How to structure payments
How do you pay for stuff on your project? We talk about preparing a procurement plan, but what are your options? I’ve always found that having clear payment terms and a structure for the payments makes planning a lot easier. When I know when invoices are due or what deliverable is attached to what payment milestone, I can queue up conversations with Finance so they are ready to pay what is often a sizeable invoice. There are 3 phases to consider when structuring a payment plan for your project:
This is how they look when you put them into practice. Before the deliverables are fully completeThis is the project execution phase, the stage where you are working collaboratively on creating the deliverables. This is where my contracts often have stage payments so the vendor gets something before the end – useful for keeping motivation high and helping them pay their costs on a long project. After all, they need to be able to operate their business to support yours. Generally, you’d want to make those payment milestones meaningful and relevant to the project. For example, you could set the payments to go out on completion of milestones that start generating benefit for the project. Alternatively, do what we did and just split them by project lifecycle stage, so a payment is due on completion of the discovery/scoping and requirements finalisation, then another one during build and the final one on completion. On the largest contract I’ve been involved with, we had multiple delivery point payment milestones as it was a long project. When the project deliverables are fully completeThis is the point where you’d do the final payments related to the services or goods they are providing on the project. All the doing is done, so you pay them for the work delivered. In practice, this is often the final stage payment. Post-project follow upThere might be post-deliverable payments to make, for example any maintenance costs or ongoing service contracts that come into effect once the main delivery part of the project is wrapped up. Perhaps this is a payment point that then initiates another round of payments for Phase 2 or subsequent work, or you might have written into the contract a mechanism for paying for additional work through change control. At this point, if the project is done, you’d normally be handing over any open contracts to the operational team who will deal with the ongoing supplier relationship moving forward. Just document what you know and hand it over to them with any paperwork. Ultimately, commercial relationships need to be beneficial for both parties, so it is helpful to work with the supplier in partnership to work out a reasonable payment scale. We involved lawyers on both sides to draft out the documentation and help with the negotiation because it was a big investment and we wanted it to be right. Putting the time and effort in to working out suitable payment milestones, stage payments, processes for change and so on meant that the working relationship going forward was pretty smooth. Both sides knew what to expect and we had documented approaches for dealing with changes and disputes. Plus, from a project management perspective, I knew exactly what would trigger a stage payment and I could plan for the acceptance paperwork so we were ready. |
5 Common Project Financial Measures
Project financial analysis is what happens before a project is approved, and is a way of making sure that the company is spending its investments wisely by making smart choices about what projects to take forward. Thorough analysis is important to ensure that you don’t end up doing projects that lose money. According to The Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook: How to Launch, Lead, and Sponsor Successful Projects by past PMI Chair Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, there are 5 common financial metrics: opportunity costs, payback period, IRR, NPV and ROI. Let’s take a look at those. Opportunity CostsOpportunity costs are a way of looking at what you aren’t going to do because the business’ resources will be tied up on this project. If the other projects are worth more to the business (however that is decided), then this project should be put on hold and instead the other projects should be taken forward. You’ll need a relatively mature portfolio management approach to do this because you’ll have to identify the other projects that will be put on hold, and have budget/resource assessments for them to calculate what it would cost to do those – and have information about their benefits. If you’re in the kind of business that only does full business cases when the idea is pretty much ready to go, then this could be hard. Even so, you should be able to include a paragraph in the financial evaluation that talks about the fact other projects will not be going ahead if the company decides to invest in this work. Payback PeriodThis measure relates to how long it takes before the project starts to generate a return. On a programme, that could be before the end (and I’d hope it would be) because individual projects should be generating benefits as they complete. Nieto-Rodriguez talks about the duration of the payback period being set by the organisation. Then if the project earns back the investment before that time is up, it’s a worthwhile investment. If it’s going to take longer than that, it’s time to think again. Typically, shorter payback periods are better, as it means the project starts to earn back more than it cost to do in a shorter time. Internal Rate of Return (IRR)I used to find IRR a difficult concept to understand, because rate of return is quite clear, but what’s the ‘internal’ all about? IRR refers to the amount the project ‘earns’ for the business. IRR is expressed as a percentage, and relates to the efficiency of the investment. Let’s say you put your project budget in the bank and didn’t do the project. Instead, you just claimed the interest that the bank paid on the money. Your investment is safe, and you make some money back. But bank interest rates are pretty rubbish for the most part. What if you did the project instead? The IRR calculation tells you what the ‘interest’ rate would be – it’s a different way of looking at the way project’s generate return. If the IRR is better than what you’d get in a bank, then the project is worth doing. If the IRR is less than what the bank could offer, you may as well save your time and effort and put the cash in the bank – assuming that financial returns are what you want to get. Net Present Value (NPV)NPV is really useful, because it helps you work out project financials as they relate to what money is worth today. A positive NPV is what you are looking for: that translates as the project forecasts being worth an amount that generates future cash at an acceptable rate. NPV targets, minimum rates and discount rates may be set as industry standards or by your finance team, so check how if there are any specific variables or values you are expected to consider in the calculations (or better still, get a finance person to give you a template where you just plug the project forecasts in and get the NPV out). NPV is expressed as a financial value. Return on Investment (ROI)This measure relates to the project’s financial return given the investment made to deliver the project. In the business case or financial documents, it is expressed as a percentage of the total anticipated project cost, often including the Year 1 to 5 opex or running costs too, but the exact calculation will depend on the criteria set by your finance team. ROI is a way to clarify what the business gets back from its investment. Typically, the higher the ROI, the better, as it means that the company is going to receive more income from the investment and it will pay off in a better way. |
5 Project Management resolutions with a financial theme
On the off chance that you’ll be making resolutions this year, here are some you could consider. They all have a money-related theme, so if you want to brush up your budgeting or polish your financial management skills in 2013, these could be great resolutions for you to adopt. So here we go: 5 promises for better money management over the next 12 months. 1. I will look at historical data for forecastsWhen you are managing projects that are repetitive in nature and that the team has a lot of experience of, it’s very tempting to simply let them estimate the length of tasks and assume that they know what they are doing. Most of the time, they probably will. But it is worth validating their estimates against historical data from timesheets and previous project schedules. Use your online project management software to pull up reports of how long things took the last time you did them. This could be at the level of an individual task, like completing a particular piece of coding, or a project phase, like testing. Or both. The purpose of checking is to make sure that your estimates really are sound and that the people who are estimating are not making the same mistakes about task duration on every project. 2. I will do my timesheets in a timely fashionThis is a personal resolution for you, although you could extend it to all your project team members. The risk of not doing your timesheets on time is that you forget exactly what it was that you were doing. As a result, you block out 8 hours per day for a task called ‘project management’ which doesn’t give you any breakdown of how you actually spent the time. Worse, you could be booking time to one project when in reality you got pulled off that project to spend half a day on some other project. These things happen in real life, to you and your team members. By aiming to complete your timesheets at least weekly you’ll not have long enough to forget what you were working on! 3. I will understand Earned Value Analysis (or teach someone else how to do it)If you don’t understand EVA, make 2013 the year when you get your books out and study how it works. If you do understand EVA, make a resolution to share your knowledge with someone else this year. Even if you don’t use EVA on your projects, it is a very useful skill to have. 4. I will do my expenses on timeMost project managers will incur expenses in the course of their job, such as travel to meetings. Not doing your expenses on time means that you are out of pocket. Many companies only pay expenses once a month in the monthly pay run, so don’t let your expense bill mount up – that’s effectively a loan to your company. Get your personal paperwork in order by keeping receipts together, noting down your mileage after every trip and understanding the schedule for submitting expenses so that you don’t miss the deadlines. If your expenses are being cross-charged to your project it is even more important to get your expenses in on time. If you don’t, your project budget will reflect that you have more ‘in the bank’ than you actually do. 5. I will review my budget quarterlyYou do this already, don’t you? If not, make 2013 the year when you review your project budget forecasts regularly. If your project runs over two quarters you’ll probably be asked to do this by your finance team anyway, but even if you are not, it is still good practice to get out your spreadsheets and just check that you are still on track to stick within your budget tolerance limits. Have you chosen any of these as your resolutions for 2013? If not, what are you having as your resolutions instead? Elizabeth Harrin is Director of The Otobos Group, a project management communications consultancy. Find her on Google+ and Facebook. |
5 levels of financial management maturity
One of the perspectives is financial management. Here’s how you should be performing at each of the different levels. Level 1There is a “general lack of accountability” for monitoring what project budgets are spent on. Projects have few, if any, financial controls and generally don’t have formal business cases. This means it is hard for the company to properly assess potential projects and decide where the organisation’s funds should be spent. Level 2There are a few more business cases around, although there is no standard template. The best business cases will explain the rationale for the project but not necessarily have a lot of financial information in. Still, it is something to go on when deciding what investment decisions to make. Project managers are applying financial controls haphazardly, depending on their previous experience and skill level. Contingency planning and risk management are done without much consideration of costs. For example, contingency budgets are just made up, instead of being calculated on the basis of likely risk. Level 3There are standards for business cases and how to get business cases approved. Business cases have one owner. Project managers manage cost and expenditure – and there are corporate guidelines that show how to get these done. There will be links to the Financial department or other teams who carry out financial controls. Level 4 (this is where you should be aiming, if you aren’t already here)There are processes in place to enable the organisation to prioritize investment decisions. In other words, the financial information available prior to a project starting is good enough to work out whether it is a strategically important project, given the available funds and resources. Project budgets are managed well by project managers, and there are tools in place to enable tracking and comparison of financial information.
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How not to leak company secrets
Categories:
corporate finance
Categories: corporate finance
Maybe you think that you'll never have to answer that question because you subscribe to the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, or because your personal ethical boundaries mean that you would never give away company secrets under any circumstances. OK. But what if I told you that employees at Google, Barclays and the Pentagon all leaked sensitive information without knowing about it? According to a new guide from document collaboration software firm Workshare, metadata in documents can give away company secrets. What's metadata? It's all that stuff Microsoft puts into your document: comments, the version history, and corrections made through the 'track changes' feature. Metadata is automatically added to Microsoft Office documents whenever a document is created, edited or saved. If you use collaboration features such as opting to record your changes in PowerPoint so that you can send them back to the document's original author, then all that is stored as metadata too. Document properties often store the name and organisation of the author. If you repurpose a PID, for example, to use for another client, be careful about what detail is stored in the properties that could give away who else you work with. The Workshare report details several widely publicised, high profile cases in which metadata has landed organisations in hot water. For example:
Even if you aren't dealing with multimillion dollar deals or sensitive financial models you should still be careful about what you could be unwittingly sharing. Circulating financial information about your project could be commercially damaging even if it is a small project. Worse, the company could end up in legal hot water with fines to pay if sensitive data is leaked. No project manager wants to be the one who got the company sued. So should you stop using track changes? Of course not. Metadata is useful for identifying, indexing and managing documents. Track changes makes editing project documents that have several rounds of revisions possible. Just be careful about what you send outside the organisation. The report does recommend that you make an effort to strip out comments and revisions before you send documents to people outside the company. Here are some tips for your documents:
In short, be smart about what you circulate to avoid exposing your company's financial data or other secrets when you share documents. You can read the whole report here: www.workshare.com/collateral/misc/Dangers_of_Document_Metadata.pdf |