Hi, I currently trying to improve the way we track pricing changes on material. Our projects start on a Bid phase in which we agree a final price for the whole project including material and manpower. Bids take months until the contract is signed to start the project and also, as projects, they take longer than 1 year. Material is being purchased as it is needed at the different stages so the cost of this material changes from the baseline (bid price). How do you track this changes effectively?
Currently we are using many many excel sheets to track the different variations on the pricing but this is not scalable nor very user friendly. I'm researching on a way of tracking this changes by using a Business Intelligence tool (Microsoft Power BI) but I still haven't found a good way of doing it. Any ideas? Saving Changes...
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Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Short of using an ERP solution, you're probably going to have to use a hodge-podge of tools and data sources to get what you need. Saving Changes...
That is what I'm trying to avoid. We already use SAP but as many companies with this product, it is so expensive that it is quite difficult to allocate money to develop it and adapt it to the evolving needs.
Current situation are many reports from SAP exported, digested on many different Excel spreadsheets and many manual work. This is the reason I thought of using a BI tool to "connect" all excels (and eventually SAP directly) to make easier to work with the numbers. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Did you look to see if one of the SAP module already offers most of what you need? I remember managing budgets in SAP and it did support multiple versions and comparisons.
You may find it easier to change your process to make it work in SAP, rather than try to change SAP to make it work in your process. Saving Changes...
Well, that was my first thought, but I work for a very big company and access to SAP is quite restricted, I don't even have access so the only information I got is on a txt that I have to parse into an excel file.
Thanks anyway. Saving Changes...
saurabh mahajanPMP, ITIL, PRINCE2| vodafonePune, Maharashtra, India
Not sure but will using open source version control tool a better option.
You can maintain project documents in version control tool and thus track changes to it more efficiently. You can also compare the document version to see how the price has changed over the time. plus all stakeholders can access these documents (access can be controlled as well) so all are on same page regarding costing/scheduling/planning/etc/etc.
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1 reply by Stéphane Parent
Nov 08, 2016 12:47 PM
Stéphane Parent
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Version control tools tend to be geared for programming code. While they work great with text-based files, they tend to work on one version at a time. (The one exception is when asking for the difference between two versions.)
Even SharePoint, which should be geared for documents, cannot help you to, say, build comparison models. You have to build each version in your document and do the comparison yourself.
Saving Changes...
Warren NashPM/PMO Position & SAP Architect| FreelancePudong, Shanghai, China, Mainland
SAP will offer the information that you need. Think about your basic needs and don't request to your IT Point of contact a button that will do all your work, usually standard SAP have the answer. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Apr 28, 2016 2:29 AM
Replying to saurabh mahajan
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Not sure but will using open source version control tool a better option.
You can maintain project documents in version control tool and thus track changes to it more efficiently. You can also compare the document version to see how the price has changed over the time. plus all stakeholders can access these documents (access can be controlled as well) so all are on same page regarding costing/scheduling/planning/etc/etc.
Version control tools tend to be geared for programming code. While they work great with text-based files, they tend to work on one version at a time. (The one exception is when asking for the difference between two versions.)
Even SharePoint, which should be geared for documents, cannot help you to, say, build comparison models. You have to build each version in your document and do the comparison yourself. Saving Changes...
