Now while most of use enjoy a good fright occasionally, often too many aspects of our daily business can generate genuine dread, frustration, and sometimes even fear. But that doesn’t mean any of us are going to be intimidated by the challenges of our industry when we have access to a tool such as System Integrator software.

Often, the first step is simply knowing where to start. That’s where today’s entry comes to your aid. We’ll look at some issues that may often be perceived as overwhelming at first, but with the use of SI, practical solutions can be developed to remove such fear (regardless of the season).

For those of you who are ready to “get with the program” and upgrade your prior version of SI, please reach out to our Customer Success team. Moreover, for those of you who are still considering the acquisition of D-Tools SI software, please reach out to our Account Management team.

The Post-Mortem 

Despite its ominous name, many teams engage in some form of post-installation completion analysis. For some teams, this means a full accurate accounting of costs incurred against the estimated project budget. While others avoid such engagement, fearful they’ll discover unprofitable losses.

Whether you fall into either extreme or somewhere in between, SI can facilitate this analysis for your team and even make it a standard practice that removes all that dread and fear.

For those of you not familiar with how this works, we’ll elaborate here for you now.

The Job Cost Report

No feature has done more to ease the fear of the post-mortem than SI’s Job Cost Reports.

Simply put, the SI Job Cost Reports provide a full picture of all estimated SI Project values along with the actual costs related to products, labor, and other miscellaneous items that are present in the job.

Even better, the report pulls real-time data from your SI Project, so you can run it at various points throughout the project lifecycle to track costs as you proceed, not just at final closeout.

Accessing the Job Cost Report is easy. Simply find it in the ribbon of the Project Explorer:
 
To maximize the value of this report, you’ll need to use these four SI features:

1. Revisions and Project Approval
2. Purchase Orders
3. Project Deployment “Tasks”
4. Time Sheets

Here's how each one impacts your job cost analysis:

Revisions and Project Approval

Project Revisions capture a snapshot of your project’s value at any moment in time. You might create revisions at initial creation, when submitting to the client, during negotiations, when closing the sale, or at any other milestone.

This is critical to many teams that need to track changes to a project’s bill of materials as it moves through the bidding process. SI also has a great tool for those who leverage the use of SI’s Revisions called the Revision Comparison. 

This tool compares the values of any two existing Project Revisions. Practical use of this could be to compare the original bid to the version that you actually closed.

In the Comparison window, items in green have been added, items in red have been deleted, and items shaded blue highlights price changes.

Project Approval  builds on this by allowing you to lock a project at a specific milestone. Once locked, any subsequent modifications automatically flow to Change Orders rather than altering the approved project baseline.

Both Revisions and Project Approval are key elements to successful results per the Job Cost Reports.

Purchase Orders 

SI’s very own Purchase Order mechanism can be the essential factor in your procurement team’s ultimate success.

Not only can these be created with a Vendor specificity in mind, they can also be “Bulk Created” for times when items from multiple projects need to be on one PO.

As you modify PO pricing or change product selections, you can enter these updates directly into the purchasing order. This data automatically syncs back to the project, ensuring accurate item pricing after closing.
 Corresponding prompts for this automation can be set in your Project Settings. This latter process is essential to the Job Cost Report.

Project Deployment “Tasks”

The use of SI’s Project Tasks enables our users to select the items necessary for each site visit according to the Project’s deployment timeline.

The intrinsic value here is that all items (including labor) can be structured for ease of access by the field techs as is required per the project’s scope. Meaning your techs can receive their daily “to do list” by Phase, Location, System, or perhaps any combination of the three. This allows Project Managers to deploy their Bill of Materials (BOM) either in a standardized, repeatable pattern or adapted on the fly to meet unique contract requirements or site constraints.

Accordingly, all data recorded by the techs using the field companion to SI, “Mobile Install”, can then be imported back into the Project. This includes but is not limited to serial number, IP address, and MAC address.

Time Sheets

Of course, no Project’s data can be truly complete without the inclusion of time incurred by the techs as they bring the project to life.

While still a relatively new feature, SI’s Time Sheets enable teams to record time incurred by their staff working on any aspect of a Project. Time Sheets can be used solely for recording work effort while on the Tasks or they can be used to record all time incurred every day for any aspect of work for the company.

Any time recorded from project tasks that has been approved will then apply against the Project’s estimated labor to produce the actual labor that is seen in the Job Cost Report. This is highly critical for a complete understanding of how your labor budgets make or break your overall effort.

When fully utilized, all of the aforementioned tools will have your team successfully evaluating your project’s profitability in no time without any fear.

The mystery of the vanishing margin

While several aspects of being competitive in today’s market that affect a team’s margin are obvious, not all are. Seeing as how we were just reviewing ways to better understand overall project profitability via SI’s Job Cost Report, it only seems logical to mention ways to understand margin both during your bid assembly process as well as in the bid as submitted.

Project Layouts

In working with SI users, I've found that Layouts (both default and custom ones) are one of the most undervalued tools in the SI toolkit.

First off, what is a Layout in SI? A Layout in SI is the presentation of data columns in a left-to-right fashion within the primary viewing pane of the SI screen.

I have found that many users are unaware of the availability of different Layouts and routinely run reports to review margin values. This is a fine approach but using an appropriate Layout can save this effort and reveal margin values as you assemble the Project’s BOM.

Custom Layouts take this a step further allowing users to associate the actual data fields that will help them review specific values like margin in a quick and succinct fashion.

Another little-utilized feature in this Layout scenario is that users can highlight any number of items present in their Project viewing pane and get an average of all items selected in the bottom right-hand corner of the SI screen.

This saves the effort of running any report to gather this same data.

Reports

As just mentioned, many teams use SI’s Reports to review such values as margin. In addition, while several of them are very helpful, perhaps none is quite as useful as the report Line Item Detail with Margin.

This management report in SI can give users the exact data they need per item to understand exactly where the margin is, and perhaps the direction it is heading in per Revision.

As with all reports in an SI Project, users can select or filter to see only specific items in their report results.

This easily enables users to focus solely on reviewing this margin data by Manufacturer, Category, Phase, or even Location.

All can shed light on how and/or why a margin is moving in the right or wrong direction.

Find Usages in Projects

Now, while the SI Job Cost reports provide an overall view into the Project’s margin, the Find Usages in Projects feature of the SI Catalog will yield any trends in the movement of your item’s margin.
 This execution is just a right-click away in your Product Catalog.

Like accessing other aspects of data in SI, users can select a single item or multiple items to see the project utilization.

Further, this data can then be exported for analysis in Excel.

This is perhaps the best way for teams to understand their margin changes in SI Projects across any time period.

Once your team finesses their use of this mechanism, you will be able to gain the understanding necessary to allay any fears related to your Project’s margins.

Workflow Rules

Communication breakdowns happen—team members forget to notify others about project updates, approval requests sit unnoticed, or critical milestones pass without proper handoffs. SI's Workflow Rules eliminate these gaps by automatically notifying team members when specific actions occur on the platform. Workflow Rules can bridge those communication gaps that occur on a daily basis and put a team’s fears at ease with appropriately leveraged usage.

Whether these Workflow Rules are related to Projects, Change Orders, Purchase Orders, or Tasks, they can deliver updates to appropriate team members in a timely fashion.

Further, the notification can include key details about why a team member is receiving it at that time and possibly indicate the next action needed.

These notifications are sent both as emails and to the user's Notifications window in the top right corner of most SI screens.

For some more insight on this usage, we’ll examine a few examples here.

Project Process Flow

The use of SI’s Workflow Rules to ensure a constant and well-defined project process flow is unmatched in the industry. When designed effectively, these Workflow Rules deliver relevant Project information and supply the data needed to advance to the next step. 

From project creation to a closed deal (including any Change Orders) and deployment, Workflow Rule can work in conjunction with your team’s SI Project Status designation to deliver timely and relevant information to team members as the Project moves through your process flow pipeline.

This approach keeps team members informed when specific criteria are met while preventing redundant communication. It also ensures data is transmitted, not omitted, as the automated system moves information to users according to the Workflow structure.

This makes Workflow Rules an exceptionally powerful and beneficial tool for SI users to explore and implement.

Purchase Order dynamics

Today’s Procurement teams constantly balance sourcing the best-priced products with meeting project deployment deadlines.

SI's Workflow Rules are essential for transmitting data as POs are created, issued, modified, received (partially or in full), or deleted during a project's Procurement phase.

This ensures team members receive timely updates relevant to their tasks or for sharing with clients as appropriate.

Once a PO-related Workflow Rule criteria are met, the associated Purchase Order data is automatically included in messages sent to your team members.

This “insert field” option references available data fields from within the PO itself.

This provides recipients with more than just a notification, it includes PO details, saving them from having to look up the information themselves before taking action or responding.

For many SI users, this capability makes PO-related Workflow Rules among the most valuable automation features in their Procurement process.

Deployment Tasking

For many teams, Workflow Rules related to deployment provide the most critical value by delivering continual updates about their team's progress during a project's deployment phase.

The key to maximizing impact is crafting these rules to be useful for both the person triggering the workflow and the recipients.

Whether initiating activity on a Task or notifying team members of its completion, these automated notifications quickly deliver important details to your team as needed.

As mentioned earlier regarding SI Project Statuses, using Workflow Rules related to your Task Statuses can be incredibly effective for all parties involved, they are customizable as well.

So if your Task Status moves to delayed or deferred this can be transmitted in almost real time for the designated recipients. 

When criteria align with the necessary trigger values, recipients of your Task Workflow Rules receive critical data as soon as it becomes available. This ensures your team operates at maximum efficiency as Projects move through deployment.

 Well there it is! A look into a few aspects of d-Tools SI v23 that can help our users overcome their fears of any scary situations.

Nevertheless, as always, there is much more than just these features to keep in mind for your team’s usage, so please reach out to our account team for more information on all of the above and more!

Looking Ahead: SI V23 and beyond

The last few years have seen tremendous updates and enhancements to the System Integrator platform. With each successive development and addition, D-Tools has shown itself to be fully engaged in bringing to market one of the most effective software platforms available.

Further, the updates in v23 (and prior recent releases) reflect our commitment to addressing the real-world challenges faced by system integrators. In addition, what’s to come will not disappoint.

With that in mind, D-Tools System Integrator v23 is more than just a software update—it’s a strategic partner for AV integrators navigating a complex and hectic industry landscape. By combining robust multi-office settings with seamless data synchronization, v23, not only empowers businesses to operate with unprecedented efficiency, but also offers the flexibility most teams need to craft a custom software environment to suit their needs.

Are you ready to experience SI v23? Then visit the D-Tools’ website to request a demonstration of these features or explore the full range of utilization with our PSG training and implementation team. With V23, as your ally, your business will be poised for a brighter and more profitable future.

Be sure to tune back in here for future installments on SI’s v23 and beyond.

Our team is continually evaluating ways to improve and enhance your team’s usage of and experience with our SI platform. Therefore, it behooves you and your team to explore these (and other features) as well by securing time with our Professional Services Group of SI and integration industry veterans in order to maximize your team’s ability to succeed with the software.

In closing…

For more information on these and other features of SI, please see this link: D-Tools v23. You can also review our other videos and our usual support documentation.

You can also get more detailed information about v23 via our upcoming webinars and by enrolling in SI training with our PSG team.

And don’t forget, that’s why we are here…to ensure your success with our product! Be sure to check back here next time for more on v23!!!