There has been a lot of buzz and questions from our colleagues and customers about Dynamics 365 Project Operations. I thought I would help shed some light and help point people to the most current information to help clarify this addition. Or should I say, rebirth to the Project Technology family.

Project Operations, released October 1^st, 2020, was the next evolutionary step for the original Project Services Automation.

Project Service Automation could import an MS Project schedule. It would spin up a Project schedule for you to outline the work deliverables (work packages) and keep that associated with a customer engagement or proposal.

The goal of Microsoft’s Dynamics suite is to provide end-to-end coverage of a customer relationship. From proposal to mapping and modeling work, scheduling, delivering, and then billing for the services rendered, Dynamics can do it all.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations functionality boasts some great connected systems and processes together:

• Project sales management
• Project accounting
• Inventory-based projects
• Price list management
• Microsoft Project integration
• Billing
• Project contracts management
• Requirements management
• Resource planning
• Schedule table
• Offer management
• Lead management
• Time and expense management
• Client management
• Teams’ collaboration
• Comprehensive project operations

This “one-stop-shop” has many advantages since keeping the data under one umbrella allows you to build, scale, report, and automate without having to move data from system to system or between toolsets.

Understanding the Project Management Technology Layers:

As you know, the lifeblood for an organization is its ability to complete both client and internal projects.  These endeavors don’t just happen in a vacuum. They are happening in an entire ecosystem of processes, tools, systems, and resources.

In building a Project Management Culture, you must account for the culture and ecosystems set up to allow a business or organization to work. Many of these are operational or foundational (like billing or collections).

Microsoft has set out to provide both back-end platforms and applications designed to work together to help give organizations and people tools to increase their personal and professional productivity.

The world experiencing a global crisis of COVID-19 highlights the need for increased pressure on project-based services organizations to change the way they operate rapidly. We refer to the term VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) events. Now more than ever, operating with the speed needed to deliver successful project-based services requires involvement from everyone.

Microsoft’s vision for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations is to connect teams across the project delivery lifecycle and unlock the business agility and resilience needed for success.

Project-Centric Organizations know the necessity of closely managing their projects to improve customer satisfaction and their project profitability. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations enables billable project-based organizations to manage all aspects of customer-facing activities, from sales through project staffing, project delivery, and invoicing.

Project Operations in Relationship with other Microsoft PM Technologies:

Microsoft has several different PM tools ranging from Task Management to Work Management to Project, Program, and Portfolio Management.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• To Do
• Teams
• SharePoint
  • Task Lists
  • Gantt Chart Lists
• Planner
• Microsoft Shifts
• Project Professional (Desktop)
• Project Online
• Project for the Web
• Project Operations

As an organization that manages projects, Microsoft and other industry leaders recognized that not all toolsets are equal. Managing Project work can involve tasks, activities, or deliverables; worked on in groups or teams with time-phased tracking and deliverables with a global resource pool of people, equipment, and skillsets. Each one of these has different but connected requirements.

With Project Operations, you can fold the best of breed of the different tools (CRM, Finance & Operations, Project Management, and Resource Management) into one experience.

As you look at different PM Technologies, you can readily see that there is overlap between the pre-initiation (Sales) to estimate and deliver that client work for customers. All of these sit under key strategic initiatives or a “Portfolio” or work connected to the resources required to deliver that effort.  Project Operations helps you fold in the Sales, Tracking, Invoicing with your Project Management activities and processes.

Project Operations Key Features & Capabilities:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations consists of 8 core modules. These work together between Sales (Dynamics CRM) and project delivery, where you can tie together what is proposed, delivered, and invoiced. All of this promotes higher customer satisfaction and ultimately better results for customers.

Module: Opportunity Management

·        Enables management to understand the organization’s pipeline to be prepared and react to new business.

·        Provides visibility into potential opportunities, their cost, and projected profitability.

Module: Project Planning

·        Natively integrated to Microsoft Project, with its scheduling and management power, to improve your project planning from estimation to completion.

·        Enables sales and project managers to collaborate.

·        Dashboards of the cost, duration, and value offered to the prospect or client.

Module:  Resource Management 

• Optimize your resources across project service, customer service, and field service.
• Accurately forecast resource needs and improve project execution and timely delivery.
• Provides complete visibility to resources so the best potential fit (skills, cost, availability, etc.) in all cases can be assigned to the project.

Module:  Mobility

• Provides your project information with the right device for the right role.
• Access project or customer data as well as collaborate with your team directly via mobile PSA.

Module:  Team Collaboration  

• Enable team members to collaborate on projects and maintain current and accurate project status at all times.
• Proactively identify and resolve potential risks to the success of every engagement.
• A collaborative and secure workspace for partners, project members, and customers to share information and project deliverables during project execution.
• Enhance project operational visibility and improve process efficiency.

Module:  Time and Expense Management

• Enables individual team members and consultants to accurately track their project time and expenses related to specific tasks and deliverables to maintain cost control within the project-based work.
• Easily enter time and expenses for a project from any device (web, mobile apps, and Office 365), so they are correctly billed.

Module:  Customer Billing

• Allows project managers to track, update, and approve all project-related costs followed by invoice generation sent or emailed to the customer.
• Costing and billing of resources time based on the role that the resource is associated to.

Module:  Service Analytics

• Real-time analytics to go from being reactive to proactive.
• Interactive Business Intelligence (BI) to help ensure projects are feasible and profitable.
• Understand critical KPI’s necessary to run a project-based business successfully.

Project Operations also comes with Power BI and Cortana Intelligence built-in. The SaaS solution enables project and service-driven organizations to identify potential opportunities, submit bids, reach contractual agreements, manage resources, deliver projects on-budget and on-time, record time and expenses, and invoice the customer according to billing arrangements.

What Project Operations is Not:

I want to clarify that while Project Operations provides a secure end-to-end solution from Sales, Resourcing, Work Delivery, Time Tracking, and Billing, it is NOT an inexpensive solution.

This application is a full ERP. The best practice approach (and the approach that yields this highest return for investment) to implementing Project Operations is to integrate this into a full-service lifecycle.  While this has tremendous benefits, if you have little budget or are not serious about aligning and improving your processes, this won’t be the right tool solution for you.

While components of this (Power BI, Power Apps, Project for the Web) all are applications that can be used separately, they are folded (along with other modules) into the entire workstream process in Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

Recommendations on When to Use Project Operations:

Dynamics 365 is Microsoft’s flagship, and Microsoft will continue to improve, edit, and align its technology in this area.

Already the MS Project Team and the Dynamics 365 Team work together on Project Operations. That should tell you about the alignment and commitment that Microsoft continues to make in this product.

If you are a Dynamics 365 customer or are looking at expanding from Dynamics 365 Sales and expand or connect your Finance & Operations with Project & Resource scheduling, this is something you should absolutely look at.

If your organizational maturity around project management is low, then this may be too big of a stretch. It would be best to look at the Enterprise version of MS Project called Project Online or PWA. Or possibly look at Project for the Web (which is a component of Project Operations).

Either way, Advisicon stands ready to help you compare, implement, and teach you how to leverage the right level of PM Technology that will best meet your needs.

Be prepared for more to be written on this. This technology is under constant improvement, so look for more articles on Project Operations as Microsoft increases its capabilities.

I hope this helped. Feel free to reach out to us to discuss this or other PM technologies.