Proteus is an intuitively designed, easy-to-use software for planning and managing projects, mostly used by teams that charge out their time, equipment, and other resources. Xergy Group’s in-house software development team has worked through various product iterations over the years. As a company, we are ambitious and driven. Our mission is to create world-class technology solutions to help businesses improve profit margins and accelerate digital transformation. This means the development roadmap is a constantly lengthening feat. The dev team is always making incremental improvements and updates, bringing more and more functionality each month.
We chatted with Proteus founder and the genius behind the development roadmap, Colin Manson, about where Proteus is now and what is in the pipeline for the next couple of months.
Proteus has changed a lot over the last year or so. Where is it now?
At its heart, Proteus exists to help businesses increase their profits through well-managed margins. The SaaS solution has been developed by our team who come from project management backgrounds, including myself. We know the challenges and pressure that project managers face on a daily basis.
It’s our experience in project management that drives us. We continuously strive to improve and transform operating models across industries where project managers face significant challenges. For example, where project managers are having to juggle the delivery of multiple projects with numerous other activities. This is why Proteus isn’t for everyone. Proteus is for organisations and consultancies who specialise in complex project management – running dozens of large projects at the same time, while developing and submitting proposals for dozens more.
Right now the majority of Proteus’ customers are from the energy and engineering space – industries which have been overlooked by many of the mainstream solutions out there. These are complex projects which need refined, easy to use solutions that are built for purpose, and that will make significant improvements to the project manager’s success rate.
With Proteus, we have combined the workflows involved in winning projects with the workflows required to manage complex projects. One of the major benefits to using Proteus is the centralisation of information which significantly reduces the time wasted on completing repetitive tasks. Whether it’s hunting down up to date CVs, the recent company bio, or the up to date rates table, or creating GANTT charts, earned value reports, or project forecasts, a lot of time can be taken up with completing these tasks that should be being automated. Many of these one hour, two hour, or even ten hour jobs could be taking these companies seconds with Proteus. The sole reliance on spreadsheets for this work is a major reason why so many project managers and organisations struggle to deliver. Legacy systems and spreadsheets is a barrier to achieving high levels of performance. Neither a business nor a PM wants to spend countless hours repeating the same basic administration tasks for every proposal and project on the books, but it’s happening every single day.
By improving the entire process with Proteus you improve the performance. Whether it’s improving utilisation rates, decreasing the team’s percentage of unbillable hours, or improving project profitability. As I said earlier, the whole idea of increasing profit through well-managed margins is at the heart of what Proteus delivers. We have spent the last year making the processes faster, more powerful, and simpler. Exceptional user experience is baked into the DNA of Proteus.
In terms of where we are currently in Q1 2023, we have several R&D projects currently in development that will continue to supercharge our clients’ performance.
What are the key features that are currently in development?
There are a couple of initiatives we are working on that are worth mentioning.
One is Proteus for operators and developers. Proteus was originally designed for the supply chain side. The core of the product was supporting consulting project teams who receive tender documents, work on the proposal, work on delivering the project, and try to maximise margin via project control. If you are an operator or developer, for example, a company like Chevron that invests in and owns the projects, you have the same focus on the proposal stage, project stage, and optimisation, but it is inversed.
So at the proposal stage, as an operator, your job is all about sending out these scopes to the supply companies. You will have several suppliers bidding and there will be a lack of consistency in the way the supplier responses are structured, making direct comparison and evaluation tricky. We are developing Proteus so that the operator side is integrated with the supply side. Instead of an operator sending a request for a proposal pdf by email to supply chain companies A, B C, they can share it from within Proteus. The supply companies get a notification from Proteus, open the proposal, complete their proposal in response, and share it back, all within the same platform. This means the responses follow the uniform structure specified in the operator’s scope and key elements such as scheduling and pricing are directly comparable.
And then, once the project is underway the same goes for reporting progress. What an operator wants to see is different from what a supply chain company wants to see. There are core similarities but also there are core differences. This way there is full transparency between the supply side and the operator and all key data is visible and accurate, and easily accessed by all stakeholders. The supply chain and the operator developer work together within their own Proteus spaces with information flowing between the two.
What new technology will be included in upcoming features?
The other part that we think is super exciting, and we have a lot of interest in, is AI. We want to take the efficiencies and savings we bring to supply chain companies and push them further. ChatGpt is taking over the world. If you think about what it is doing, it uses a massive databank to produce content. We are moving to a point with Proteus where we roll in the positives this AI can bring. You will be able to input your project scope and Proteus will be able to write your proposal for you. If the scope is written correctly by the operators and shared in the Proteus to the supply side, you can automatically produce a proposal document based on your specific data set. This will include your introduction that is tailored to your company’s capabilities, your execution statement, team, past experience, project plan, and pricing, all produced automatically. You will of course have to add your human touch, but if Proteus can help you get 90% of the way there, imagine the efficiencies and savings that can be made.
When can we expect to see these features being rolled out?
We have a few critical items on the development roadmap right now, including our Salesforce integration, but we have the UX and UI design completed so some of these features will be a reality later in the year.
About Xergy and Proteus
Xergy Group’s Proteus work management solution is designed to work with your existing systems and to scale and evolve as your business evolves. Created by project management leaders, for the diversified engineering consultancy sector, Proteus delivers an end-to-end work management software platform with detailed workflows from the early opportunity stage through to project delivery, compliant with common project management frameworks and ISO standards.
How to get Proteus
Proteus’ project management software is a cloud-based system designed for businesses of all sizes to handle projects of unlimited complexity. Each Proteus feature is aimed at making bottom-line improvements by improving proposal win rates, resource utilization, streamlining workflows, providing quick and efficient access to resources, and reducing overheads.
One of the unique advantages of Proteus is that we offer a free onboarding consultation service to ensure the company account is set up according to your company’s needs. This makes getting your company up and running on Proteus quick and easy. Get your free Proteus demo here.
Proteus operates under a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. We offer Enterprise packages and flexible pricing solutions: contact our team to learn more.
We designed Proteus to be simple, and that means you can get up and running on Proteus without an IT team or support from a programmer. You will want to spend a bit of time configuring the admin console so that you have everything set up to suit your company structure, but it’s very intuitive, and you don’t need a PhD in IT. However, we want you to get the best out of what is a brilliantly powerful tool, so don’t hesitate to ask for our support. We have a team of customer success experts who are ready to help you with the configuration process, so get in touch today by completing the form below.
