Bringing a project to fruition is like cultivating a plant. It takes time, attention to detail, discipline, and a goal-oriented mindset. The last thing you want is to have your plant compromised by neglect.

What is Challenging about Project Job Forecasting?
In project-centric industries, many factors, such as costs, timelines, and vendors, tend to change over time, leaving project managers hard-pressed to maintain forecasts that are accurate enough so that a project yields a healthy profit margin.

David Scott, senior principal project manager at Oracle, said that one challenge in forecasting is managing the fluctuation of costs over an extended period of time. “What ends up happening is that the cost of labor and material, and other costs, tend to change over the duration of a project,” Scott said. “As the original timeline of a project is extended, in some of the more volatile situations – for example, where the price of gas drops drastically – the remaining work can change because of those dynamically changing costs. Advanced Job Forecasting helps the forecast stay in line with the ever-changing cost of the remaining work.”

What Makes the JD Edwards Approach Special?
To generate an accurate forecast, many businesses do not have a centralized place where they store forecasts. Advanced Job Forecasting creates that place where forecasts can be updated and completed. Management has a clear idea which forecasts are completed and can receive updates on the stages of completion of other forecasts. “Companies can also view historical data on each forecast, which gives them an easy audit trail for every project,” Scott said. Advanced Job Forecasting gives project managers a head start in navigating those obstacles. Its capabilities enable project managers to build and even change cost projections mid-stream.

Advanced Job Forecasting is an ideal project management solution for several types of companies, especially in the construction and oil and gas industries. In these industries, projects can last a year or more, resulting in several business challenges that are addressed by Advanced Job Forecasting.

How Does JD Edwards Advanced Job Forecasting Help?
Advanced Job Forecasting offers an array of solutions to common forecasting challenges. Advanced Job Forecasting has set ways in which a project manager can enter an estimate-to-complete or an estimate at completion of the forecast. Customers can delineate specific types of labor, labor rates, union codes, and other information to build out cost estimates. Advanced Job Forecasting also allows customers to create their own user-defined calculations. This function works in conjunction with the existing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Project Costing module. “Customers can forecast using multiple methods for what makes sense to them in their business,” Scott said.

Advanced Job Forecasting supports a number of capabilities, but two in particular stand out. One feature involves the concept of remaining work. For example, a construction company may need to know how much it will cost to complete a new foundation for a building. The company will need to determine how many remaining cubic yards of concrete, how much remaining labor, what additional materials and which specific permits for the foundation are needed. The forecast can include all this detail and using the remaining work function, Scott said, “You have the ability, at a level below the task on a job, to specify all of that detailed forecast information. Then, that detailed information is carried forward from month to month into the next forecast.” Project managers can update their forecasts, including remaining work, along the way.

The second key feature involves user-defined methods of computation. These methods allow customers to create formulas from scratch that are specific to their company. “Maybe you need to add two pieces of financial information together in order to calculate the forecast for a task on a job. Or you need to create other formulas based on other pieces of financial information,” Scott said. “Sitting on top of the formulas are tools that allow the customer to use these calculations based on certain conditions. You don’t have to know syntax, because the application guides you through building that out.”

Advanced Job Forecasting was made available with the release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne version 9.2. Customers interested in purchasing the product will need to have that version already running, as well as EnterpriseOne’s Project Costing Module. Optionally, if customers want to use billing information in their forecasts, they would also need to license EnterpriseOne’s Contract & Service Billing.

“There are a few key actions enterprises need to take to incorporate Advanced Job Forecasting into their technical environment and business processes,” Scott said. Businesses would need to set up user-defined ledgers to be able to store information including the summary of their remaining work, estimate-to-complete and estimate-at-completion forecasts. They would also need to set up any user-defined formulas as well as the rules that use those formulas. Those are really the only key things that customers need to do. “There’s a lot of power in this product, but much of it leverages the existing system of project costing.”

JD Edwards recognizes that industry is a differentiator: Industry matters, and our customers’ industries matter. Lower-level business processes are necessary to sustain any company. The solutions customers need and that makes their organizations competitive should embody industry best practices. What makes a company a leader is industry depth, both functional and technical, that can be leveraged, uniquely configured, and extended to provide the company with a unique competitive advantage. So while JD Edwards is an ERP platform, it is one that is informed by the specific industries that we focus on.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2 and Advanced Job Forecasting illustrate the unique industry capabilities and platform features that have been added to EnterpriseOne. For each new solution, JD Edwards has worked with a focus group of related industry customers to help validate our strategic direction and shape the new product.

More resources for you learn more about Advanced Job Forecasting:

• Add these sessions to your agenda at COLLABORATE 17.
  • Improve Your Bottom Line with an Accurate and Auditable Job Forecast
  • Skanska and JD Edwards Advanced Job Forecasting: A Strategic Tool Keeping Projects and the Business on Track
  • How to Utilize Advanced Job Forecasting in JD Edwards
• Get involved with the Engineering and Construction SIG and the Oil, Gas, and Chemicals SIG to share knowledge and network with other users.
• Watch for even more education at INFOCUS 17!