The Proteus value proposition is at the core of our companies mission: we introduce efficiency which translates into directly measurable profit. The Proteus work management solution provides full control over projects with real-time visibility, powering on-time, accurate, consistent work, and driving better profitability.

Proteus was designed with the future in mind; a future that allows companies to reduce costs considerably, a future with a flexible workforce, a future where data is saved and used at the click of a button, a future where skills can be transferred easily between industries and a future where a company is digitally transformed internally before selling externally. This may sound lofty but the fact is, this future is already here.

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, 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.

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.

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 in two ways; firstly by ensuring that all metrics are tracked accurately, giving project managers real time visibility and therefore the information to make accurate decisions.   Secondly, Marketplace moves certain components of a company’s fixed costs into variable costs and therefore maximises utilisation.  Marketplace focuses on the utilisation of people.

The following example assumes a utilisation improvement of 10% in a company of 100 people.  Using the marketplace this kind of saving is easily achievable.

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.

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 a predictable, high quality of 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 on team workflows. However, disparate legacy tools and siloed teams working across multiple offices has 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.
• Flexibility. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Recent lockdowns have precipitated a  successful move to remote-working, demonstrating that the traditional 100% in-office model is no longer legitimate. There is now an expectation from both the workforce and management for at least a measure of remote working to remain for the foreseeable future. Proteus offers the perfect online environment for companies working with remote teams, removing all physical barriers.
  • Users can share files and knowledge within the same platform.
  • Users can work fluidly across multiple projects.
  • Teams can expand and contract quickly and easily with experts being either onboarded or outsourced to other external projects within minutes.
  • Users can enjoy less time commuting and more time doing the things they love.
• 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.

How to get Proteus

Proteus’ work 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 utilisation, 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.

We recommend getting setup on a free trial. 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.

As we hope you have understood from this article, we are passionate about driving real value through Proteus. We would be happy to estimate the business value we could bring to your company.

If you love what we do and want to share this value amongst your industry peers, you may be interested in our Partner Program

___

Read more to find out more about how using a work management solution such as Proteus to help you drive profit, or get in touch with our team today.