August 13, 2004


Anytime, Anywhere Tool Helps Managers Track Projects

Integrated Professional Services Software Brings Focus to Organization

By

Judy Silver

Senior Editor

Data sharing between agencies is a fact of life, whether the agency deals with transactional information or sensitive personnel records.

“When you look at the breakdown we have experienced in security information, we see clearly that we are not sharing information,” asserted Nayab Siddiqui, president of Columbia, MD-based Scientific Systems and Software International (SSSI) Corp. 

SSSI offers a solution that will help organizations share necessary time, project and contract information in a secure way, helping workers be more productive. xpdoffice™ is a web-based professional services automation software that promises to reduce costs and help an organization maintain its focus and serve it customers better.

Modules are available for contracts, time sheets, personnel records, performance evaluations, and purchases and expenses, which when working together become an office productivity enhancement tool.

“People become efficient by virtue of the systems that are put in,’’ said Siddiqui. “If you need to make your organization an efficient, high-performing organization, you must put systems in place and make sure people use them to become high performers.”

xpdoffice™ is designed to collect information entered by employees and managers about time spent, progress made and budget spent on tasks and projects and bring information together in a database to make the information instantly available to task managers and employees.

You can use the solution at division or agency level. Every division would tailor xpdoffice™ for its unique staffing and workflow. It has a feature to synchronize information that needs to flow from one xpdoffice™ implementation to another while safeguarding the information that you don’t want to share.

On one level a contract manager wants to know how much time a particular contractor is spending on a particular task or whether they are on budget. Task managers can see if they are meeting their schedule. The department manager is interested in the health of the project and the executive is interested in the general productivity of the organization. How well is it fulfilling its mission?

DOL Uses xpdoffice™ for Contract Management

At the Department of Labor, the Office of Technology of the Employment and Training Administration turned to xpdoffice™ to help with contract management.

Because of limited space, the Office of Technology had moved its contractors from the main offices in Washington to an offsite location. The software has enabled tracking of contractors’ hours and activity applied to contracts.

“Before xpdoffice™ we didn’t have a structure to manage the many different contracts and various managers,’’ said Jim Coliton, one of the project managers at the Office of Technology in the Employment and Training Administration at DOL.

The project tree-structure of xpdoffice™ allows Coliton to look at a specific tasks and get an update or look at his staff’s productivity on projects or contracts. xpdoffice™ also enables intuitive, straightforward loading of Work Breakdown Structure from project through job and task level, allowing allocation and tracking of labor and hours at all levels.

“When doing billing, the software will show me how many hours staff have been dedicated to a task, so I can keep track of hours used on a particular contract,’’ said Coliton.

Because the software is accessed through any Internet browser, it is well–suited to a dispersed work force. Contract workers may access xpdoffice™ and input their time and task status from their home office or another remote site.

xpdoffice™ has a built-in synchronization utility, so that as information is entered, it is selectively and automatically updated in other selected xpdoffice systems. In the case of parallel agency/contractor systems, only approved information would appear in the contractor’s system when it is entered first in the agency system—and vice versa.

The beauty of xpdoffice™ is that is was designed from the bottom up and was web-enabled from the get-go.

xpdoffice™ is offered as an installed licensed version or in an Application Service Provider (ASP) model. The ASP option lets managers and employees access xpdoffice™ through the web, meaning that agencies don’t even have to worry about installing and maintaining xpdoffice™ software.

“An entire office could be up and running in a matter of days with initial training,” said Siddiqui, adding that with the ASP model customer service comes standard and upgrades are free.

Security for the software meets the stringent federal requirements. The database sits behind firewalls and users have to go through data authentication and password protection. Digital signatures are used by employees to enter, approve and access information.

Business logic in the software also meets government requirements such as DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) cost accounting standards and Federal Acquisition Regulations. xpdoffice™ also supports EVM (Earned Value Management) calculations.

Judy Silver can be reached at JudySilver@PubSector.com.