So many pieces go into building a project budget, including fixed and variable costs, direct and indirect costs, equipment and more. All these moving parts make creating a true baseline difficult. Can project budgeting with cloud ERP really be easier? It certainly can. Here are five ways in which an Enterprise Resource Planning solution can streamline and enhance your project budgeting.
#1 Project Budgeting with Cloud ERP Provides Access to Historical Data
Building a budget can’t happen in a vacuum. When you have access to comprehensive historical data from other projects, you have the information and guidance you need to put together a project budget. When you handle project budgeting with cloud ERP, you can see all data across your company through a single pane of glass, providing a unified way in which you can access and leverage that data.
#2 ERP Supports Collaboration
In order to put together any budget, you need feedback and input from SMEs across your company. You may have a high-level idea of what direct and indirect costs will go into certain tasks, but no one knows better than the SMEs doing the work. ERP provides your team with a way to collaborate and communicate more effectively—everyone is working from the same real-time data, and everyone has a “meeting place” where they can collaborate as a true team.
#3 ERP Provides Access to Real-Time Data
Having a baseline budget in hand is great, but as we all know, things can change over the life of a project, and you may well have to re-baseline at some point. By using ERP to monitor the real-time data associated with your budget, you can monitor and control costs more effectively, but also re-baseline sooner rather than later, if need be. Not to mention that variable costs are not so variable when you can see them in real time, right?
#4 ERP Eliminates Silos
Nothing complicates a project OR its budget more than siloed departments and workflows. Marketing has their way of doing things, production another, and the business office spends half their time scrambling to explain it all. When one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing, it can lead to confusion, rising costs and budgetary errors. ERP eliminates silos, allowing everyone to work in one unified space. Everyone is on the “same page” and workflows become more unified and consistent.
#5 ERP Gives You the Complete Picture
As a holistic solution, ERP allows you to see every nut and bolt across a project. You can also clearly set up and view tasks and milestones to more effectively monitor a project and keep a budget on track. With ERP as a central part of your budgeting, you get the comprehensive view of the project you need to succeed.
Are you interested in seeing for yourself what project budgeting with cloud ERP could do for you? Reach out to our team of cloud ERP experts today.
