Business Case 1: The consultancy Company requirements

I love the idea of this blog. Although I've had 0 comments so far, I still have the feeling of stepping on a stand and telling a story !

Let's continue with the requirements:

Depending on type of business, requirements can be long task. I have even seen a project with more than one year of people writing requirements.

To make the story practical and a tutorial style, I will go through business cases. Each business case is split into a series of requirements. Eeach requirement will have its implementation demonstrated in Adempiere.

As of now, I will start the interview with Aicha Consulting CEO, Mr Fahem. Mr Fahem has a small consulting firm that sells consultancy services here and there.

Mr Fahem is convinced he can make his life easier through an ERP. Let's understand his problems in the first place, section per/section.

How does Aicha Consulting invoices its customers ?

At the end of the interview, I should have a clear idea of what's the input of the invoice, and what's the output of it.

Me: Mr Fahem, can you please briefly describe your customer invoicing process?

Mr Fahem:OK. Quite easy, we have some 20 consultants employed and contracted by our company. These contractors are being assigned to different clients on different assignments. Here is the process:

• On 29th of each month, secretary sends a mail to all consultants to fill in their timesheet by last day of the month;
• The timesheet, which is an Excel sheet contains a line for number of hours for each working day per project, are sent by mail to timesheets@aicha-consulting.com. for each The header of timesheet has name of contractor, name of the client and the address of the site where he is doing the job;
• Secretaries compile these timesheets together and send one consolidated invoice per client. It could be that there are 5 consultants at one client site;
• Client approves the invoice, negociates or rejects some hours, and then eventually figures are being approved by client and so is the invoice;
• Once figures are approved, secretaries send it to the accountant and request 30 days payment terms;
• Client proceeds to payment before expiry of terms of payment;

Me: Can you please show us a sample of your sales invoice?

Mr Fahem: Below is a sample of Aicha Telecom Invoice.

Me: Oh I see, how often does the price / day of the consultant change for a customer?

Mr Fahem: These are 6 months contracts. Prices of consultancy are reviewed at renewal of each contract.

Me: What is deal world for invoicing?

Mr Fahem: If consultants can enter their timesheet online. From there, an invoice draft can be generated from this data, that would be great.

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Let us stop here for requirements. If these are only requirements requested by customer with no strategic vision of what to do of next requirements, we can clearly say that no ERP is required.

Let's see how the exact requirements can be implemented in Adempiere. Next article will describe:

1-) A step-by-step how to adjust invoice in Adempiere to match Aicha Consulting;

2-) A step-by-step solution as to how do consultants fill-in timesheet online (if Adempiere allows this);