Aftermarket Service Software
Alliance Professional Services supports management of knowledge workers, such as those deployed by professional services organizations and internal service departments of large organizations. It simplifies project planning, automates deployment and tracking, improves coordination, and reduces operating and administrative costs. The application enables evaluation and monitoring of project profitability – in order to both adjust plans for current projects and aid in more accurately projecting future programs.
Alliance Professional Services provides project managers and their resources (i.e. consultants) with a universal view of all information regarding projects and tasks. It also affords a means to capture associated time and expenses. Process workflow supports company-specific approval chains for submissions.
The application provides full project lifecycle support, from quotation through initiation to completion. It captures material and time usage, provides resource management functionality including appointment booking, and allocates costs. Private and work-related information such as resources, time sheets, expense reports and forecasts are all made accessible through a unified point of interaction. Both internal and external (third-party) resources can be managed. More than simple job costing functionality, Alliance Professional Services enables automation of project deployment.
A link to Microsoft Project provides detailed project management and seamless connectivity, streamlining project management with end-to-end planning. Users can operate in familiar Microsoft paradigms but still leverage information based in the Astea Global Database – personnel and material availability, generation of work orders, and automation of fulfillment and tracking. Integration with other Astea Alliance applications delivers an end-to-end solution to market, sell, manage and bill professional services. Capabilities to share sales, service, project, and post-project field service data across the enterprise enable professional services organizations to operate with less overhead, improved cash flow, higher profitability, and more competitive bidding.
Features
- Tailored user views of tasks and projects
- Time and expense reporting with respective approval processes
- Unified project information including tasks, risk factors, documentation, billing schedules, skill gap analyses, and profitability reports
- Consultant orders and activities for use in engagement management
- Project collaboration enabling resources and managers to exchange information via online collaboration (WebEx), project forums and documents
- Bi-directional link to Microsoft Project
Benefits
- Enables project profitability analysis through the unification of all information related to a project
- Resource management including scheduling based on skills, roles and availability increases profitable asset utilization
- Integrated service system to cost, deploy, track and bill projects to expedite the service-to-cash cycle
- Automates work orders, staff scheduling, logistics and parts ordering for operational efficiencies
- Improves competitiveness as can execute using best-available resources
