Project Cost Reporting

1. Project Cost Reporting

2. The Project • AIT were approached to look at two related business functions supported by the Ellipse Project Module: • Project Financial Management, Forecasting and Reporting • Cost Management and Capitalisation • It was initiated due to the frustration felt by the users due to poor reporting and information captured.

3. Our Approach • Interview stakeholders and capture high level requirements and current gaps. • Gain an understanding of the current Ellipse technical environment. • Perform a gap analysis using the findings from the stakeholder interviews. • Produce a report of recommendations including quick wins and medium to long term system and business process improvements.

4. Root Cause Analysis • The review looked at the current Project Cost Collection and Asset Capitalisation process form a functional perspective, as well as focusing on: • Ellipse capabilities and uptake, • Reporting and data extraction connectors, • Ellipse load connectors and • Current roles and responsibilities

5. Root Causes – Corporate • There is no set or consistent approach to the cost collection and capitalisation processes. • Ellipse is under utilised with a majority of users reliant on connector tools or manual data manipulation done by Finance.

6. Root Causes - Finance • Finance users are spending excessive amounts of time extracting and manually manipulating data in various ways for individualised business unit requirements.

7. Root Causes – Asset Management • There is a shortage of resources allocated to the upfront classification and assignment of work orders raised. • Poorly maintained historical records and the lack of a formal costing structure, which increases the reliance of Finance and the manual data manipulation.

8. Root Causes - HR • A very manual approach is taken to record actual versus budget costs.

9. Root Causes – IT • From a technical view point there exists a level of user frustration regarding the number of reports, connector scripts, data extraction processes and continued data manipulation to perform adequate project tracking.

10. Recommendations – Short Term • Ellipse Configuration • Changes to Ellipse Configuration will create a framework for more flexible reporting and data extraction from the Ellipse Projects Module. • These changes will remove the need for maintenance of external spreadsheets to assist with reporting. • There will be significant improvements in the accuracy of costing due to correct defaulting. • Less reconciliation effort will be required. Recommended Change Business Benefit

11. Recommendations – Short Term • Existing report and script changes to support configuration changes • This will enable current reports and scripts to be run at with the appropriate level for efficient analysis by each project manager. Many reports are currently being run several times & appended to retrieve all the required information. • Less manual data manipulation will be required Recommended Change Business Benefit

12. Recommendations – Short Term • Initiate a change culture to the costing process • The benefit of this change will be ongoing. These will be more accuracy in the costing process and the identification of capital expenditure. • Implementation of this recommendation will ensure a consistent approach to the management of project costs across the organisation. Recommended Change Business Benefit

13. Recommendations – Medium Term • Develop new project management and fixed asset capitalisation connector tools • Development of these tools will ensure a consistent approach to project management. • Reporting will be able to be performed at any time without end of month restrictions. • Project Managers will be able to control reporting without the need for finance to perform ad-hoc reporting and manual data manipulation. • Reduce maintenance of external spreadsheets to assist with reporting. • Significantly Reduced reconciliation effort will be required. • Significant savings in the finance area with less follow up of project/work order closures, reduced ad-hoc reporting & less reconciliation effort. Recommended Change Business Benefit

14. Recommendations – Medium Term • Continue to deliver a change culture to the costing process • The benefit of this change will be ongoing. These will be more accuracy in the costing process and the identification of capital expenditure. • Implementation of this recommendation will ensure a consistent approach to the management of project costs across the organisation. Recommended Change Business Benefit

15. Recommendations – Long Term • Continued roll out of Projects Module and Management tools • This process will ensure in the long term all project management performed will follow a similar process. Recommended Change Business Benefit

16. Recommendations – Long Term • Continue to deliver a change in culture to the costing process • The benefit of this change will be ongoing. These will be more accuracy in the costing process and the identification of capital expenditure. • Implementation of this recommendation will ensure a consistent approach to the management of project costs across the organisation. Recommended Change Business Benefit