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Spring Release Enables Better Scheduling, Tighter Project Cost Controls, Improved Project Planning Capabilities, Smoother Quote-to-Cash Automation, Improved Reporting Performance, and More

Austin, Texas - March 18, 2009 - QuickArrow, Inc., the leader in SaaS Services Automation, today announced the availability of the Spring Release of its Professional Services Automation (PSA) solution.  This release is highlighted by several innovative additions, including a next-generation integration with Microsoft Outlook® and the debut of its new user interface, featuring the Ext JS® framework.

Next-Gen Integration with Microsoft Outlook® QuickArrow’s new Outlook integration enables the seamless transfer of detailed schedules between the PSA Industry’s leading Resource Management solution and the world’s leading email and calendaring software.  QuickArrow’s new Add-In transfers detailed project and task-level information to appointments, rather than simply blocking out time in Outlook.  Users can easily configure the Outlook Add-In to synchronize automatically.

“Outlook is the de facto calendaring tool in most corporate environments, and so if appointments aren’t scheduled there, the result is often lost productivity or missed assignments,” said Malcolm Hawker, QuickArrow’s vice president of product management.  “Our new Outlook plug-in addresses that, and helps our clients ensure they can get the right person in the right place at the right time.”

Adoption of Ext JS® extends UI advantages The Spring release also introduces QuickArrow’s new user interface which leverages the Ext framework, a JavaScript library for building rich internet applications that incorporates high performance, customizable UI widgets, and other features to enhance the user experience.  QuickArrow, already recognized in the PSA space for its ease-of-use, has rolled out Ext JS® to improve the overall design and usability of its project setup functionality, making it even easier to create and staff projects.  Moving forward, the company plans to incorporate the Ext framework throughout their entire application.

“While there are certainly other Javascript frameworks available for developing web apps, none compare to Ext when it comes to producing a slick, intuitive user experience.  It’s skinnable, customizable, cross-browser compatible - and that’s why we also use it here at Thomson Reuters,” commented Micheal Eicher, vice president of professional services at Paisley, a Thomson Reuters Company.  He continued, “We have been a QuickArrow client for several years, and the launch of this new UI is yet another confirmation of their commitment to helping us better manage our people and projects.”

Reporting Performance Improvements For several consecutive quarters, the company has also focused on enhancing its reporting capabilities and performance to provide clients with real-time, up-to-the-minute visibility into their operations - a process that can otherwise take weeks or even months, which often means that critical business decisions are based on outdated or even inaccurate data.

“During our annual audit process, we literally run hundreds of reports through QuickArrow,” said David Erikson, technology specialist with ISH, Inc.  “We recently completed our ‘08 audit, and the speed of report generation was really stellar, making the entire process much less cumbersome.”

With this release, the company has achieved performance improvements of up to 4X on several key reports over the last year.  Some of the reports impacted include but are not limited to:

  • Expense Reports
  • Schedule Items
  • Project Metrics Reports
  • Revenue Recognition Reports
  • Opportunity Admin Reports
  • Employee Metrics Reports
  • Time Reports
  • Employee Admin Reports
QuickArrow’s Spring Release also features enhanced time card controls, a key component of their ongoing initiative to help clients fully automate their quote-to-cash processes.

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Discussion Forum
Seeking Opinion on When to Bill and When Not to Bill?

We are a professional services organization within a software product
company.  Our products are all large scale applications in the electronic
payments field.  Every implementation is heavily customized to suit the
business needs of the client.  We are having internal discussions on
what activities should or should not be billed to the customer; mostly
surrounding project management but the discussion extends to all PS
staff as well. 

For example, our delivery methodology specifies that we have weekly
meetings with our senior management to review the status of projects. 
Project Managers prepare for and conduct a portion of the senior
review.  Should that PM time be logged against the customer project
and billed to the customer? 

Another example:  PMs spend time preparing invoices, addressing
billing questions, entering/checking/verifying/editing data in our
Oracle financial and project accounting systems.  Do other companies
bill the customer for this administrative time logged by PMs? 

Another example:  Since our applications are customized for every
implementation, there are inevitably software bugs.  Those software
bugs lead to internal review meetings, delays in delivery, and rework.
Although we would not bill for rework, should the time the PM spends
coordinating all the internal activities be charged to the customer? 

One last example:  our delivery methodology calls out specific
activities & deliverables such as Quality Gates, Quality Audits, Post
Mortem analysis, Executive Review sessions with customer execs,
weekly status reports and many more.  Where do other companies
draw the line between when an activity is billed to a customer because
it is part of the customer project, and when the activity is not billed
because it is an internal action that the company elects to perform that
is only tangentially part of the customer project?

This may seem like a simple question but it is really quite complicated. 
We are finding that making the transition from a pure software vendor
(our old model) to a services company (the new model) is not that
easy.  Maybe you have experienced the same thing. 

People are lining up on both sides of the aisle.  On one side are the
people who think we should bill every hour of time that we think about,
do something about, talk about or work on a project.  On the other side
are those who think that some of the things we do are driven by our
own internal desire for process, methodology and data, and, if an
activity is internally driven, we should not bill the customer as it is a
‘cost of doing business’. 

I’d be interested in any opinions or examples you have on the topic.

Thanks.

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