Tag Archives: timesheet implementation

timecontrol

FAQ: How much internal effort and resources will I need to make a timesheet work?

internaleffortFirst, let’s talk about the effort to implement TimeControl when it is first deployed. This is highly dependent on several factors including the number of users on TimeControl and the number of external system to which TimeControl will be integrated.

The TimeControl QuikStart program was designed for a mid-sized organization doing a basic deployment of TimeControl with only a couple of interfaces to create.

This is a 5-day effort by HMS and requires internal support of a TimeControl Administrator for 3-5 days prior to making the timesheet available to the end-users.

If you are deploying TimeControl for 10-200 people and making a simple link to a project management tool and another export link to a finance tool, then this is probably sufficient.

Of course some people have much more complex environments and wish to integrate TimeControl to numerous internal processes and tools. Depending on the level of complexity, a multi-thousand person deployment covering numerous countries systems, internal payroll rules and more could take a team several months to complete the deployment.

Next, let’s talk about time to administer and support TimeControl once it is in use. The technical time to support TimeControl is negligible. You have to make sure data is being backed up, but that’s probably being done anyway as part of the DBA’s responsibilities.

Upgrades and updates take very little time and are done only a couple of times a year typically.

Administrators are often not full-time on TimeControl unless it is a system with thousands of users.

The work each week Administrators focus on is making sure new employees are onboarded and that employees who have left are made inactive and looking to do regular clean ups of old data.

timecontrol

FAQ: How long does it realistically take to implement a timesheet system?

spiral-clockThis is a great question and I hate to give the most obvious answer but “it depends”. Because TimeControl is designed to be able to link to so many different kinds of systems, a complete deployment can include many different facets.

Let’s say that you’re keen to deploy TimeControl on its own with some basic links for individual projects in Microsoft Project or Primavera. The installation, configuration and deployment are probably not more than a few days. We created the 5 day QuikStart program for this type of situation. Clients don’t need HMS’s assistance to do this either. Many clients have figured out for themselves how to do their deployment.

If we take another situation, let’s say a new TimeControl client wants to link to their centralized enterprise project management system like Microsoft Project Server or Oracle-Primavera and also to the finance system for billing and job costing.

If TimeControl is the first product to bridge the gap between Project Management and Finance then there may be many unanswerable questions when they start.

How should rates be tackled? What level of resolution of the timesheet will Finance require? Is that the same level as Project Management? Are there coding standards or other processes that have to be identified?

Very little of these questions are technical, they’re more likely to be process related but they are critical to how the configuration should be handled. Let’s take an extremely common example. A client says “We want to track overtime”.

Both Project Management and Finance agree that’s a key criteria. “Do you need to know what task the overtime occurred on?” we ask. “No” says Finance “Yes” says Project Management at the same time. Resolving the answer to that question might take several meetings between the two groups.

A TimeControl deployment in this situation might take several weeks to complete most of which is used by the client making process-types of decisions.