CrossPoint Engineering Cuts Data Entry and Invoicing Time by 80% with Upland PSA

CrossPoint Engineering needed time and expense data capture methods to help the speed and accuracy of the client billing process.

Market background

Founded in 1993, CrossPoint Engineering is a full-service process and control house specializing in Process Automation Engineering, Process Control system design, as well as start-up and calibration for industrial and pharmaceutical processes. With offices in Boston and New York City, CrossPoint Engineering’s client base includes pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as specialty chemical companies.

Challenge

CrossPoint Engineering undertakes a multitude of projects each year. The company, which has upward of 40 customers at any given time, was entering time and expense data into Excel spreadsheets. Data from these spreadsheets were extracted into QuickBooks. “With somewhere in the vicinity of 100 projects undertaken per year, our antiquated and unstructured system of data capture was extremely time consuming and highly prone to errors,” said Gary Woods, President of CrossPoint Engineering.

The difficulties and limitations of CrossPoint Engineering’s time and expense data capture methods were, in turn, impacting the efficiency, speed, and accuracy of the client billing process. In addition, producing project and operational reports was an equally tedious, highly inaccurate and timeconsuming process. “We had no real means of producing reports, so this function was handled in a rather inconsistent manner,” adds Mr. Woods.

The Upland PSA Solution

In 2004, CrossPoint Engineering began an exhaustive process of evaluating approximately twelve solutions to streamline the Company’s time capture and billing processes. CrossPoint experimented with two other solutions before selecting Upland PSA Timesheet. As an integrated workflow-based time, expense, billing, and invoicing system, Upland PSA centralized and automated billing rates, billable work, project status, and ongoing cost/revenue updates. CrossPoint was able to create and approve invoices quickly, leading to a reduced billing cycle and improved cash flow.

Benefits

Immediately following implementation, we were able to reduce our data entry and billing time by 80%.

Gary Woods, President

In addition, Upland PSA provided CrossPoint Engineering with detailed auditing of all project activities. User data is validated at entry based on pre-configured policies and procedures, significantly reducing data entry errors, which in turn translates to a substantially shortened billing cycle. “Upland PSA has helped simplify how we retrieve timesheets and expense data so that every manager is now a true stakeholder in his or her project.” In addition, with standardized project time and expense management processes in place across the enterprise, CrossPoint Engineering has streamlined the process around tracking, managing and approving invoices, resulting in better visibility and control over project costs.

The availability, knowledge, and professionalism of the support team is excellent; they’ve been very responsive to our needs.

Gary Woods, President

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