Project Transition to Service and Closure 23.02
In this MasterClass webinar, we continue our Project Management series with discussion and Q360 demonstrations of Project-to-Service hand-off, Product creation, and project closure.
This webinar was recorded on February 21, 2024.
Agenda:
- Introduction | 04:08
- Discussion between Brad Malone and Andrew Ashbury on why the last 5% of the project is the most important
- What is a System (Product)? How can we set the stage for Service? | 05:51
- Recap of Sales Quote Attributes | 06:43
- Sections (Sales) vs. Groups (Service) | 06:51
- Sections and Groups demo | 08:01
- Transition to Service and Support Department | 11:06
- Substantial Completion | 11:57
- Project to Service Hand Off – Create Product, Initiate Warranty Service Contract, Mark Project ‘Substantially Complete’ | 13:25
- Project to Service Hand Off demo | 15:37
- Comparison: Warranty vs. Other Service Contracts | 24:41
- Poll 1: How effective is your transition to Service process? What areas could you improve upon? | 26:08
- Project Lifecycle, Key Learning Opportunities | 27:32
- Project Close-out Process | 29:02
- Project Close demo | 32:18
- Project Reporting and Review | 38:19
- Project > Profit tab
- Project > Material grid
- Projected vs. Actual Hours
- Project Status Report
- Project WIP – Template LD Report
- Project Reporting and Review demo | 41:04
- Final Reconciliation, Lessons Learned | 49:03
- Poll #2: How effective is your Project Closure process? Where do you see improvement opportunities? | 52:48
- Summary – “Track the journey, manage proactively, close the loop, and continuously improve!” | 54:27
- Q&A (see below) | 55:12
- Wrap Up and References | 58:14
Q & A – Answers to relevant questions submitted during the live webinar may be found below. If your team is interested in additional training options, please reach out to your Customer Care Team.
High-level, a policy should be established regarding expense submission and project closure, including leveraging a status such as “ACCOUNTING” or “CLOSEOUT” (which can be added to general codes if not currently available). This can help teams track what stage a project is in to prompt collection / submission of all expenses. This may require a policy conversation, as a project should NOT be closed before all project-related expenses are submitted, approved, linked and posted to the project. For additional consulting on this topic, please reach out to your Q360 Customer Care Team.
This is not currently part of the “Check Project Close” process, but worth considering. Note that within the “My Projects” Workflow or “Projects Overview” Workflow, there is a bucket for “Overdue Tasks” that finds tasks that are incomplete and have an end date in the past.
Projects should not be reopened, and if it is a small change, a wholly new project is likely not needed. This is why it is important to build the habit of creating products on our projects, and also warranties / service contracts to cover them. Our recommendation here would be to create a service call (that is linked to said project and said service contract / warranty) so that this cost is captured to the contract and to the Service department. If the customer comes back with a significant request (a request that will take a long time, a lot of labor and material, or requires Project Management consideration), you may want to consider quoting a new project.
The dynamic update cannot be achieved on the project, but group fields may be set singularly, or in multi-select on the Material grid. If you are entering a CCO quote on a project, the dynamic update may be done there.
Projects should not be reopened, and if it is a small change, a wholly new project is likely not needed. This is why it is important to build the habit of creating products on our projects, and also warranties / service contracts to cover them. Our recommendation here would be to create a service call (that is linked to said project and said service contract / warranty) so that this cost is captured to the contract and to the Service department. If the customer comes back with a significant request (a request that will take a long time, a lot of labor and material, or requires Project Management consideration), you may want to consider quoting a new project.
Your organization should set a standard to determine how you will group your items on quotes and materials on the material grid. Additionally, you should standardize and how you will create products and cover said products with contracts. Any of the 5 group fields may be used for this, so it’s best to set a standard first and group / re-group as needed.
Interested in learning more?
- Refer to MasterClass: Project Management v23.01 Scheduling and Forecasting, MasterClass: Project Work in Process and Change Orders v23.02 and Release Highlights v23.01
- For a deep dive, check out our Work Breakdown Structure series WBS I, WBS II, and WBS III
- Contact Solutions360 Customer Care team at support@solutions360.com to pre-schedule your upgrade to Q360 v23.02