This month Enquire highlights how one key natural resource management group, Burnett Mary Regional Group, extensively uses the Enquire projects and contracts management platform to deliver consistent quality and improved internal procedures.
For the past 8 years Enquire client Kim D’Arcy has been writing contracts and administering finances for natural resource management group, Burnett Mary Regional Group (BMRG) as their Contracts Officer. When asked about the rewards of her role she jokingly rebuts with the answer, “grey hair”. It’s not surprising that Kim stays busy, as last financial year Kim oversaw 344 projects entered into Enquire through its project contract management tools.
Kim quickly consults Enquire to let me know how many projects she has overseen entered into the system over the past couple of years. “In 2012/2013 financial year it was 475 and I produced every single contract out of Enquire,” said Kim, as she double checks her memory by looking up Enquire.
Kim’s use of Enquire focuses around the quality control of project data and creation of project contracts including setting up the group project templates. Additionally, Kim enters investment contracts into Enquire and manages internal procedures for management of the system.
“Our project staff use Enquire to set up project applications, which can be tracked, assessed and then contracted all in one place,” she said. All BMRG’s project reporting data is collated from Enquire for submission to specific investors.
BMRG use Enquire downloadable applications which allow their field staff to gather potential proponent data and application details then upload it into Enquire to begin the project lifecycle. These applications are then assessed in the system for viability and approval. Successful projects continue on to use Enquire data and contract templates to download a BMRG relevant contract for all parties to sign. Each step in this process uses the one instance of data controlled within Enquire. “Seriously, if you set up the system properly you can just hit that button and pump out heaps of them (contracts). Which I did!” Kim laughed.
“Another of the great benefits of Enquire,” said Kim “is that all project information is captured in one place and it’s easy to transfer projects from one person to another.” BMRG find this particularly useful when staff leave and new staff commence. It ensures that project knowledge and data is not lost with outgoing project members. Kim said this is a huge advantage. When information is kept updated and a new person starts, “you just transfer all the projects from the old person to the new person,” she explained. New employees then have access to all the historical data, it makes life really easy for the new people,” she said. “This is a job that would usually take Kim days of work. It is a really useful function.”
BMRG uses Enquire to capture all their incoming and outgoing contract details. BMRG also enters into Enquire all their activity agreements, with all the milestones for each period. Projects are then linked to relevant contracts ready for reporting. “So instead of having nervous breakdowns every time it’s reporting time, our project people do it on a progressive basis, day by day, week by week, and update their project as they’re going, then at reporting time, it should be a breeze,” said Kim.
If you have any questions about how your organisation can use Enquire to better manager project contracts please contact Tactiv or call us on +61 7 3846 1555.