Automate your firm’s data management to gain business insights

Automating data management to save time and focus on growing business

OGantry focused on creating a streamlined process to minimize data management and utilize the saved time and resources to work on optimizing business throughput. With heaps of resources at hand, OGantry ties all of your data together into an interface designed around what leaders care about i.e. managing business processes effectively.

Deliveries

– WebApp

Technologies and Integration

– Angular

– Java

Data Management

Business users needed data management streamlining for organizational processes, to reduce hefty time on manual work and drive the workforce to focus on strategic tasks. This was highly demanded to enhance accuracy, consistency, and data updates, minimizing errors and the need for manual reconciliation. This efficiency improvement was aimed at facilitating quicker, well-informed decision-making, leading to significant time savings in various operational aspects.

Resource Utilization

The project aimed for efficient resource utilization which is fundamental for saving time and optimizing projects. Strategic allocation of personnel, finances, and technology should streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and minimize errors. By assigning skilled individuals to tasks aligned with their expertise and preventing bottlenecks, optimized resource management maximizes efficiency, contributing to overall project success.

Strategizing for Profit Optimization

OGantry wanted to come up with an application that could align with strategizing for profit optimization involving targeted approaches to pricing, cost management, and market positioning, leading to increased revenue. This included balancing strategic pricing models, attracting more customers, and encouraging repeat business through effective cost management and operational practices. Overall, a well-crafted profit optimization strategy was instrumental in enhancing profitability and setting the stage for sustained revenue growth.

in Client’s words!

“The utilization report was a successfully implemented module that allowed us to keep track of the resources and allocate them to projects accordingly. We were very impressed with the way Sunflower Lab handled the project and always delivered our requirements within timeline. There were instances where they faced challenges in executing the project but the way they handled these challenges was praiseworthy and we couldn’t have looked for a better partner.“

Kymberli Cassidy

Project Manager

Timeline ⸻

Team Size

Sunflower Lab handpicked professionals until we were convinced that the proven
team would best fit for Ogantry by assessing our and Ogantry’s strengths.

Challenge #1

Managing Projects Staffing and Estimating

OGantry’s clients also had their clients whose data they were managing. This implied a lot of focus on data management and not on business acceleration. Thus, OGantry reached out to Sunflower Lab to develop a solution where its clients could automate their data management and focus on building clients.

Whenever any client of OGantry needed to create a new project or manage an old one, it had to do it manually. And managing all this data manually needed a huge workforce and time. This made the process unmanageable and finding any insight was quite unachievable.

Our Resolution

We took this into consideration and implemented it in a working app model. The app allows users to create clients and add their information for tracking both active and inactive clients. This helps state which zone the clients are from and if there is anything that is notable about them mentioning it for users’ assessment. In case there is particular info that needs to be highlighted about the clients we enable it.

Furthermore, apart from clients, projects can also be tracked. The project can be set up via a client for which it is implemented. It can be added for an existing or new client. The project is setup in three phases –

Project Setup

Here basic details about the project are measured like if it is a fixed-cost project, or time dependent project. This helps in calculating the overall profit/loss incurred via the project. Information about contact person, project expenses and other relevant details are added here.

Position Setup

In this section we allow clients to manage the position that would be needed for a particular project. Based on these details the total cost of employment will be calculated and tracked.

Financial Review

Based on the details entered in both of the above sections, a calculated estimate of the project cost and revenue will be reflected in this section.

The best part is the expenses and profit do not need to be calculated manually, as you mention the costs of operation the revenue is calculated automatically in the backend and reflected. Also, the utilization of a certain employee is calculated – whether they are on a bench or working on some project. Based on these inputs, the app also calculates the profit or loss based on projects in action.

Problem #2

Optimizing Resources

While a resource worked on a certain project, they follow certain modules – working on an hourly basis, project basis, or time slot basis. It became essential to quickly assess how long and efficiently a resource worked to calculate the profit they bring to the table.

Our Resolution

Within the application one can view the utilization of resources/employees can be seen based on filters of projects like booked, completed, forecasted, etc. for a certain period time. Based on the filters past, present and future employee status can be seen along with details of a particular employee or a range of employees.

This gives clients the liberty to manage their employees more effectively and allot tasks based on their bandwidth. Employees can be tracked based on their hourly utilization, percentage utilization or dollars (usage) basis.

One other most prominent feature of resource utilization is to see the calendar-based consumption of resources with visual representation. It can be viewed which month where the resource is utilized.

With this, we can track the lost revenue based on a particular employee’s position in a project to make amendments to the strategy. At the same time, we enable you to calculate the report of positions that are not on the bench or the positions that are still open for a project.

Problem #3

Forecasting Finances

Our Resolution

Based on the financial year the app automatically calculates revenue, costs of goods sold, gross profit, gross margin, net profit and net margin.

Problem #4

Administrating

Our Resolution

In case there are holidays or client visits or other such exceptions where the employee is not working it can be tracked as well.

We allowed creating tags and adding subcategories for them. For instance, we have a tag BE implying backend, and we create a subcategory for it i.e. Java and apply these categories wherever necessary. We can also create a project category tag and add them to the projects.

The app also gives at the same time liberty to manage employees – like adding employees and their details such as – email address, skill set, region, travel (if needed), utilization target, and more. At the same time, we can also add the expenses of employees both on a daily and monthly basis. Employees’ schedules can also be updated in the app to gauge how many days they will be working or on leave. Their skill set is also something that can be updated.

Problem #5

Access Control

Since OGantry’s stakeholders wanted a fully functional application that could cater to their clients, a well-regulated system was incepted by them with an access control system allow users to work collaboratively.

Our Resolution

In this section we allow the admin to create a user and assign them roles based on their access level. For instance, we allow them to access Project Staffing & Estimating, but refrain from using the Administration section.

Since there are multiple modules in the application, roles can be assigned according to their level of access. This is allowed by enabling checklists.

OGantry

Before Digital Revolution

The parallel implementation of project and data management was cumbersome which meant the stakeholders had to sift time in managing data which was an overhead in business applications.

Before

After

With the inception of OGantry business owners can manage data and projects parallelly without spending too much time and resources on solely taking care of data.

Project Management Tool

Static Project Report

In the utilization report of employees, we have project status. Project status was written statistically on UI side. It was managed on the frontend and saved as draft on backend which was leading to issues.

Our Resolution

We worked on this and after trying multiple solutions we discovered that the reliance for this feature should only be dependent on the backend and not the frontend. By managing everything from the backend the issues were streamlined.

Challenges

Implementing Calendar View

We implemented calendar view using it for the 3rd party library i.e. Mobiscroll. In this tooltip was not coming properly.

How we overcame it?

This was completely new to us. We created a new UI to make users understand project allocations. We settled on how users are allocated for which term project they are allocated and which client they are working on. For instance, if the allocation is zero percent, we made it more viewable. With this, there was a clear insight into when a particular resource was available and what projects they were working on.

in Client’s words!