Being on track through digitalisation

I vividly remember my childhood days when every morning my sister and I used to wait for our school bus at the bus stop near our house. The wait was a little tougher during the chilly, foggy mornings of the Delhi winters. The school bus, owing to poor visibility, would often reach late, which meant more waiting, shivering and teeth grinding for us.

Well, 20 years down the line, now I get my son ready for his school bus. The seasons and the chilly mornings remain quite the same, but the waiting time has lessened manifold. No guesses, it is technological evolution!

GPS tracker has come as a blessing, giving us the benefit of keeping track of the bus so that we step out of our house at a time when there is minimal waiting.

This ‘real-time’ tracking has helped me not just personally but professionally as well.

Our organisation, Fabtech, embarks on projects that need to be timely delivered, while duly considering profitability and managing stakeholders’ expectations.

However, irrespective of the volume of effort an organisation puts in, projects, often tend to get delayed. Infact, there is hardly an industry or a project that does not face the challenge of delivering projects on-time, every-time. These delays are often due to adhering to the scope and budget, so much so that despite companies managing to deliver projects against several odds, the profitability on one hand and customer satisfaction on the other, often end up getting compromised.

So, how does technology put us in a better space? To help you know and understand its benefits, let’s first bring to you the common reasons why projects fail to be completed on time:

• Absence of clear and complete specifications
• Aggressive or unrealistic timelines
• Delay in approvals from key stakeholders
• Last-minute requests
• Third-party dependencies
• Unavailability of right resources and skills at the right time
• Funds and payment issue
• Change in priorities leading to delay in execution

The above scenarios inevitably result in the incidence of fire-fighting, stress, dissatisfied stakeholders, low profitability, and, needless to say, delayed projects.

Therefore, to address and solve the above issues, we sought an automated process that could help us achieve better and faster project execution. Hence, we brought about developing in-house software that enables customer involvement right from the start of the project until its handover. This innovation significantly helps create transparency in project execution, building customer trust and long-term relationships.

The major focus of this innovation is to efficiently carry out project management techniques via improved planning, analysing information, implementing costly software tools, better-estimating models and micro-detailing task definitions. That is to say, our Project Management Office (PMO) tracks the entire project right from receipt of the formal order until the contract completion. In addition, the PMO keeps the entire organization aligned with the project goal using our proprietary real-time web-based Project Management System (PMS) – FabAssure, which is accessible from all across the globe.

Being Sure with FabAssure

FabAssure is a software that tracks the project activities from day one and gives real-time tracking of any project.

In this software, the local actions (task completion) are linked to the holistic impact i.e. the project completion date, from the perspective of the person facing issues in completing the task. With PMO driving the coordination, the entire team aligns to have the issues closed using the ‘Issue Log’. The issues remaining open are escalated to the senior management from time to time to have them step in and lend the due impetus to the project.

Implementing FabAssure in the system has made all life engineers change the way they view a project’s health. The focus is no longer merely on completion, but on the project team’s focus on the ‘whats’, ‘whens’ and ‘hows’ of completion through optimum support required to expedite the process. The site team and the office team thus have a common view of the project, ensuring alignment to the common goal of completing the project on time. The discussion among all is how the project can be completed faster, together!

The client commitment by our sales team relating to date, time, deliverables, and price is inviolable, and the team aligns itself to meet them reliably. With Fabtech’s years of experience executing projects, our Life Engineers have arrived at delivery templates for different projects. This helps them arrive at the time and cost estimates rapidly, and equips our sales team to make reliable client commitments. The system also allows an equal level of involvement of the third-party associates in cases where issues pertaining to them are highlighted, so as to avoid any last minute rushes. To this effect, we have a separate team to manage customer expectations.

Our strong emphasis on assurance also makes our senior management team come together to review the health of the project and the associated issues on a pre-defined day in the week/month based on the number of projects requiring urgent attention. All this is driven by FabAssure’s dashboard, which is a barometer of the health of our project management and the associated delivery capability.

As a Project Management Company, we attach a lot of importance to transparency, and this reflects in our software- FabAssure, where our clients are kept in the loop with all details during the project execution along with giving them full access to keep track of their projects.

FabAssure has enabled Fabtech to reach its primary goal of cost-efficiency which goes parallel with an increased production efficiency of all the projects.

(Graphs & Screenshots of the FabAssure Dashboard are attached as supporting documents)

And above all, FabAssure makes Fabtech India’s first pharmaceutical manufacturing company to have software that helps manage projects and daily operations.

Delving deeper, Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has also helped Fabtech transcend from the conventional manual work culture to the modern non-manual smart work. It has brought about efficiency in the company’s business in more ways than one. By upgrading to an ERP system, our personnel no longer have to rely on advance transactions to proceed with business operations, thus eliminating the possible account discrepancies arising out of overdue payments. Similarly, ERP, by enabling tracking of advances, has also streamlined the advance system of all our life engineers and enabled them to close their advance balances via the easiest, fastest route. Thus, ERP has boosted cash flows by way of improved invoicing, collection tools and faster payment.

Thus, the benefits of this software have gone well beyond the seamless integration of operations and resulted in better streamlining of the business, improved reconciliations, timely closures and easy analysis. Other technologies, viz. CRM and HRMS also play an equally important role in further enhancing the overall system efficacy.

Beyond Business

We have incorporated much more essential software that bring digital inclusivity to our organisation.

Customer Relation Management (CRM) is our sales and marketing portal where all activities of the marketing platform can be tracked. Its functions encompass lead generation, order finalisation, communication with customer, preparation, proposal offer, and offer finalisation till the opening of letter of credit. The system has helped us make a seamless shift from the laborious paper work and utilise advanced technology for improved access and better classification of data. CRM has also led to promptness and more effective responsiveness in our customer relations, ensured timely closure of leads and resolved customer issues more efficiently. The portal has been truly worthwhile in achieving greater customer satisfaction.

Human Resource Management System (HRMS), is another platform where the system manages human resources and related processes throughout the employee lifecycle. The system is a one-stop digital platform that gives a comprehensive view of tasks, data, HR related costs and many in-depth features. Infact, the benefits of HRMS are not just confined to the HR department, but also support finance, accounts, IT and other stakeholders.

To recapitulate, all our project management processes are designed to be practical, simple and result-oriented, and help Fabtech remain firmly committed to the goal of every life engineer, and last but not the least, of every client!

Considering what was unimaginable yesterday will be inevitable tomorrow, digitalisation has been a key driver in minimising manual errors and has helped us keep pace with the times while aligning our business practices with the ever-changing technology. Hence, it would be safe to conclude that this rather auto-mode evolution has made us watch our business transactions without actually having to keep a watch!