INCREASING PROJECT MANAGEMENT EFFICIENCY

As a leading manufacturer of post-frame buildings and other pre-engineered structures, Lester Buildings relies heavily on their Enterprise Resource Planning system to deliver faster time to value. They use Epicor Kinetic ERP because it’s an award-winning system that specializes in manufacturing and it scales alongside their growth.

When it comes to project management, Lester needs an equally reliable solution that integrates seamlessly with Kinetic. But before switching to Epicor Advanced Project Management (Epicor APM), Lester was using a non-integrated project management system.

Lester’s team liked some of the legacy system’s features, including the ability to manage an extensive list of project cost codes and their associated budgets. But a lack of integration required a lot of duplicate data entry and time spent reconciling data between systems.

The desire to cut out manual data entry, Excel spreadsheets, and extra reconciliation led Lester to investigate other project management options. When comparing Kinetic’s Standard Project Management module against the APM module, they soon found that Epicor APM was a more complete fit.

“Before Epicor APM, I would open up my Excel spreadsheet and type in data such as the invoice number, the vendor, the project number, the phase ID, the cost code, the dollar amount, metc. Then I would have to go into Epicor and manually transfer all of that information. It took a lot of time.”
Angela Leverich Accounts Payable Clerk

ENHANCED CONTRACT MANAGEMENT AND BILLING WITHIN WORLD-CLASS ERP SOFTWARE

With the Epicor Advanced Project Management module, Lester is able to support their business’s granular budgeting and reporting requirements and consolidate their business software solutions in a single source of truth.

This added functionality helps Lester Buildings manage complex contracts, alleviate cashflow stress, and gain real-time visibility into the status of each project and the overall health of their business. Now, they can easily:

• Capture all costs and invoice everything on time
• Improve their cash flow and forecasting capabilities
• Consolidate billing information, and eliminate spreadsheets from the revenue recognition process
• Ensure compliance with contract requirements and accounting best practices

The addition of APM has cut out the manual entry of timesheets, project related invoices, and extensive spreadsheets, without compromising project detail.

“All of the fields that I used to enter manually are now native Epicor APM fields. It saves me quite a lot of time putting invoices in and reduces keying errors.”
Angela Leverich Accounts Payable Clerk

INTEGRATIONS STREAMLINE OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

Lester Buildings now has one single user-friendly ERP system that provides enhanced project cost detail and the ability to completely manage projects, claims, and revenue recognition.

They’re able to capture all costs, on time and according to contract terms, regardless of whether they’re fixed price, progress percentage, quantity-based, or a complex combination thereof.

They’ve eliminated spreadsheets from their revenue recognition process. They now have an easy workbench from which to generate proposals, calculate project costs, and make changes as needed.

With Advanced Project Management, Lester Buildings is able to confidently manage upwards of 200 open projects at any given time. Epicor APM saves the accounts payable team precious minutes on the hour when it comes to things like payment and pro forma processing. And George Berg, Epicor Admin at Lester, says that the APM module continues to drive growth in the middle of their busiest year to date.

“Last year was Lester’s busiest year ever. Consolidating project management processes with Epicor APM, as well as cutting out manual data entry and data chasing, has supported that growth.”
George Berg Epicor Admin

Why Choose Epicor Advanced Project Management?

Epicor Advanced Project Management has been built into Epicor Kinetic and adds robust project planning, resource management, time and expense management, and billing and revenue recognition to Kinetic’s already powerful capabilities.

Unlike third-party solutions, which often don’t speak the same language as your ERP system, APM augments and extend’s Kinetic’s project capabilities with three powerful modules:

• Advanced Project Management – gain full project ledger visibility, revenue
  recognition, project journals and cost-code level budgeting.
• Advanced Contract Order Management – define complex contract structures,
  including a sophisticated billing engine with revisions and variations.
• Advanced Subcontract Management – control larger sub-contracts with powerful
  work breakdown structures and application processes.

As a fully-integrated software solution, you can manage all of your projects, contracts,
subcontractors, claims, variations, and revenue recognition in a single, intuitive system.

Take your Kinetic ERP system to the next level with Epicor Advanced Project Management.

Contact your Epicor Customer Account Manager to organize a demonstration.

Contact Epicor

Epicor Advanced Project Management has been developed by Precise Business Solutions, one of Epicor’s longest-serving, premium channel partners. As a trusted Platinum ISV partner, Precise develops powerful, flexible companion solutions to extend the core functionality of Kinetic within the areas of project management, procurement and counter sales.