Due to the current COVID-19 restrictions that have been imposed on public gatherings and travel, the 2020 AACE Conference has gone virtual.  Attendees can still take advantage of all the presentations, technical sessions and networking opportunities – but this year from their own home office.  Of course, we would all love to be there in person, but this year we’re all adapting to the current situation to still deliver high quality content, but in a modified platform. For those who aren’t familiar with the AACE, it is one of the most respected organizations on the planet for promoting the cause of best practices in project controls and cost engineering.  They provide a deep wealth of high-quality resources for all areas of project management and project controls to ensure projects are delivered on budget and on time.  If you’ve never attended an AACE conference in the past, this may be an ideal opportunity to try it out, as being virtual, there’s no travel involved and the time commitments can be much more flexible.

Approvals are deeply woven into the fabric of any financial software solution, and 4castplus is no exception.  The challenge with designing complex, multi-stage approvals workflows however – for key items such as purchase orders, change orders, timesheets, invoices, etc. – is that they can quickly bog things down, and introduce delays as approvals get stuck waiting for individuals to get around to dealing with them. Approvals can drone on and on and keep critical-path items stuck on hold for days or weeks, wasting time and money, if not attended to properly. This is what we refer to as “Approvals Bottlenecks” and they can be a massive drain on the efficient management of project finances. 

And bottlenecks can be very bad for business.

Managing the complexity of procurement for large construction projects requires an exceptionally robust technology solution.

Most commercial procurement software solutions are designed to handle general purchasing for a broad range of businesses and industry applications.  Procurement for construction projects has more complex needs such as: