Have you worked in an organisation where there has been no central database for everyone to manage a project from? Not having a central database has many implications for the way the project is managed, but one seemingly simple one that can drive employees nuts is that project managers often need to create their own report templates for each aspect of the project. And we know not everyone thinks the same way when it comes to templates.
There’s nothing more confusing when everyone working on a project has a different way of writing and formatting reports. RFIs produced by one project manager could look completely different to RFIs produced by another project manager a day later. Not only does this not provide cohesion amongst all your project documents, but it is also very frustrating for the person who has to read them and figure out what part of the report the information they need is contained in.
Having employees create their own document templates also means the organisation is sending out different looking reports to its external stakeholders, and this doesn’t really project a professional, unified image. It seems like a small detail in the scheme of multimillion dollar projects, but something as simple as a unified company image can really show others how professionally your team can manage those multimillion dollar projects.
So, in order to assist project managers so they don’t have to keep creating their own templates, and to provide everyone with simple, easy to understand reports, IPM has uniform reports across the whole application. When you generate a report from IPM, it will always be laid out and formatted the same way. This means each cost report, for example, whether it’s generated by the accountant or the PM will look the same. And not only that, all the reports across the program have a similar look and feel, with company logos and information that is common to two different types of reports appearing in the same place and the same layout. The reports are also easy to generate with a click of your mouse, so users will likely prefer them over creating their own separate templates.
Of course, with the proper security access level, organisations are free to customise the software, including their reports, to suit the way they want to present their data, rather than using the reports provided by IPM. And as any customisations made are applied organisation wide, all employees with always be generating and working off the same report templates, whether they are customised or not.
Having standardised reports across your entire organisation may seem like a simple feature, but many people find this a real positive with the IPM software. Not only can it make a difference to your organisation’s image, but also to the efficiency of employees’ work. No longer will project managers have to create and produce their own report templates, and employees will also be able to process information in a familiar way each time they receive a new report.
As always, please feel free to contact us for a free demo if you’d like to know more about IPM.
