Steering Business activity steering software for a project-based company
Looking for business activity steering software usually means looking for a way to stop reconciling six dashboards to know where the company stands. The need is real. But in a company that delivers projects, activity is not a sum of indicators: it is a portfolio of commitments in progress, and it is steered differently from recurring activity.
Who this page is not for.
What follows therefore assumes an organization whose activity is made of managed projects: an IT services company, an engineering firm, an industrial or construction company, a public body, or an internal department that delivers to its business units.
What an activity steering tool does.
It aggregates, compares, reports. On a recurring activity, that is enough to decide.
It gathers sources
Accounting, billing, time, customer relations. The merit is real: this data did not talk to each other.
It compares to a reference
Budget, previous period, target. This is what turns a figure into information.
It reports by level
Executive, entity, manager. Everyone sees their own scope, at the level of detail that suits them.
The limit lies in the material, not in the tool: all these sources describe what has already happened. A recurring activity can live with that, because next month looks like the last. A portfolio of projects cannot.
Six dashboards, and none that says where you are heading.
It is not a reporting problem. It is that each source arrives with its own lag, and that none of them carries the commitment.
Every source has its own lag
Time is entered weekly, validated monthly, invoiced the month after. Consolidating three delays does not produce an up-to-date view.
Reconciliation is manual
It happens as often as someone has time to do it, and it disappears when that person is away.
No source carries what was sold
Accounting knows what was invoiced, time management knows what was spent. What was promised is nowhere, so the gap cannot be computed.
The status depends on who gives it
A project is green because its project manager declared it green. Without underlying data, the color is an opinion.
See it happening, rather than see it done.
A dashboard aggregates what has already happened. Steering the activity of a project-based company demands the opposite: seeing it happen, while it can still be corrected.
The shift is not a matter of refresh rate. It lies in the source: as long as the executive view is built by aggregating downstream systems, it will inherit their lag. It changes nature when it is built from field data, the data teams keep day to day because it is useful to them.
Steering the activity of a project-based company then means steering commitments: what was promised, by whom, by what date, and what remains to be done to keep it. This is what we call operational commitment management.
In pylotik.
Four views that make up activity steering, all built on the same data as the teams' own.
The portfolio
All managed projects, with their progress, their upcoming milestones and their gap. Not a list: a state.
The monthly status
Backed by project data and confirmed by the client. A color that no longer depends on who declares it.
Consolidated financials
Committed budget, time spent, remaining work, margin projection, project by project and overall. See project management control.
Team workload
What is committed against what is available, over the coming weeks. This is the view that says whether the portfolio is tenable.
The quarterly account review relies on these same elements, project by project and client by client. The full tour is on the product page, and the contractual modes on engagement levels.
What we are asked about activity steering.
Which indicators should you use to steer a services company?
Four are enough to decide: the gap between time spent and time sold per project, the remaining work, team workload against capacity, and upcoming milestones. The others describe; these ones trigger an action.
Does this replace a business intelligence tool?
No, and it is not the same object. A business intelligence tool consolidates heterogeneous sources for management. pylotik holds project data at the source, and the executive view follows from it with no reconciliation.
Does the whole company need to be equipped?
No. You equip the teams that carry dated commitments. A share of time and materials or continuous operations can stay on its tools, and the invoice follows the equipped scope.
How do you get a reliable status for each project?
By backing it with facts rather than a feeling: financial gap, milestones met or slipped, late actions, team workload. And by having the client confirm it, which makes it adversarial instead of declarative.
What about an internal department?
It works the same way. An IT department steers a portfolio of commitments to its business units, with due dates and accountability, without a formal contract.
How often should you look at the portfolio?
It is available at all times. The useful rhythm is that of the governance bodies: the monthly internal review to decide, the quarterly account review for the relationship.
Going further.
- Project steering software: the project level, below the portfolio.
- Project management control: the monthly review and gap analysis.
- Operational commitment management: the definition of the category.
- The product tour: portfolio, financials, workload, committees.