News

CYNERTIA CONSULTING SPAIN, SIGNS UP AS PARTNER

4/12/2012 12:44 PM

Copenhagen, April 2012 – Cynertia Consulting and WorkBook Software A/S today announced their partnership covering sales of WorkBook for professional services companies to the Spanish market. 

As of April 2012, Cynertia Consulting has been granted the rights to sell WorkBook software in Spain. Cynertia Consulting is a strategic partner for WorkBook Software A/S because of their long history of servicing professional services firms.
 
WorkBook is an all-in-one financial management, pipeline management, project management, resourcing planning, time/expense solution with executive dashboards that is tailored made for professional services firms.  WorkBook is extremely scalable and will enable companies from a few users to many hundred users to invest in a solution that will support their growth.

We identified WorkBook as a great opportunity to meet the need for a comprehensive information system of some professional service sectors, such as Marcom, Advertising or Digital Agencies. WorkBook provides a great balance between functionality, quick adoption and reasonable cost while offering the financial advantage of paying as you use, says Alex Ballarin, CEO of Cynertia Consulting.
Alex continues; “WorkBook offers a quick adoption solution which saves implementation and maintenance costs. The key in my opinion is that offers the right mix of broad functionality and ease of use that avoids large efforts to define a simple yet defined usage model.Since WorkBook is a very well established tool in some countries and sectors, we expect we can leverage the quality of the tool and the great references to demonstrate its business value and low risk of the tool adoption.”

“Entering Spain is very exciting for WorkBook Software. In recent market research we’ve done it shows that Spain is a very promising market for us and I feel that Cynertia Consulting has what it takes to open up the market and be successful.” Says René Præstholm, Partner Director of WorkBook Software A/S.
 
About Cynertia Consulting
Cynertia Consulting is a business and IT consulting firm covering the Spanish market. The goal of Cynertia is to help their customers to innovate and enhance effectiveness in dimensions such as the business model, operations,
 
About WorkBook Software
WorkBook Software is a leading software company that is headquartered in the beautiful Copenhagen, Denmark. We work with partners around the world to deliver the best SaaS web based system tailored for the Professional Services Industry. The WorkBook system includes CRM, Project and Resource Management and Accounting but clients can choose exactly what modules to include.
 

BROADCOAST AUSTRALIA SIGNS UP AS PARTNER

3/23/2012 9:18 AM

Copenhagen, March 2012 – Broadcoast Australia and WorkBook Software A/S today announced their partnership covering sales of WorkBook for professional services companies to the Australian market. 

As of March 2012, Broadcoast has been granted the rights to sell WorkBook software in Australia. Broadcoast is a strategic partner for WorkBook Software A/S because of their long history of servicing professional services firms.

WorkBook is an all-in-one financial management, pipeline management, project management, resourcing planning, time/expense solution with executive dashboards that is tailored made for professional services firms.  WorkBook Software targets the following market segments; Marketing/Communication, Architects, Engineering and Consulting. WorkBook is extremely scalable and will enable companies from a few users to many hundred users to invest in a solution that will support their growth.

“Broadcoast mission is to provide Australian companies with access to cloud solutions so that they can access world leading business applications at affordable prices. WorkBook provides leading solutions for the Marketing and Communication Industry, and Engineering sector, that have not been available in Australia previously.  We are excited to be partnering with this dynamic and growing firm. WorkBook provides Broadcoast a solution that is targeted toward MARCOM and Engineering firms, offering the full lifecycle from sales prospect, thru project, resourcing, and accounting.  WorkBook is very easy to setup and use, and since is available from the cloud requires no expensive infrastructure and consulting to get established.” says Trevor Townsend, Director of Broadcoast.

“Entering Australia is very exciting for WorkBook Software. In recent market research we’ve done it shows that Australia is a very promising market for us and I feel that Broadcoast has what it takes to open up the market and be successful.” Says René Præstholm, Partner Director of WorkBook Software A/S.
“Broadcoast believes access to the WorkBook solution will open up the MarCom and Engineering markets for us, and allow us to be a leading provider of cloud based software solutions to this market.” says Trevor Townsend, Director of Broadcoast.
 
WorkBook delivers a complete and rapid implementation template, which in detail, documents and describes all business flows and business areas within a market segment - through an intuitive web interface and based on Microsoft SQL Server. 
 
About WorkBook Software
WorkBook Software is a leading software company that is headquartered in the beautiful Copenhagen, Denmark. We work with partners around the world to deliver the best SaaS web based system tailored for the Professional Services Industry. The WorkBook system includes CRM, Project and Resource Management and Accounting but clients can choose exactly what modules to include.
 

About Broadcoast
Broadcast is a business technology advisor specialising in cloud-based applications and infrastructure.  Drawing on more than 20 years IT professional services experience in banking, telecommunications and the software industry itself, we are well placed to guide your technology investment decisions.
 
Through Broadcoast's strategic partnerships our clients gain access to the cloud-based business technologies selected and configured to their real business needs. Our product catalogue offers premium business technology choices for emerging companies and established enterprise scale organisations alike and will position both to fully exploit the potential of leading global solutions.

GetApp.com Review

3/23/2012 8:46 AM

GetApp.com - one of the best sources to find cloud based business software have recently done a review on WorkBook. 

Another 8/10 to be proud of...


Head over to GetApp.com to read the review...

Burning off hours or making it fast & efficient?

2/28/2012 10:30 AM

Back in the days where ERP systems where hard to implement you’d pay many money in consultancy fees for pre-analysis, analysis, research and focus groups, system configuration, technical installation, training and after sales support to name a few. Many of our competitors are still throwing around with such buzz words and are making complex looking implementation plans with a lot of tasks included and hundreds of hours to be used. It might be the case that you have to have these phases and tasks when developing an entirely new system from scratch but if you are selling the same system to the same kind of clients every single time I simply cannot comprehend the burn rate of hours that we hear about.

Our philosophy is and has always been to implement new clients as efficient and structured as possible. How do we do that? Well, first of all we always start up a new client on a pre-configured system. This saves us a bunch of time in typing in the same data again. Secondly we don’t ask the client about all 700 system parameters. We ask them about the ones that are vital in order for the system to be launched as quickly as possible. Sometimes a wrong decision is made in the setup but the great thing is that even though the system has been launched, generally the decision can be reverted.

Many of our clients don’t now the consequences of deciding for a certain parameter. So our job is to guide them through the decision making process as smooth and quickly as possible. Our job is not to burn hours asking the client about irrelevant parameters just for the sake of it.

Now sometimes there’s a glitch. Sometimes the client doesn’t know their own workflows or haven’t invented them yet and sometimes we are expected to do more of a management consulting role and helping the client to establish new workflows. These implementations are hard to spot in forehand in the pre-sales process hence it’s hard to estimate the hours in an implementation budget. To some extent that’s alright. Our goal is not to have any hour accounted for but to have a happy client that will tell great stories about us to other clients. That is the best marketing money you’ll ever spend. 

WorkBook scores 8.8/10

2/17/2012 3:35 PM

In a recent review done by WebAppRater.com, WorkBook scored 8.8/10 which is a rare and high score for a web based ERP system.
"I'm thrilled to see that WorkBook is scoring that high in the highly competitive market of CRM, Project and Resource management systems on the internet. This proves that WorkBook has in-depth functionality that the competition cannot reach. The team is excited to receive such high honours and it strives us even more to deliver high-end quality products," says René Præstholm, Partner Director of WorkBook Software.



Read the entire review here.

Resource planning: a new beginning or just a nightmare?

2/2/2012 2:34 PM

Every Project manager is struggling over this subject. Why? - Because when dealing with people, things change rapidly. Clients will change plans, employees get ill or assigned to other tasks and in this ever changing world of changes, the Project Manager will need to update time plans to reflect these changes. That requires a lot of effort and time and sometimes it’s a slaughterhouse to get the right resources.

In order to accommodate this, I have made a small checklist to consider before starting using resource planning. Here we go:
 

1. Will everything be scheduled?  Is it both billable and non-billable tasks?
Recommendation: everything will need to be scheduled.
 

2. When is a task significant to schedule (i.e. an hour, 4 hours, a day etc.)
Recommendation: That’s a matter of the culture and how large tasks are in normal. WorkBook can be setup so the employee has extra time for every working day, and that allows the employee to pick up the phone as well as do ad-hoc work during the day.
 

3. Who will perform scheduling?  Is it Project Managers only?  Or will there be a central planner(s) that will manage and regularly review the allocation of tasks?
Recommendation: We see the best results in companies that have a central planner functioning. However, not all companies can afford having just one person undertaking this. Sometimes the position can be combined with a management role i.e. Department Manager. If your company can only afford Project Managers, then we suggest that they allocate the necessary employees on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and then meet up to fine tune and adjust the time plans once a week.
 

4. If there are changes or a conflict that has arisen, who should have the ability to move tasks between resources, add additional resources etc. (i.e. who should act as a traffic manager?)
Recommendation: We think that the Project Manager is overall in charge of updates to the time plan, but if you a centralized planner, changes must be done according to the overall plan.
 

5. Are all people available to allocate? Do you wish to plan to individual resources or Group Resources?
Recommendation: It’s pretty hard to allocate a Project Managers time. They often rush from project to project so to allocate specific time to a Project Manager can best be done (in our point of view) as an even distribution of hours over time, in order to at least see the capacity usage overall. We think that Project Workers will need to be the ones to focus on. A great way of solving the issue about having (or not having) a Traffic Manager is to have Group Resources. A Group Resource is an option in WorkBook to assign work on a grouping level i.e. by position. In WorkBook, you can see how much capacity has been booked to the group resources and it will warn you (as it will for all resources) if you book above the free capacity. Once all Project Managers have allocated their tasks to the Group Resources, they (or the Traffic Manager) will need to assign the tasks to real employees. In that way you don’t allow Project Managers to assign to real people directly.
 

We find that scheduling is most successful when it is used by everyone.  If not, all resources are planned then the overall view does not give you information on how busy people are.  Also, if some Project Manager’s plan and some don’t it is very hard to see who you can use to perform work.  It is a matter of discipline and it relies on keeping the schedule up to date.

Calendars
It can be very hard to do resource planning if you don’t have a 100% overview of available time for all people. You can integrate WorkBook currently with Outlook (Microsoft Exchange) so a user’s calendar appointments will be transferred to WorkBook and appear as bookings. You also have the option to do this in reverse and let bookings end up in the user’s calendar. In that way, you get the total overview of all free capacity. To my knowledge, WorkBook is the only system that has this feature.
 

We have invested a lot (I mean a lot!) of development time into building the calendar synchronizer plug-in-thingy. We asked our users what calendar we should do the plug-in for, and most of them replied Outlook (Microsoft Exchange), but integration to other calendar systems are on the way (Google, Kerio, iCal to name a few).
 

We have a lot of experience from both small and larger organizations so contact us if you need advice on how to approach resource planning in your company.

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New exciting partners joined our partner program

2/2/2012 2:20 PM

We welcome our new partners:

Runtime from Germany
Apora from The Netherlands
DP Technology from Singapore
 
All partners are very excited to help clients implement WorkBook in their respective countries.

Runtime is a leading company for cloud computing in Germany and is implementing WorkBook themselves to get a real in-depth knowledge and understanding of the capabilities.

Apora is also a leading cloud focused company that apart from WorkBook also has offerings within the Google Apps space.

DP Technology is covering most of South Asia from Singapore and has extensive knowledge for solution implementations. As well as Runtime they also implement WorkBook themselves (after have done a lot of research in other PSO solutions that didn’t work).

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Customer signed!!

7/12/2011 2:48 PM

PR firm Veritas Communications, 360 Visibility and WorkBook A/S reach new heights of innovation with the world’s first Professional Services Automation solution powered by Microsoft Azure in the cloud
 
Veritas’s selection of WorkBook v8.0 on Azure a revolutionary step in the cloud-based application world
 
Toronto, July 11, 2011— After an exhaustive selection process that included the consideration of cloud and on-premise solutions, public relations firm Veritas Communications Inc. has signed on with 360 Visibility Inc. and the professional services automation solution, WorkBook v8.0.
 
The implementation of WorkBook v8.0 on Microsoft Azure is a world first, and the adoption of this ground-breaking PSA solution makes Veritas, whose client roster includes Expedia.ca and Church & Dwight, a pioneer in North America.
 
WorkBook v8.0 is an all-in-one cloud-based executive management tool targeted specifically at professional services organizations for tracking time and expenses against projects. While the tool already hosts thousands of on-premise implementations, today’s announcement marks the first to be implemented on the Microsoft Azure platform.
 
“WorkBook v8.0 is a fully integrated solution for Professional Service Firms and provides a full 360-degree view of an organization’s operating results,” says Marco D’Ercole, executive vice-president of 360 Visibility Inc. “It is a world-class cloud product accessible anytime, anywhere, with minimal upfront costs and implementation effort.”
 
Because of its history servicing such professional services organizations as Res Publica, NATIONAL PR, and kenna:, 360 Visibility has a long and healthy working relationship with WorkBook A/S, and represents the product in Canada, U.S.A. and the Caribbean Islands.
 
 “We are very proud that Veritas selected WorkBook and our partner 360 Visibility Inc.,” says René Præstholm, chief operating officer of WorkBook Software A/S. “Veritas is a very strong brand, and we are excited they have signed on to the cloud-based version of our PSA solution, which has an 11-year history in the industry.”  
 
For Veritas, a member of the MDC Partners network, the move means more efficient time and expense tracking – and will be a key step in the firm’s commitment to continuously improving client service. “This is an exciting development for our company,” says Raymond Siu, Veritas’s chief financial officer. “We are very much looking forward to the gains in efficiency and the rapid implementation of a cloud-based, industry-specific solution.”
 
About Veritas
Veritas, a subsidiary of business transformation organization MDC Partners (Nasdaq: MDCA; TSX: MDZ.A), is a full-service public relations and public affairs organization that aims to fill the marketplace gap between traditional and new media approaches to the business. The company’s 60 PR professionals are led by a team of senior managers who hail from high-level communications roles in government, media and the private and not-for-profit sectors.
 
About 360 Visibility
360 Visibility is a business solutions company dedicated to facilitating enterprise participants’ ability to make swift, well-informed, coordinated and profitable business decisions through the provision of enterprise software, unified communication, and technology infrastructure. Concentrating on professional services firms such as Marketing Communications, Architects and Engineers, and Management Consulting, 360 Visibility sets organizations up with the technology foundation that allows them to effectively manage their business, capitalize on opportunities and avoid pitfalls.
 
For more information:
Rene Wong, public relations
Phone: (905) 907-3600
info@360visibility.com

WorkBook enter Belgium

6/21/2011 1:20 PM

WORKBOOK SOFTWARE A/S AND SOFTADVICE ANNOUNCE THEIR PARTNERSHIP FOR THE SALES OF THE WORKBOOK SUITE OF PRODUCTS TO PROFESSIONAL SERVICES ORGANISATIONS IN BELGIUM.

SoftAdvice has been granted the exclusive rights to distribute and sell WorkBook software within Belgium, the Netherlands & France. SoftAdvice is a strategic partner for WorkBook Software A/S because of their long history of servicing professional services firms.

WorkBook Software targets the following market segments: Advertising & Design, Communications & Public Relations, Digital & Web, Architects, Engineers, Tax & Audit and Consulting organisations.

WorkBook is a complete solution delivered on a per user per month usage contract, based on the technology of Microsoft Silverlight® and Microsoft SQL Server®. WorkBook also has a tight integration to Microsoft Dynamics® products for those customers that wish to leverage their existing investment in Microsoft Dynamics.

WorkBook - SoftAdvice PDF

http://www.work-book.be

SIS GLOBAL and WORKBOOK announce partnership

3/18/2011 5:23 PM