Alert provides the whole team, from CEO to account managers, with the tools and information essential to be effective in their jobs.

Chief Executive Officer

• Single page Key Performance Indicator reports on weekly and financial period basis
• Report Capacity, Utilisation, Utilisation %, Gross Margin and more
• Macro view of business performance
• Multi dimensional analysis of performance
• Low level detailed analysis to project and employee
• Accurate financial period revenue, cost and margin reporting
• Reporting of Sales, Revenue and Billings

General Manager / CIO

• Plan resource usage and then monitor actual against plan
• Plan at any level required depending on the nature of the work i.e. from Project Plan Task through to Customer or Service.
• Report Fixed Price V's Time and Material Services performance
• Define different business activities and manage these independently ie professional services V's software maintenance
• Set service and product pricing and monitor performance to these
• Set performance criteria such as customer service, contribution rates, billing ratios and measure actual against these
• Single page Key Performance Indicator reports on weekly and financial period basis
• Multiple project view of business activity
• Manage services, software products and other products independently
• Exception reports to highlight problem areas
• Ready access to summary and detailed information on all business activity

Chief Financial Officer

• Manage and report Capacity, Utilisation, Utilisation % - by company, profit centre, employee etc
• Report Fixed Price V's Time and Material Services performance
• Monitor Billable and Non Billable Time
• Report Billable ratio's and contributions in real time, by project, employee, customer etc
• Earned value management and reporting - Revenue earned and not yet billed AND Revenue billed and not yet earned
• Automated billing facilities - T&M and Fixed Price
• Order management for reporting Sales, Billings and Revenue
• Outstanding Order values reported - future chargeable work
• Standard price lists - services, software product and other items
• Extensive services performance reporting by profit centre, line of business, software product, employee etc
• Forecast cash flows
• Customer terms and specific customer project terms recorded in Alert
• Electronic (.pdf) documents including invoices and credits
• Financial performance reporting at the level of project and / or service and employee level if required
• Forecast billing schedules and actual billing schedules by period
• Employee revenue and costs reporting for employee contribution analysis
• Very flexible revenue and margin reporting, graphing all supported up by multi dimensional analysis tool for ad hoc 'slice and dice' reporting.
• Key Performance Indicators available in real time as graphs and reports, also with analysis tools, including Billable Ratio's, Contribution Rates, Billable Rates etc

Services / Consulting Practise Manager

• Logging and visibility of future work
• Resource scheduling and planning tools
• Resource and task skill recording and matching facilities
• Forecast Billing and Revenue reports based on Forecast Resource Usage
• Time and material or agreed costs service pricing
• Flexible service pricing structures including multiple pricing items for same service ie for service variations such as time of day
• Specific project based service pricing with configurable price lookup hierarchies
• Billing terms, schedules and milestones recorded by project
• Automatic service billing reports
• Time, billing's and gross margin analysis optionally available at levels of Service, Service/Employee or Employee/Service
• Define different service activities and manage these independently
• 9 user configurable analysis codes for meaningful summary reporting of services
• Quote and manage products, either software or other products within service projects

Account Manager

• Real time customer based reports available from all areas / departments of the organisation ie Help
• Desk, Consulting Services, Software Production, Finance etc
• Ability to record potential future projects to use as a basis for future sales efforts
• Capability to report and analyse profit trends and ranking's by customer
• Historical customer service statistics available

Production Manager

• Visibility of future work
• Resource scheduling and planning tools
• Resource and task skill recording and matching facilities
• Software product object management including versioning and change management tools
• Controlled production tools such as change / works orders linked to initiating requests, projects, timesheets, delivery etc
• Employee time reporting enforceable by production manager at any level of project / task / activity / work unit for each employee
• Flexible reporting and analysis of resource schedules and time worked with variations
• Automated software kitting and delivery tools
• Product change documentation integrated to production
• Quality Assurance Manager
• Logging and visibility of future work
• Resource scheduling and planning tools
• Resource and task skill recording and matching facilities
• Flexible analysis of time and costs for testing work carried out
• Capture and reporting of production performance such as number of errors, error turn around time etc

Project Manager

• Manage fixed duration and ongoing projects
• Record all projects and flexibly manage at the level of detail that the project warrants
• Tightly integrated to Microsoft Project® for Project Planning
• Single Enterprise Data Store of common information including Resources and Calendars
• Microsoft Project Plans stored in Alert SQL Database for security and data access control
• Microsoft Project Plan updates recorded in Alert for auditing of planning activities
• View potential gross margin by project and analyse actual variations
• Powerful Analysis Tools for analysing Forecast Resource Usage V's Planned Resource Usage V's
• Actual Resource Usage
• Project specific controls for level of timesheet entry and resource planning
• On line, real time project summary details such as project timesheet entries, project billing's, current resource plans, system calculated remaining work estimates, summaries of linked requests / work items
• Multiple project summary reports available over flexible report ranges
• Many detailed project reports including work effort and financial reports
• Accurate sales, cost and gross margin reporting of projects that span multiple financial periods
• Ability to manage any billing schedule terms including billed in advance, part billing's, billed in arrears etc

Help Desk Manager

• Central logging of all customer requests
• Alert Handles all types of requests including software error, training, documentation change, consulting, software enhancements etc
• Request lists visible on line with key progress information
• Request status reports on outstanding and competed requests available
• Web based customer request logging and tracking reports
• Customer request performance statistics maintained in Alert and available in graph format including movements, average age etc
• Detailed analysis of customer requests available using multi dimension analysis tool

Software Development Team Member

• Defined production processes
• On line work schedules definable at any level from project / task / activity / work unit
• Time recording against production work

Quality Assurance Team Member

• Testing facilities linked to software production for visibility of changes implemented
• Automatic generation of test shells from production
• Tests may be conducted at any time for any purpose
• Tests link to software objects to ensure correct version of object is being tested
• Multiple test iterations able to be performed with errors recorded by iteration
• Test and error reports able to be produced

Services / Consulting Team Member

• Record unlimited service notes against all service activities for future reference
• On line service schedules definable at any level from project / task / activity
• Automatically produce service reports for customer sign off and forwarding to accounts office
• Easily check that all work performed has been billed

Application Support Team Member

• Single knowledge base used to manage and record software product release notes / changes
• Logging of application requests including bugs, enhancements, training etc performed in single knowledge base with flexible reporting and analysis by customer, issue, application module / object etc.
• Application development roadmap managed in Alert
• Future application releases fully documented during the course of production to allow advance notice of approaching changes
• Application changes linked to initiating requests to allow lookup on who, why and when changes were made
• Applications and versions in use by customers to the module level including customer specific variations are recorded in Alert to provide accurate information necessary for appropriate customer support
• Web based customer service desks maintained dynamically from Alert database details - no user maintenance required
• Web based application release notes reports available from customer service desks - dynamically available based on product release facility in Alert - no user maintenance required