people to the right projects
Maintain resource profiles to easily match people’s skillsets with projects. Rate skills easily with proficiency models that adapt to your unique business needs.
- Anticipate resourcing needs with intelligent scheduling
Streamline scheduling with intelligent and relevant skills-based assignments and up-to-date visibility into resources’ availability using Universal Resource Scheduling.
Simplify time tracking and expense management
- Submit time and expenses on the go
Use the mobile app or a browser for time and expense submissions no matter your location. Automatically create expense lines from uploaded receipt images.
- Make team member compliance easier
Give your teams easy-to-use time and expense tracking tools to support policy compliance.
- Ensure accurate reporting and expense policy adherence
Use configurable rules and automated workflows to improve time and expense policy compliance with submissions, approvals, and reporting.
Improve deal management experiences
- Customize resource-based costing and pricing
Model robust pricing and costing variations on geography and local market economics that influence your global workforce and exchange rates.
- Leverage deal structures tailored for project-based organizations
Create fixed-price, time and materials, or retainer-type contracts for your projects using adaptable billing models that meet your customers’ cash-flow requirements.
- Shorten the deal cycle
After generating a high-level estimate, use standardized templates to quickly develop a detailed estimate, schedule, and monetary values for the quote.
- Manage your pipeline with a unified sales dashboard
Consolidate your customer data into a single view using the built-in integration with Dynamics 365 Sales to get actionable insights for personalized customer engagements.
Drive business performance through streamlined project financials
- Recognize revenue accurately and on time
Support your global teams’ adherence to accounting standards and practices, including revenue recognition compliant with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
- Improve cash flow by invoicing customers quickly
Manage billing queues and add ad-hoc transactions for more precise invoicing. Add details and group transactions to customize invoices for optimal review and reconciliation.
- Manage your project accounting with higher accuracy
Leverage project cost and revenue profiles for fixed-price or time and materials billing through a combination of accounting rules for cost and revenue, accruals, and postings.
Expand to a service-centric ERP system
Use the integration with Dynamics 365 Finance or use open APIs with an external enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to extend to accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger capabilities.
Improve visibility for greater business impact
- Visualize key insights for fast, informed decisions
Use built-in dashboards surfacing KPIs such as resource utilization, forecasting, and budgeting to quickly adapt to changing business conditions.
- Democratize data to eliminate silos
Use Microsoft Power BI to easily visualize and share business intelligence with your project teams to help drive better customer outcomes.