Case Study – South Africa – Consultancy - Pétanque

“We’ve been using it (Timesheet Xpress) with great success for a number of years now. It simplifies timesheet logging, tracking and billing tremendously! You are constantly improving the product… Your support is great and value for money absolutely excellent!” - MJ Fick COO of Pétanque

What/who is Pétanque Business Specialists…

The Pétanque Team, as an office of strategy delivery, works with clients to improve business performance and bring about change through best practice processes, business analysis and successful project implementation; linking what’s done to business vision and strategy.

Pétanque focus on providing methodologies, tools and services to clients who want to deep dive their edge to reach their goals ahead of the pack.

The Pétanque Commitment to clients is:

• Manage Projects for Results
• Deliver realistic & practical output
• Deliver cost effectively
• Meet deadlines
• Cut through the noise
• Motivate through example
• Knowledge share

Above - Sample list of Pétanque clients who they are working with on Project Management Methodology

Pétanque (the business) uses the principles of the game by the same name: they apply the right tools (the boules), design the tactics (the loop, lob, ctlank), focus on the target (the jack) and achieve the victory (score the points) whilst aligning to the bigger picture (in boules the bigger picture is to have fun in a competitive, team structure).

Issues before using Timesheet Xpress...

Pétanque motivates clients through their own example; whilst managing multiple client projects, it is necessary to effectively manage and track time spent on each whilst remaining highly productive and within budgetary restrictions. Before implementing Timesheet Xpress, Pétanque used a traditional way of recording time spent on client activities, this involved each team member recording and tracking time on individual spreadsheets which then had to be collated manually to prepare billing reports and invoices.

The problems caused by the inefficient methodology resulted in a huge administrative burden to collect timesheets, checking that all are received, collating information by client and by project, preparing billing reports and generating invoices.

Pétanque, as with many business specialists offer several support services to their client base. The Project Management Office (PMO) in a business or professional enterprise is the department or group that defines and maintains the standards of process, generally related to project management, within the organisation.

The PMO strives to standardise and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects. The PMO is the source of documentation, guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution.

90% of projects do not meet time/cost/quality targets. An estimated 69% of project failures are due to lack and/or improper implementation of project management methodologies.

As a company who leads by example, Pétanque searched for a more efficient way to monitor their Project Management activities for clients and associated costs, whilst looking at staff/project effectiveness, consolidating expenses and streamlining the billing process; a tall order by any measure.

There are hundreds of timesheet solutions available in the market place today; filtering through them to find a satisfactory solution can be a daunting task.

As experts in the area of cost effectiveness and management of projects, Pétanque had a clear vision of what it would take to check all the boxes for as satisfactory time recording methodology when dealing with multiple client projects. The solution was Timesheet Xpress

“An added bonus for us, apart from the time savings, was that we now have all our timesheets in a central space. It allows us to easily generate statistics and analyse the productivity of our staff. Timesheet Xpress does all of this, it is a simple matter of generating the required report or chart” - MJ Fick COO of Pétanque

Since using Timesheet Xpress...

As with many Timesheet Xpress Users, Pétanque have found that not only is life much easier to track activities and associated costs, but reporting on detail is quick and seamless. Pétanque are using Timesheet Xpress for both internal and client based project work, particularly in the area of PMO.

The simple point and click methodology for time recording along with the highly visual interface allows Pétanque to get accurate and detailed information immediately.

The staff at Pétanque were able to get “up and running” with the software immediately, with no time consuming training required; the customization of Client, Project and Tasks can be set up seamlessly and associated costs to budget ratios.

Billing for client projects is accurate and timely estimating up to 2 days per month in time can be saved when looking at logging of tasks against projects, reporting on activities for any queries and billing clients for work completed. The User interface for input is simple and engaging (see below)

Management reporting can be done through a simple wizard process – extensive reporting includes summary information on Project by Time, cost both chargeable and non-chargeable; Project Gantt Charts, Productivity and Profitability analysis and many more.

As a company that specialises in assisting others to improve business processes, Pétanque know that Timesheet Xpress has significantly assisted in their successful project management of their client base.

About Timesheet Xpress...

As the leading application based product for logging and managing project efficiencies in any organisation, Timesheet Xpress is being used by thousands of users in over 40 countries.

The software is easily installed on either stand alone or network computers and offers a range of configurations for use in organisations of all sizes from independent consultants relying on accurate tracking of “billable hours” to large corporations who are concerned not only with project management and staff productivity but also with timely management information for the purposes of workforce management and staff optimisation when forecasting and scheduling outputs.

Timesheet Xpress will monitor organisational productivity and performance through time and attendance with quick and easy to use reporting.

With accurate and timely information, effective planning and decisions can be confidently made leading to increases in business competitiveness.

With links to various applications such as Microsoft Project, Excel, Timesheet Xpress offers a seamless integration into many existing business applications in organisations of all sizes and in many sectors.