I'm working for client rolling out BaanIV who is interested in implementing BaanIV Project (TP). What are the major differences (or advantages) between TP and PCS and is there a substantial overhead in implementing (and using) TP? I cannot find too many details on TP and who is using it. Is there an interface between TP and Microsoft Project?
Any help on this matter would be appreciated.

Hi Ian,

Before getting into the differences it would be better for us to know what the requirements are. In that way we can give you a specific answer that may be more usefull to you.

Unfortunately there is no nice document that will summarize the differences between tp project and pcs project.

Regards,

Edwin

Hi Edwin,

The company involved run professional service type projects and do not really want to carry out a large number of inventory transactions for each project as these are a small part of the project value.
They also want strong project management tools, and the ability to invoice projects without having to carry out lots of inventory transactions against the project or even necessarily have to create a sales order (if that is possible)

Regards,

Ian.

Hi Ian,

In that event I would strongly suggest to use BAAN Project and not PCS projects.
The advantage with BAAN Project is that you do not have to set up item transactions to make it all happen.
You can define projects with activities and link budgets to them. The activities can be made graphically available in a planning board.
Once a project has to be executed you can maintain the actual costs by activty and compare them with the budgets.
Also invoicing can be done by activity and you have billing possibilities like fixed price contracts, progress invoicing (percentage complete) and cost plus.
All the amounts (budget and actuals) are real time in the system so that project managers have full visibility of the performance of the projects. You would not even need to create sales orders as BAAN Project is taking care of the invoicing.
These are just a few advantages of BAAN Project and already many BAAN customers are using BAAN Project for managing projects in a professional services environment. BAAN Project has a lot of features and it is very important that you keep the implementation as lean as possible.

PCS Project does not offer the functionalities I have just described.
I have seen many BAAN customers selecting PCS Projects for the wrong reasons and many times this is because the BAAN implementation partner was not knowledgeable with BAAN Project.
In these situations almost all the customers were having big problems after a couple of years because they realized PCS Projects has been designed for manufacturing projects only and not for professional services projects.

Hopefully this information is useful for you and in case you need addiotional help you can mail me at edwin@baanboard.com.

Regards,

Edwin

Many thanks Edwin, your comments have been very helpful.

Regards,

Ian.