At Ten Six, we often see companies that have a requirement for an Earned Value Management System (EVMS) immediately go out and buy a tool from one of the EVM vendors. Attempting to select an EVMS tool without understanding basic Earned Value Management concepts and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 748 guidelines, and how they apply to the contracts is likely to cost more money, take up more time and end up with little success.
The problem with this focus on tools, is that to successfully meet the ANSI guidelines for an EVMS, you need to integrate many tools, processes and make sure your staff are extremely well versed in all aspects of the system.
Leading Earned Value Management Tools
Looking only at tools for the moment, some of the leading vendors include Deltek, Oracle and Microsoft. Below are some of the tool types together with some example vendors that can make up an EVMS.
- Scheduling Tools: Oracle Primavera P6, Deltek OpenPlan, Microsoft Project
- Earned Value Tools: Deltek Cobra, Deltek MPM, Primavera Cost Manager
- EV Reporting Tools: Deltek wInisght, Encore Analytics Empower, Microsoft Excel
- Account/ERP Tools: Oracle Applications, Deltek Costpoint, Deltek GCS Premier, SAP, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards
It’s very likely that some of these tools are already in place at your organization. Typically the accounting/ERP system is well established and more often than not, some sort of scheduling tool is also already in use.
This gives you an idea of the tools involved and some insight into the integration that is required among them. Although many of these tools offer some integration capabilities, at Ten Six we help implement just the right amount of integration without opting for an over-engineered solution or one that requires significant manual interaction to make it work.
Our experienced consultants have previously worked at many of the leading tool vendors, giving them unique insights into the tools, how they apply in the real world and how to identify and avoid common pitfalls.
As an independent company, Ten Six enjoys the enviable position of being able to advise you on which tools will best suit your needs and your contract requirements, without being encouraged or lobbied by a tool vendor to recommend its products.