The Situation

The management at Arrow International had the daunting task of tracking time for 440 employees intimately involved in various projects such as designing, developing, and manufacturing catheterization products. For years, Arrow used a custom-built solution to address its time-tracking needs. The in-house solution had many shortcomings. Some of the difficulties included the following:

The custom application was verydifficult to maintain and support

• It lacked an intuitive and Web-based interface to easily record and manage time
• Poor reporting capabilities such as reporting on project status andrisks• Accurately tracking of actuals (project time and expense) was time consuming and almost
  impossible
• Budgeting involved a lot of guesswork
• Users could not easily communicate their estimate-to-complete

The Solution : PSA Time & Expense

Arrow International streamlined its time and expense management processes with PSA Time & Expense. Employees can easily access their personal timesheets over the Web to record the time they have allocated for work performed across multiple projects and departments. Moreover, the centralization of data allows management to quickly identify bottlenecks and generate reports as required. What follows are some of the reasons Arrow International selected PSA Time & Expense:.

• It simplifies and automates the time entry process, making it a welcoming task
• It ensures the validation of information at the point of entry
• The solution is easy to maintain and support
• PSA software ships with a well-documented software development kit and data model, which facilitates enhancements, customizations, and integration  with third party applications
• It monitors time and expenses preventing budget overruns
• It tracks and reports on costs per project with an unlimited project hierarchyUsers can enter and track their time and expenses from anywhere at anytime

Ease of Use

One of the primary reasons for selecting PSA Time & Expense is its intuitive Web-based interface and functionality.

As Angie Herb, Project Manager of Arrow International, describes, “The fact that PSA offers a totally Web-based solution gave us more reason to move from our old custom product. The interface was also very similar to what our employees are used to, which would make the transition to PSA solution extremely easy.”

Support and Maintenance

PSA provides Arrow with an affordable and scalable solution that requires minimal to no maintenance. The staff at Arrow has at its disposal, a team of technical support specialists to assist them with any potential issues.

Herb asserts, “After using our own custom application for a while, it became very difficult to maintain, as well as extremely time-consuming for us to use. Moreover, it did not offer all of the features that PSA does.”

Technology
The technology and open architecture of PSA solutions were important factors in Arrow’s decision to move forward with PSA Time & Expense. All solutions include a software development kit (SDK) that facilitates enhancements, customizations, and integrations with third party pplications. In fact, Arrow plans on developing an integration to its payroll system in the near future with PSA SDK. The latter would have been impossible to achieve with their previous custom application or a closed enterprise application.