The Proteus value proposition is at the core of our company’s mission: we introduce efficiency which translates into directly measurable profit. The Proteus sales and project delivery software provides full control over projects with real-time visibility, powering on-time, accurate, consistent work, and driving better profitability.
Too many systems promise the world and deliver nothing other than an expensive overhead.
Promising cost reduction and digital transformation is easy enough, but the value proposition for Proteus needs to be tangible. The numbers here are real however based on a number of assumptions. We see clear value in the following areas
- Business Efficiency: Proposal Development Benefits, Project Management Benefits, Invoice Benefits
- Personnel Utilisation
- Overhead
Proteus Value Proposition: Tangible Benefits
What measurable value can be generated by Proteus?
Every software platform is going to make it very clear what benefits their tool offers. They will promise you the world but potentially never deliver it. Understanding the value of what you will get from a piece of software is a fundamental part of the buying process. It’s also one that is so hard to calculate. But whether you are at the coal face as the person expected to use it, or you are the manager expected to sign it off, or the IT team expected to oversee it, you will need to justify your choice.
For Proteus with some reasonable assumptions in place, we have made calculations resulting in benefits that have tangible value.
Business Efficiency: Proposal Development Benefits
How long does it take to produce a fully approved proposal document that can be issued to a client? Clearly this is dependent on the size and complexity of the project, however, there is another factor that plays a part in the timing – how organized is the data that is required for the bid?
The following numbers need to be scaled up, or down depending on a company’s own circumstances. The assumption here is that a company is developing a proposal for a fairly complex project, with a value of around $1M. The proposal requires an accurate fixed price, a methodology statement, details of the team who will execute the project, and a project execution plan. The company normally does the proposal in Microsoft Word, pulling in data from Microsoft Excel.
Typically this kind of proposal takes about 60 hours of development time costing a company around $6,000 per proposal.
In Proteus this time can be reduced to 10-15 hours, costing $1,000 to $1,500.
| Without Proteus | With Proteus | Saving | |
| Proposal development | |||
| Time to develop proposal | 60 | 15 | 45 |
| Average hourly cost | $100.00 | $100.00 | |
| Cost to develop a proposal | $6,000 | $1,500 | $4,500 |
| Proposals per week | 3 | 3 | $13,500 |
| Proposals per annum | 156 | 156 | $702,000 |
| Potential Annual Saving | $702,000 |
Of course the value is even greater than this as this allows the person developing the proposal to add value to another project, or one salary can replace four salaries.
Business Efficiency: Project Management Benefits
The majority of the project management tools are aimed at ensuring all components; time, equipment, software, training courses, etc are tracked accurately and the correct margins are achieved. Producing reports (timesheet, utilisation, project) is simplified reducing project management time that is required.
Typically around 12 hours a week are spent in project management administration across project managers, cost controllers and project controllers.
In Proteus this time can be reduced in half making significant annual savings for a company.
| Without Proteus | With Proteus | Saving | |
| Project Management | |||
| PM time per week per project | 12 | 6 | |
| Average hourly cost | $60.00 | $60.00 | |
| Weekly cost of project management | $720 | $360 | $360 |
| Annual cost of project management | $33,840 | $16,920 | $16,920 |
| Projects per annum | 100 | 100 | |
| Project management cost per annum | $3,384,000 | $1,692,000 | $1,692,000 |
| Potential Annual Saving | $1,692,000 |
Business Efficiency: Invoice Management Benefits
The key to effective invoice systems is the interface between the project manager and the finance team. This often breaks down, resulting in errors in the invoice, which, in turn results in the invoice being returned for re-submission. This ultimately results in a company’s debtor days increasing.
Therefore the value Proteus offers is it helps improve a company’s debtors days, improving the cash position and therefore reducing the cost of borrowing.
Personnel Utilisation Benefits
Poor utilisation in a company erodes value faster than any other component. Utilisation is a measure of usage of a component against availability. For example, if a company sells man hours and a single person books 1,000 hours against projects annually compared to an annually available 1784 hours the utilisation is 56%.
The same applies to whatever components a company sells. Proteus tackles this problem by ensuring that all metrics are tracked accurately, giving project managers real time visibility and therefore the information to make accurate decisions.
Overhead Benefits
Proteus offers a number of overhead benefit savings. Primarily this value is linked to reducing office space and the associated cost that comes with this. The following table does not go as far as looking at the reduction in office repairs, car parking and in particular the lower level of staffing required to run a smaller office.
| Without Proteus | With Proteus | |
| Gateway Impact | ||
| Headcount | 100 | 60 |
| Utilisation | 80.00% | 100.00% |
| Office space per person (sq ft) | 100 | 100 |
| Office size (sq ft) | 10,000 | 6,000 |
| Rent (per sq ft) | $30.00 | $30.00 |
| Annual rent | $300,000 | $180,000 |
| Overhead (per sq ft) | $10.00 | $10.00 |
| Annual overhead | $100,000 | $60,000 |
| Total | $400,000 | $240,000 |
| Potential Annual Saving | $160,000 |
Proteus Value Proposition: Intangible Benefits
Proteus comes with a number of intangible benefits that offer huge value to any business but are difficult to attribute to bottom-line savings. In summary, these are;
- Consistency. Services are bought by clients looking for predictable, high-quality content or output. A move to a fluid, contracted workforce makes this consistency in quality harder to control and therefore is time-intensive. Proteus is hard-wired to generate deliverables that are always consistent, whether documents are created by temporary outsourced freelancers or by senior managers.
- Single-entry data allows control over how the platform is used by the workforce.
- Form-led processes and templated document creation ensure content meets desired standards.
- 100% accuracy is achieved through inbuilt cost controls and approvals.
- Zero errors allow companies to manage risk efficiently.
- Transparency. Operating in low-margin environments, it has become more important than ever for managers to maintain a real-time view of team workflows. However, disparate legacy tools and siloed teams working across multiple offices have made it difficult to get immediate and accurate oversight. Proteus changes this paradigm by bringing everything into one place.
- Visibility across offices and departments.
- Instant, real-time data via in-built dashboards.
- Automated reporting.
- Productivity. By tracking all workflows through easy timesheeting and resource management, Proteus allows teams to increase productivity.
- Easily accessible databases for contacts, contracts and end-to-end projects greatly simplify the tasks of storing, retrieving and working with varied data while also enormously expanding the capabilities of information sharing and reporting.
- Templated deliverables make the tasks of creating, editing, storing and sharing documents much more efficient.
- Business continuity is enabled through zero product downtime.
- Security. Data security is prerequisite for all businesses operating in an online environment. We take security and privacy seriously to protect the data our customers entrust to us.
- AWS. We store and protect data using world-class hosting infrastructure using services provided by AWS.
- Hosting. For performance and compliance, the Proteus databases are hosted in Ireland.
- Encryption. Traffic within Proteus is encrypted at all times.
- Data segregation. Every company using Proteus is provisioned with a dedicated database, this ensures a customers data is completely segregated and protected, databases are backed up daily.
About Proteus
Proteus developed by a Scottish-based tech company, Xergy Group, is an end-to-end project management solution developed for the energy and engineering consulting industries.
Proteus is industry-proven and enables consultancies to meet project demands across the full lifecycle, from proposal development to project delivery. With robust sales and project delivery modules, Proteus helps its customers win more business, increase efficiencies, manage expenditures, and improve project controls.
Critical workflows, automation, and controls are integrated into Proteus. These include opportunity evaluation, proposal building, resource planning, budget tracking and forecasting, real-time multi-level restricted dashboards, and project performance analytics.
Third-party integrations and customised solutions allow Proteus’ users, which include C-suite, project leads, and engineers, to get the exact software solution needed for their business.
We offer a free onboarding consultation service to ensure your company account is set up to your company’s needs.
How to get Proteus
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 product experts who are ready to help you with the configuration process, so get in touch today by filling out the form below:
