International Financial Service Leader

InFoScore Software Services, headquartered in Baden-Baden, Germany, employs 900 people in 22 companies around the world. It is one of the leading providers of information and financial services in Germany, Ireland, France, Austria and Switzerland.

The Situation

InFoScore’s original time-tracking system consisted of the usual assortment of manual, paper-based timesheets and in-house developed spreadsheet applications. The in-house time tracking applications had been assembled piecemeal over the years and had serious limitations and drawbacks:

• Remote time entry: In order to allow its consultants to submit timesheets remotely, InFoScore had to provide employees with some sort of remote access. The in-house legacy system was not designed with this in mind. Tedious and laborious, the data collection process increased labor (re-keying data), increased the total reporting cycle and had a high risk of human error.
• Flexible real-time reporting: The decentralized legacy time reporting processes did not have any reporting capabilities. The manual timetracking system, normally took a month to complete; thus the company was managing its resource costs by looking back a month at a time. There was strong pressure within the organization to drastically shorten the cycle. This presented a serious handicap to managers and executives, who were trying to manage worldwide projects, budgets and staff assignments.
• Integrating with other information systems: In the case of InFoScore, an important requirement was to integrate time tracking with its SAP ERP system, as well with Microsoft Project.

In light of these drawbacks and numerous other impediments to having a fast, modern time tracking and reporting solution, InFoScore was ready to invest in optimizing its current systems and processes.

The Solution

Since InFoScore already had SAP R/3 installed and was very satisfied with this product, the obvious solution was to use SAP’s Time Tracking subsystems.

This was one of the first options reviewed by InFoScore, especially since SAP was highly thought of at InFoScore. Moreover, its IS director Kosmas Schuetz already had a lot of experience with the product. As Kosmas Schuetz, said, “…I worked as a SAP R/3 project manager and consultant for IBM Global Services for several years. SAP R/3 is an excellent and integrated ERPSystem….”

He went further to say that PSA software was chosen for several reasons: • Price: SAP R/3 time tracking implementation is significantly more expensive than that of PSA. “PSA software delivered us the functionality we needed at a good price”.

• Ease of Use: “PSA software is easy to use and easy to implement. It is fully web-based and requires minimum training”.
• Different perspectives: “Managers and controllers have significantly different views of projects. Project managers need detailed project information at least on a weekly basis. Controllers need high-level information on a monthly basis. Putting detailed information into SAP R/3 is complex and costly. For us it is much more efficient to have the detailed information in the PSA database and only have a monthly transfer of aggregated information into SAP.”

The Results

With the introduction of PSA software, the main goals of the project were immediately achieved: remote time entry, flexible and real-time reporting, and integration with key systems such as SAP and Microsoft Project.

Due to the small investment in PSA software, its fast implementation/deployment, and its powerful, built-in features, a very fast ROI was realized.

In the case of InFoScore it was even faster than usual. InFoScore managed to recover its full investment on one specific project where unauthorized work had previously gone unnoticed.

Fast and accurate Information from their worldwide activities

In the words of Kosmas Schütz, “PSA software has truly shed light on the projects of this organization.”