Thursday, September 12, 2024
Oracle Primavera Earned Value Management is a powerful, flexible EVMS cost engine that integrates with Primavera P6.
While the software has the potential to solve your earned value management needs, it can also cause major headaches if not configured properly for your business. Improper configuration can lead to:- Inaccurate or missing data
- Poor performance
- Significant re-work
- Additional resources to operate and troubleshoot the system
Configuration of Cost Manager is not limited to just the Cost Manager database, but may require changes to your Primavera P6 configuration as well. Configuration items that may need revision are:
- Resource & Role dictionary
- EPS and security
- Project, Activity and Resource codes
- User Defined Fields
The implementation of Cost Manager may affect your scheduling procedures, including:
- How WBS's are structured
- How activities are defined
- Whether or not to resource load, and at what granularity
- Approach to handling non-labor resources and expenses
- Baseline maintenance processes
- Status updates
Additionally, EIA-748 compliant earned value management imposes a number of business process and policy changes that affect how budgets are developed, rate tables are configured and actuals are collected. This will impact other parts of the organization, such as contracts and finance. Cost Manager cannot produce appropriate earned value data if business processes and data are not integrated properly across the organization.
Some of the typical questions you need to consider when implementing Cost Manager are:
- Enterprise architecture - will you use one database for all Programs and projects, or multiple implementations?
- How to approach integration with the scheduling engine?
- How to model costs (overheads, burdens pools, escalation etc.)?
- How to integrate with your ERP application to collect actual costs? Will costs be collected at the control account or work package level?
- How is forecasting going to be handled? Taking advantage of Cost Manager’s forecasting options or driven totally from the schedule?
- How will Cost Manager be operated? Run by an administrator? Scheduler? Business/finance Manager? Will CAMs and other program-roles have direct access to the tool?
- How will Variance Analysis and Variance reporting be handled?
- What reports will be generated from Cost Manager? How will they be distributed?
- Will you be integrating with other reporting tools, such as Deltek wInsight, Decision Edge or custom dashboard?
- If you are loading data for projects that are already in in-progress you have to consider data migration issues as well.
Deploying software applications usually involves the following phases:
- Requirements/Architecture – agree the basic requirements and technical approach. Includes role definitions, user-scenario development and technical architecture.
- Prototyping/Configuration – building prototypes to support decision making
- Development – build any custom migration, integration or reporting that is required
- End to End Testing – test the applications from end to end
- Deployment, Documentation and Training– iteratively deploy functionality to the users.
Pinnacle’s implementation approach has been refined over many years on large and small engagements. Our approach emphasizes user-participation, is adaptable, and will guide you through the pros and cons of alternatives to each of the questions above. The goal of our implementation approach is successful adoption of the new system.
Talk to a Pinnacle professional regarding an Oracle Primavera solution. - Give Us a Call or 
Topics: Aerospace & Defense, Energy, Utilities, Oil & Gas, Engineering & Construction, Earned Value Management (EVM), Technology, Oracle Primavera, Government & Public Sector
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