ERP Solutions for Architects & Engineers ​

For Architects and Engineers, time is precious. Each hour lost doing administrative work or tracking down project information has a direct impact on your firm’s bottom line. A completely integrated financial and operational software solution by OFOQ add-on Software and Microsoft will empower your team to quickly find the information they need to make the right business decisions, to deliver efficient projects on time and on budget.

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Benefits

Integrate your finances, projects, clients and resources

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Streamline key project-related business processes, eliminate redundant and manual data entry, and drive standardization across your firm by implementing a single integrated business management system. 

Gain insight into critical business information and trends

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Make informed decisions that optimize your firm’s performance through the use of best-in-class business intelligence and reporting tools.

Win more business 

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Maximize the effectiveness of your business development activities with integrated CRM dynamics, marketing, proposal management, and project estimating tools.

Improve project execution

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Gain real-time access to project details to monitor project progress and profitability, avoid cost overruns, and allocate resources that drive on-time and on-budget project delivery.

Enhance project team collaboration

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Empower your project teams with integrated project collaboration sites, unified communications tools, and enterprise social networking

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Features:

Comprehensive project life-cycle support:
Manage all aspects of your client-facing projects, from business development through project execution and close-out, all in a single system

Flexible project management capabilities
Totally integrated with Microsoft project also address a wide variety of project management requirements through the use of flexible work breakdown structures (WBS), project time tracking (ETC/EAC/Earned Value) and project budget management.

Integrated resource planning and scheduling
Maximize resource utilization and ensure optimal project staffing practices using built-in resource planning, scheduling, and competency management tools.

Configurable billing and revenue recognition rules
Easily configure your billing and revenue recognition rules to accommodate a variety of project styles, including Time & Materials, Lump Sum, Cost Plus Fixed Fee (CPFF), and more.

Ability to cover all types of project
Advanced tool to manage all types of project (time and material projects, fixed price projects investment,...etc.)

Powerful billing features
Deliver timely and accurate invoices and accelerate cash flow through online invoice review and approval, configurable invoice formatting, and automated invoice backup document generation.

Detailed project inquiries and analysis
View project Microsoft project costs and budgets and analyze project profitability at any level of the project hierarchy using standard project reports, inquiries, and analytics.

Subcontractor Management
Maintain control over your subcontractors through subcontractor compliance tracking, purchase order and commitment tracking, pay-when-paid, and retaining features.

Robust financial management back-end
Confidently manage your firm’s finances with a powerful financial management and accounting platform that supports unlimited companies, currencies and reporting dimensions. Easily expand globally with multi-language and multi-statutory support.

Embedded business development capabilities
Integrate your business development and project execution activities with client relationship management (CRM Dyanamics), project lead and opportunity tracking, qualification management, and project estimating capabilities.

Broad human capital management solution
Manage the full employee hire-to-retire life cycle with an integrated Zing HR & Payroll system for recruiting, performance management, compensation management, and payroll processing.

Flexible workflow driven processes
Streamline key processes and ensure proper controls with a powerful workflow engine for approving time sheets, expense reports, draft invoices, fee estimates, and any other event.

Best-in-class Business Intelligence and Reporting
Take advantage of Microsoft’s latest in-memory business intelligence technology, including Power BI, to put critical real-time information in the hands of your decision makers.

Integrated project collaboration and document management
Improve project team communication and collaboration through the use of integrated Microsoft SharePoint project team sites for managing project documents, calendars, tasks, discussions, etc.

Financials, Compliance, and Internal Controls
Manage and transact across legal entities and regulatory contexts. Borrow and loan resources between companies and generate inter-company invoices for various transaction types including labor, expense and vendor invoices.​

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The matrix below illustrates the complete Microsoft Dynamics solution we offer for Engineering & Construction companies

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Buildings evolve with occupants’ intended uses, within physical and economic constraints. When designed to accommodate “upgrades” in various component elements, buildings can achieve longer and more productive lifespans. By analogy, this principle applies also to the design of organizations and the people, process, technology and culture elements that comprise them – elements that accept change at varying rates and thereby constrain overall change. Thus, sustained growth depends on flexibility, agility and adaptation to changing business objectives at many levels or layers within an organization.

Proactive and forward-looking technology can connect people to their work, bringing forward insights that enable better decisions and guiding processes that optimize results. Agile software empowers adaptation to changing economic and market conditions. It supports a firm that can anticipate rather than react to rapid change, and supports the optimal alignment of people, assets, systems, and data. Microsoft Dynamics delivers a system of engagement that helps firms stay current with leading edge practices and value-chain integration in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.
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Technologies should enable business process flexibility, support organizational change, and foster rapid adaptation to evolving operational and market needs. Indeed, this is a guiding principle fueling the Microsoft approach to modern business solutions and our vision for the Dynamic AEC Firm, designed and built for change.

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Client-Centric

Cultivate firm reputation through consistent results and owner experiences delivered across teams and projects.

A firm’s must be highly responsive and mitigate risk,  while shaping client perceptions  through project experiences, interactions with team members, use of digital assets, exposure to marketing materials and word-of-mouth.
Differentiate your business. On-time, on-budget delivery establishes a foundation for an outstanding reputation. Owner- and client-focused service, consistently applied in each project phase drives differentiation and enthusiastic referrals. Integrated business solutions help build the process maturity required to ensure reliability and consistency in project delivery, client service, and business performance.
Follow the right clients. Not all revenue is good revenue; the right clients and projects yield better, more sustainable business results; and the best deals are those where you help the client shape the project and RFP. CRM dynamics
capabilities help leadership prioritize market segments and preferred account profiles, then track opportunities, manage risk, and grow with the best clients.
Respond swiftly.  Quality delivery demands the right client engagement, project plan, leadership, resources, execution, oversight and more. Capitalize on new technologies and an increasingly digital next generation of professionals to build virtual relationships and connect virtually across organizational boundaries and at the modern job site.

Talent-Driven

Balance resource utilization across projects and job sites while fostering team coordination and collaboration.

More effective utilization of available expertise and assets as well as higher productivity through best practices that increase revenue-per-employee and firm profitability.
Navigate a changing workforce. As a generation of skilled architects, engineers and construction leaders near and enter retirement, proactively foster knowledge-transfer by building inter-generational and cross-cultural project teams that can capture and internalize leading practices.
Operate globally. Take advantage of advanced scheduling capabilities that enable identification and assignment of the most qualified and available resources to projects across job sites, operating units and subsidiaries. Balance and optimize resource utilization to simultaneously improve delivery of client value and drive project profitability.
Execute as a team. At a tactical project level, technology-driven improvements in joint access to digital design documents (e.g., BIM and IPD), project time tracking of building materials in transit to the jobsite, and other information-sharing capabilities help enable more dynamic project teams.

​Action-Oriented

Accelerate project execution and firm operations with familiar, flexible, role-based tools and timely insights.

As developers and owners innovate and evolve sourcing practices, service providers need to keep up with clients. Project teams need the right information and tools at their fingertips to deliver status updates, make better decisions faster, and manage risk.
Improve productivity. Take advantage of project templates and role-specific user interfaces that deliver contextual insights for consultants, engineers, project managers, site superintendents, line managers and other team members. Take advantage of native Microsoft Project and Excel integration to work smarter in familiar tools that connect with business processes and transactional activities.
Enhance Financial Controls.  microsoft project cost, time, quality, safety, risk and other controls are de rigueur and broadly accepted methods like Earned Value Management (EVM) offer quantitative foundations for monitoring and oversight. Easy availability and transparency of measures and targets help push decision-making closer to where execution takes place, accelerating project delivery.
Adapt with agility. Expand into new markets and establish an integrated business presence in new geographies, applying proven business practices and processes with consistency. Easily adapt processes to address local market realities and changing client demands, developing next practices that become proven best practices.

​At-a-Glance a list of Features and Benefits of Microsoft Dynamics

Familiar User Experience

• Accelerate adoption with a familiar, integrated platform of tools that help professionals to do their jobs more effectively.
• Enhance productivity and business insight through configurable user interfaces tailored by role and practice group.

Client Relationship Management

• Apply a client-centric approach. Access social insights and connections that make every client conversation more relevant, valuable and productive. Collaborate on pursuits, refine proposals, and win deals.
• Deepen client relationships with real time insights from InsideView (US), included with CRM OL license.
• Follow a guided pursuit process with built-in team coordination, collaboration and risk management. Standardize on best or preferred practices for consistent outcomes, then rapidly develop next practices.
• Keep teams connected with new tablet and phone apps. Project team members can always access key data and update information in real-time. Cached data allows for offline viewing even if connectivity is lost.

Human Capital Management

• Coordinate the recruitment process more efficiently including campaigns, screenings and candidate correspondence.
• Retain and develop talent using core HRMS and talent management features, and analyze skill sets with the right metrics.
• Manage hires, terminations, transfers, promotions, and leaves using employee based personnel actions and workflow.
• Monitor and administer benefits, absences, compensation, illness tracking, project time tracking, competencies and more.

Project Management
and Accounting

• Manage projects proactively to maintain service quality and ensure business group profitability.
• Synchronize project information into Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Project Server for collaboration and sharing.
• Visually and easily track progress using a variety of metrics by using the Project Manager role center in Dynamics AX.
• Easily add and manage critical KPIs for operational and financial management using The Role Center framework.
• WBS, or work breakdown structure templates can be used and modified to suit specific project needs.

Project Time and Expense

• Submit time, expense, and approvals from various mobile devices and from web-based applications.
• Guide employee submissions and manager approvals with configurable business process flows and rules.
• Reconcile expenses while traveling; streamline employee reimbursement, implement expense policies seamlessly.

Service Management

• Streamline service operations with service agreements, service orders, service subscriptions and repair management.
• Use service agreements to define the resources, service level agreement and view how they are invoiced.

Business Insight and Reporting

• Builds on products that support business process and workflow design and revision with visual process and workflow design tools.
• Easily add new KPIs that are important to managing operational and financial responsibilities within the business.
• Identify the right business opportunities right away. Use rich financial and operational insights with the flexibility of unlimited financial dimensions, pre-defined KPIs and charts to listen to clients and track competitors.
• Visualize trusted data and allow sharing and collaboration of business insights in a familiar SharePoint Server environment.

Financials, Compliance, and Internal Controls

• Manage and transact across legal entities and regulatory contexts. Borrow and loan resources between companies and generate intercompany invoices for various transaction types including labor, expense and vendor invoices.
• Take advantage of unlimited financial dimensions and expanded reporting capabilities.
• Flex to owner expectations with a flexible billing engine that reduces billing process management time.
• Supports business processes that can span legal entities in complex multinational organizations, currency exchange for intercompany and intra-company transactions, and a variety of different languages.

Procurement
and Sourcing

• Enforce spending policies, enable approval processes, and facilitate employee self-service for performance goal management using the Employee Portal and workflow tools.
• Track purchases with vendors, follow pricing agreements and honor negotiated payment terms.
• Help vendors operate more efficiently by providing the ability to view and respond to open RFXs, provide visibility into the status and results of a solicitation, update catalog content, submit invoices, review payments and much more.

Tools

• Automate business processes through a graphical workflow editor to create business rules and custom workflows (or use templates) by business analysts.
• Make organization-specific modifications easily in Microsoft Visual Studio and X++ development environments.
• Ease application-to-application and business-to-business integration with an application integration framework.
• Work across devices, from almost any location. Provide a consistent experience across your PC, phone, and tablet.

Employee Portal

• Use the Employee Portal and workflow tools to enforce spending limits, allow approval policies and enable employee self-service for time reporting, project and travel related expenses, and performance goal management.

Companion Applications

• Provide native app experiences on multiple mobile phone platforms as well as Microsoft Windows 8 tablet devices.
• Simplify the burden of capturing time spent on projects “on the go”, improving working capital and billing cycle times.
• Enable managers to approve business requests such as budgets, time sheets, expense reports and purchase requisitions.

Platform

• Simplify and standardize the implementation process, and improve predictability and quality.
• Collaborate easily with implementation business experts using a Windows Azure-based workspace.
• Take advantage of expanded services that are supported: Business Process Modeler, Usage Profiler, License Sizing Estimator, Customization Analysis, System Diagnostic, Upgrade Analysis, and Issue Search.
• Utilize IaaS with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 to run on Azure for easy deployment in the cloud.
• Connect devices from outside the organization’s firewall using the Windows Azure Service Bus.
• Quickly deploy a production environment in a matter of hours instead of weeks.