You can now clone individual or groups of work packages between existing proposals and projects. This saves valuable time by streamlining the setting up of similar proposals.
Multi-office Proposals
Several of our clients have faced situations where one office needs another office to help with pricing while preparing a proposal.
To address this, we’ve introduced a new workflow in Proteus which allows the lead office to create and assign a supporting proposal to a project manager from the supporting office. The supporting office can then budget the necessary resources, with the option to use a different local currency if needed.
Once the supporting proposal is completed, the lead office can add this price into the main proposal as an internal purchase. If additional information is needed, they can refer to the supporting proposal within Proteus.
Asset Tracking
We have added new functionality to allow clients to customise the way they track hardware and software in Proteus.
Previously, Proteus would only allow a user to track assets on an hourly basis or on a daily basis using the hourly rate as the basis for the calculations. This is now much more flexible and you can fully customise your tenant to measure the assets in whatever units you wish, such as days, minutes, items, grams etc.
Release Notes V2.7
26/04/2024
What's new!
Proteus release V2.7 includes a range of functional upgrades to several features across the project lifecycle. These help our users work more efficiently, saving time on low-value admin tasks.
Import Functionality
We have developed new import functionality so that you can get even more data into Proteus quickly and seamlessly.
You can now import data from these additional modules;
Grades, Departments and Disciplines
Offices
Companies
Contracts
Basic proposals
Assets and Asset Categories
Timesheets
Rate Reviews & Updates
With ongoing, multi-year project contracts, it is typical to include the ability to review and increase your standard rate on an annual basis. Our rate review feature gives users the ability to set new rates with the date they should apply from (even historically) updating all relevant WIP automatically. This ensures that people’s time is accurately invoiced against the most up-to-date agreed rates.
Resource and Workload Builders
The resource builder allows you to create and manage the available resources for your project, whilst the workload builder is used to assign quantities of those pre-defined resources to each work package in Proposals and Projects. This simplifies the budgeting process. Previously users had to create resources within each work package. Now you only need to enter the number of hours in each work package for each project resource you intend to budget for throughout your WBS.
Moreover, if you decide to change a project resource, for example, its price, it automatically updates for all the users of that resource across your project.
Drag and Drop
You can now rearrange work packages in your proposals with our drag-and-drop functionality. This feature is incredibly user-friendly, offering more flexibility as users no longer have to create proposals in order.
Release Notes V2.6
02/10/2023
What's new!
Named Resource Tables
You can now apply specific sell rates to an individual team member, rather than a full grade or discipline.
It is common for our clients to follow a formal approval process when allocating specific people to a project. A key step includes approving the specific sell rates that are used for each individual.
We have added functionality within Proteus to apply these sell rates to a person, so that when a Project Manager budgets for them in a proposal, the correct rate comes through.
When you select the new “named” classifier to the rate table, the specific rate data is pulled into the appropriate areas of the system.
The key benefit here is that when you are writing a proposal you will see the correct rate next to the individual- not the generic rate that is normally applied to a role.
Negative Variations
The amount of work or time needed to complete a task changes, which is why our variations feature has always been important for our clients to help manage amendments.
We have improved our popular variation functionality by adding the ability to apply negative variations when less time or budget is required. This is a simple and easy step. For example, if you want to reduce a work package by 10 units, you issue a variation with “-10”.
Proteus Next
Our development team spent much of 2023 working on Proteus Next. This is a more technical, behind-the-scenes feature but it is significant to improving the way that Proteus operates. Put in layman’s terms, Proteus Next is a separate code base that impacts the speed with which work packages and project controls data are processed. What you need to know is that Proteus can now handle background jobs quicker and more efficiently. In short, you will save more time.
Project References
It is now possible to set and edit custom references for a specific project. If left blank, the project will be automatically assigned a reference as Proteus normally does. The benefit of this functionality is that your teams can set references according to the requirements of a specific project, rather than defaulting to the setup in the Admin Console, making it much more flexible and user-friendly.
Bespoke Approval Process for Opportunities
We have worked closely with a client who uses our Bid/No Bid tool to set up a bespoke set of questions and outcomes for each part of the functionality. This ensures that all the information is captured and goes through a strict approval process before the opportunity progresses.
Other improvements to the functionality include the ability to cancel an approval request, add notes to each stage, and the option of receiving email notifications throughout the process.
Proposal and Project Export
Whilst we like having you manage your work within Proteus, it is hugely useful to be able to export data out of the Proteus environment.
You can now export your work in Proteus by downloading an Excel spreadsheet containing all the details within a specific proposal or project. The export contains a full work breakdown structure with CTR line items, detailing item type, rate table, unit, hours per unit, description, average hourly cost, base rate, markup, rate total, budgeted units, budgeted cost, budgeted price, budgeted margin and comments.
We understand that some information such as the cost and margin may be confidential, therefore it is possible to make this information hidden if required.
Proteus Release v2.5
24/04/2023
What's new!
New Features
Opportunities BNB (bid / no-bid) Feature Upgrade
The Opportunities feature has had a major upgrade. In fact, so much so, we have moved the goalposts considerably. We originally added the Opportunities feature as a kind of CRM light. However, we have found that most companies use an existing CRM. Therefore, after some market research, we decided to concentrate on integrating with CRM tools and adding a lot of new features that are traditionally carried out in spreadsheets.
Go / No Go – A list of questions to determine whether a project opportunity should be taken further or not. These are the big ticket items such as “Is this an existing country/region?” If the answer to any of these questions is No, then the user is forced to seek advice or approval to proceed. This list of questions can be amended to suit your company’s requirements.
Analysis – This probes a little further to try and understand some of the key factors included the bid: number of competitors, expected margin, reimbursable or fixed price, etc. Each answer generates a score that ultimately determines if the user needs to do further research to proceed.
Difficulty Factor – Most companies allocate a percentage of expected revenue to proposal time. Proteus takes this a step further and determines how difficult the proposal will be to write and allocates time and budget accordingly.
Winning Strategy – This asks the user to think about what is required to develop a winning proposal. Is it price, capability, past experience, etc?
Risk Analysis – This asks the user to list all of the perceived risks and put mitigation in place to counter these risks.
Our Contracts database, which holds client rate cards, sits at the heart of Proposals and Projects. This has been upgraded as part of the latest release with the following enhancements:
New side panel containing contract summary data. This helps the user quickly identify the important information in the contract.
Apply average rates button – This allows the user to pull the average cost rates into a rate table so they can be used to generate a fixed price cost that can then have a markup attached to it.
Bulk modify rates – This allows the user to simply increase all of the rates in a rate table by a fixed percentage.
The Contracts index has also been updated with our new column functionality, including the ability to resize, hide and reorder table columns, as well as a more comprehensive filtering system.
Import WBS
You can now upload your work breakdown structure into the system from a CSV spreadsheet. This means any data that you currently have within other systems can easily be moved over and mapped to Proteus, at the touch of a button.
This tool provides you with a template to map the data you have to the proposal in question, ensuring both sides are aligned.
Import Users
You can now also import system users in bulk via our new admin console user import. Simply add all your user details to the downloadable template available in the system and hit upload.
Calendar Navigation in Timesheets
Our timesheet system is currently getting a complete makeover and we will be releasing this in a few weeks. However, in the meantime we have added some new features to improve the functionality.
Improved Deliverables Functionality
We have improved the deliverables functionality to allow you to better define the deliverables for each work package.
Add Named Resources to a Rate Table and a Proposal
Proteus has always used a combination of grades and disciplines for rate tables and proposals. This works well most of the time, however, sometimes you want to add a specific individual to the proposal. You can now do this.
Project Controls Refinement
The Project Controls functionality has had a bit of spring clean and polish. This has helped differentiate between fixed-price and reimbursable projects and provides more unique dashboards for each scenario.
Rollback Variations
The Variation functionality in Proteus is second to none. To further improve it we have included the functionality where a Variation that is not approved can be rolled back and the user can then reset it and re-issue it.
File Access Helper
Proteus is fully integrated with Microsoft. If anything goes wrong with your Sharepoint/ Word/ Excel integration, this new feature helps to troubleshoot and fix the issue.
Baseline/Forecast
We have added the Baseline and Forecasting feature to Proteus. Therefore, if you want to forecast your project more accurately then you can now use this functionality.
The Proteus Release v2.5 features are all automatically updated in your Proteus account. Enjoy! Any questions please contact support@xergy.com
Proteus Update – V2.3 Release
06/09/2022
What's new!
Single Sign On (SSO)
You can now sign in with Azure SSO. This means if you are using Microsoft you can use your MS login to sign into Proteus. Whilst it might not help you develop proposals faster, and it doesn’t improve the margins on your projects, it is one of our most requested features and our clients already love it.
Baseline and Forecasting Tool
If you have been keeping up to date, you will know that the Proteus project controls features have had a major upgrade this year. This has not stopped and we have now added a baseline and forecasting set of features.
Baseline
Baselining what is it? Previously you would add a resource to each work package. The resource would then be allocated the number of hours in the work package. Now you can allocate every individual resource separately with a specific number of hours per week for each resource. This introduces some really powerful functionality for detailed planning. There are a couple of neat features here to make it easy to back, front S-curve or linear load the project.
This makes it easy to setup the baseline for the project and we have also made it really easy for you to compare the baseline with the original proposal or a new baseline.
Once the baseline has been submitted and locked this becomes the basis for the data used in the Project Controls calculations which were released in V2.2, such as earned values, actuals, etc.
Re-baseline
The baseline can be updated to provide a new baseline, or a re-baseline. Change management or variations, which were added in v2.2 has been fully integrated with the baseline system and project controls. Newly approved variations are added to form the new baseline, which is then used in Project Controls
Forecast
The baseline or re-baseline of the work profile is used in the “forecast” calculations. The project controls calculations use the forecast to give Estimate at Completion (EAC) & Variance at Completion (VAC) forecasts.
Curve Based Work Package Profiling
When you add time to a work package you can select how this time will be used through the project; linear loaded, front end loaded, back end loaded or S curve loaded. This information is then added to the baseline which can then be used in the forecasting and the future resource scheduling tool.
Work Package (or CTR) Code Wizard
We like to keep things simple but our WBS number was too simple for larger projects. Proteus defaulted to a nested work package (or CTR) numbering such as 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1, etc. We now allow you to really go to town and build bespoke Work Package ID’s generator. For example, you might want this to take account of your business classification, the phase of the project, task identifiers, assets, disciplines, capabilities, activities etc, etc. Remember there is a good chance this work package identifier will appear in the timesheet system and/ or the ERP.
Proposal Resource Histogram Export
We definitely missed this in earlier versions of Proteus. You can now look at the potential resource load on project at the proposal stage and the project stage. This data can be exported to Excel for further manipulation or use in reports.
Workday Integration
If you use Workday as your finance ERP and / or for HR then you will be pleased to know Proteus can now integrate with them. Proteus does have its own timesheet functionality, however it is equally happy getting this information from an existing ERP system. And as Workday is one of the world’s leading enterprise ERP systems, we are extremely happy to have completed this integration.
Feature Flags
This is more back of house, however it is super important. As Proteus develops and our client base increases, we have realised that not every client wants every single feature in Proteus. So we have added a flag to every feature which can be switched on or off depending on each client’s specific requirements This allows us to customise Proteus for everybody, while at the same time ensuring everybody has the same core Proteus.
Tenant API Availability
We’ve been working with several of our clients to provide them with API access for all their data needs. Whether you have an internal tool that requires a custom integration or want to connect your Proteus data to Power BI or Tableau we can provide a suitable API.
All API access is protected with industry-standard OAuth2 authentication, and controlled to a fine-grain to protect against data leakage and reduce attack vectors.
Tenant Database Replication
Some of our clients have data processing needs that APIs just aren’t suitable for, for those cases we can provision a standby database to which Proteus will replicate your tenant data. You’re then free to query or integrate this database to satisfy any requirements. This solution is fantastic for connecting to a data-warehousing tool.
Proteus for Word Add In Lite
Our much loved Word Addin, which pulls your Proposal/Project data built in proteus into templated documents in a standardised way, has also been updated. Now you no longer have to integrate Sharepoint to use this feature – the Addin can now be accessed directly from Word and connect back to the Proteus Rate Table / Billing Type Filters.
We have refined the user experience when building proposals based on billing type e.g “Time & Material” or “Lump Sum”. You can now tag rate tables by billing type, and define markups functionality.
V2.2
18/04/2022
What's new!
1. Microsoft Word Formatting and Styling
We have always been proud of the Microsoft Word Add In integration as it allows you to fully integrate Proteus cost estimates, CTRs, Schedules, CVs, past experience and Organigrams with Word. If you make an edit in Proteus it will automatically refresh in Word. In the Proteus v2.2 update we’ve addressed your feedback regarding the styling and formatting of tables to enable you to use your preferred company styling on all your documents. Once you have set up your formatting in a template in Word any edits in Proteus will be automatically formatted to align to your company style. It not only looks great, it is remarkably simpler and infinitely more robust.
2. New Add In Blocks
We have added a number of new blocks giving you more functionality. The full block list is now:
WBS Summary
WBS Catalogue (CTRs or Work Packages)
Variation Summary
Variation Catalogue
Deliverables List
Milestones
Quick Quotes
Rate Tables Blocks
Team CVs
Organigram
Schedule
Experience Block
ms word add-in
3. Template Tags for Microsoft Word
Template tags allow you to tag a Proteus field in MS Word. For example use {{Proposal_Reference}} and when the document loads it will automatically pull in the proposal reference from Proteus. No more manually inputting repeated data. We have added several new template tags, making Proteus even more efficient.
4. Template Blocks to Standardise Key Information
When you design a proposal or pre-project template, if there is a specific section where you, for example, tend to include the WBS Summary, simply input {{WBS_Summary}} and when the proposal document is setup the WBS Summary is automatically populated and styled. This allows you to create proposal and pre-project documents much quicker and more accurately than ever before.
5. Create Notes
We have added a Note feature to Proposals and Projects. This allows teams and individuals who are collaborating on a proposal or pre-project document to post notes and keep a record of important information that needs to be shared.
6. Proposal Summary Table
You can now find a summary table for the Proposal WBS showing the breakdown of the cost / price buildup, markups and margins. This allows you to see all of the key proposal information in a single page.
Bug Fixes
Users who were previously converted from an offline user to an online user, were unable to add timesheets. This has now been corrected.
V2.1
25/03/2022
What's new!
1. Project Controls Features
The Project Controls in Proteus have always been good. However, we have been working hard to take this to the next level and this has been included in V2.1. Within your Project you will find a new menu item called “Project Controls”. Click on this and you will see the following:
Schedule Proteus has a full schedule capability displayed in a Gantt chart. The full WBS is now available in the Gantt chart with progress tracked against expected progress.
S-Curve A schedule S-Curve and a Cost/Revenue S-Curve have been added. Both show the expected, actual, and forecasted data. This is a great visualisation to enable project managers and business leaders understand where the project is heading.
Estimate at Completion A table showing the Estimate at Completion (compared to planned data) for Revenue, Cost, and Margin.
2. Data Table for Each Project
To complement the visual Gantt chart and S-Curve, we have added a data table for the each project. This table contains a number of data layers as a summary of the project. All data is presented against the time component of the project; either weekly or monthly, showing historical and forecasted data.
Tracked Resource This shows the number of hours/ days booked for any of your assigned resources; people, equipment or software.
Progress Displays planned progress, actual progress, forecasted progress on a weekly / monthly basis.
Cost Forecast For cost, Proteus calculates and displays:
Planned Cost (PC)
Actual Cost (AC)
Earned Cost (EC)
Schedule Variable Cost (SVC)
Schedule Performance Index Cost (SPIC)
Cost Variance (CV)
Cost Performance Index (CPI)
Cost Estimate at Completion (CEAC)
Cost Estimate to Completion (CETC)
Revenue Forecast For revenue, Proteus calculates and displays:
Planned Revenue (PR)
Actual Revenue (AR)
Earned Revenue (ER)
Schedule Variable Revenue (RVC)
Schedule Performance Index Revenue (RPIC)
Revenue Variance (RV)
Revenue Performance Index (RPI)
Revenue Estimate at Completion (REAC)
Revenue Estimate to Completion (RETC)
Margin For margin, Proteus calculates and displays:
Planned Margin ($)
Actual Margin ($)
Margin Variance ($)
Planned Margin (%)
Actual Margin (%)
Margin Variance (%)
Data Export Export all your data from Project Controls, the WBS and Tracking into a spreadsheet.
3. Variations
You can now add a variation to a project. The variation works just like a new work package and allows you to add hours, equipment, software, expenses or purchases. The entire functionality is wrapped around the management of the change process, ensuring the correct approvals are in place before the new price/schedule goes live.
4. Speed Improvements
Phase 1 of our speed enhancements is now live to maximise your user experience. Further upgrades will be implemented in the near future that will continue to ensure the best experience for our customers and keep Proteus at the cutting edge of cloud-based work management solutions.
5. Asset Categorisation and Search
The asset management databasein Proteus has been optimised to support the tens of thousands of assets from customer inventory lists. If you’re a company that has an enormous inventory of equipment or software, this one’s for you.
You can use our easy categorisation to create an unlimited hierarchy of assets, or use the search to immediately find the asset you need by querying the name or reference number.
Bug Fixes
Our export functionality now provides your work packages in the order set within the Proteus Project
We have improved the validation for asset categories
