With our first round of clients upgraded over the weekend, UniPhi17 is now a production release!
This new version has two main aspects, a complete re-write of our contracts module and the implementation of embedded charts throughout the application. Why were these two elements our investment focus?
Contracts module
The contracts module is the fourth most intensive data capture area of UniPhi, after timesheets, issues and documents. What's more the data is numbers heavy as it is used to track the adjusted contract value and progress invoicing across all purchases within a business or for a program of works. Feedback from clients was that while it was a lifesaver in terms of tracking all the adjustments that need to be administered to an original contract, data entry was slow and clunky. So we decided we'd respond with a focus on quicker data entry, easier re-formatting and the ability to build and manage larger and larger contract values.
Additional features for contracts while we're at it
As we were investing in this module, we decided some new features were in order as well. For a while now we're been supporting clients track earned value at a project level but our engineering clients wanted more. They battle to track performance against deliverables during design, building complex spreadsheets that are hard to maintain with actual data in an attempt to do so. Again, we felt responsible for delivering something more and so, we introduced earned values for contract deliverables. Three new screens were essential for supporting this: An earned value screen to measure progress via a stage gate methodology, comment threads against contract deliverables to validate the earned value claim and an effort schedule that provides a baseline at the WBS level for planned performance.
Charts - In 2018 we released as part of UniPhi 14 a direct integration with Power BI and an embedded Power BI product that allows you to publish your own charts within the application, however, there are two issues with this: You need to have internal capability to build the dashboards and you can only view them in the embedded dashboard page. We wanted to support all our clients plus be able to give instant visual feedback to our users when they change budgets, add issues or risks, commit contracts and submit timesheets. These charts have generated significant interest from our user base and we plan to leverage this concept with more and more charts supported by drag and drop selection for users to get the visual that means most to them right where they need it.
The full webinar series for UniPhi 17 is in a playlist on YouTube.
So, if any of this has piqued your interest, give us a call or register for a demo. We'd love to show you our biggest and best release in years.
