The objective: financial success 

Engineering and construction projects are tricky. They are often enormous – in both size and complexity. They don’t play nicely with fiscal years. They often hit executives with unwelcome surprises. And they have financial ramifications that can echo throughout an organization. For contractors, EPCs and service firms, margins are notoriously narrow. For project or asset owners, missteps with cost or schedule can dramatically impact the underlying business case for the project itself. 

The goal of virtually any project-driven company is to ensure profitability is not only sustained but also grows with time. The cash flow to support operations, debt and other financial concerns is critical, even in cases where profitability is not the end goal (i.e., the public sector). 

Financial success can only be achieved if the right decisions are made at the right time. But we’ve seen this to be difficult to do well and repeatedly over time. If only executives had a crystal ball to see into the future of their projects! They would know which projects to pursue and how they should direct their teams in executing them. This would certainly propel the organization in question to repeatable positive project outcomes and subsequent financial success. 

Surprisingly, business leaders do have a way to see into the future of their projects through effective use of project data. However, their business systems and practices are often outdated or siloed, which results in a lack of data availability and transparency. This keeps executives in the dark and limits their ability to make strategic decisions. Information arrives too late and there is a lack of confidence in the data presented. Because of this, financial challenges arise and profit margins suffer.

Here’s the plan 

In this eBook, we’ll examine the financial challenges project-driven businesses often face and the impact they have on project performance. Then we’ll discuss how business leaders can overcome each challenge by championing their organization’s digital transformation. The replacement of slow, manual, error-prone processes with digital, automated systems will in turn provide executives with a panoramic view of the full project lifecycle. Armed with a complete view of their portfolios, executives will stay well informed of project performance, empowering them to make choices that will serve as key drivers of organizational growth and financial success. 

The financial challenges of project-driven organizations

Executives of project-driven businesses struggle with the challenges shown on the right. Interestingly, the cause of each challenge can be traced back to a problem with either project data or a lack of standardized processes. This resulted in a lack of visibility and subsequent spread of misinformation, which then hindered the decision-making process of business leadership. 

Let’s find out how each challenge affects an organization and its projects. 

To see what the top 4 challenges are and how to combat each, download the rest of the eBook here.