WSG Systems Corporation
Optimizing Resources for Improved Financial Management

One of the major challenges affecting project-based organizations is ensuring their resources are managed effectively. Inefficient resource management can lead to over-budgeting, under-utilization, and missed deadlines and deliverables for the organization and external clients. While project-based organizations and internal IT operations can leverage cloud computing and mobile applications to improve their responsiveness as well as manage their on-going projects and deliverables, disorganized resource management can quickly derail the effort. WSG Systems Corporation, a New York-based firm specializing in the design and development of resource management and project accounting solutions, incorporates the latest technologies to provide resource management and scheduling solutions to project-based organizations such as consulting, finance, HR, and internal IT operations.

“Our goal is to help project-based organizations improve their productivity and project performance through better scheduling and rationalized resource management,” begins William Cornfield, President, WSG Systems Corporation.

WSG Systems’ flagship Empire SUITE product streamlines operations and simplifies tasks for project-based organizations. The seamlessly integrated application suite provides a powerful and flexible solution for project-based organizations ranging from small IT consulting concerns to larger firms with complex multiple location, multi-currency and software capitalization requirements. The Empire SUITE applications – Empire TIME, Empire TIME OFF, Empire MOBILE, Empire CALENDAR, and Empire RESOURCE – help project-based organizations manage their projects from inception to completion. Time and expense capture using Empire TIME, Empire MOBILE or Empire CALENDAR is efficient and painless. Empire CALENDAR, WSG’s Microsoft Outlook plug-in, provides two-way integration with Empire RESOURCE and Empire TIME. Microsoft Outlook meeting and appointment details–for all meeting and appointment participants–can be uploaded to the time sheet and downloaded into Empire RESOURCE so everyone is in sync and up-to-date.

Empire RESOURCE gives managers and schedulers a powerful tool kit to match the firm’s resources with the right activities on the right project.

Our goal is to help project-based organizations improve their productivity and project performance through better scheduling and rationalized resource management

Managers can search for resources across multiple attributes such as skills and proficiency levels, past experience with specific tasks, industries, similar projects, and availability. Empire TIME OFF, WSG’s integrated personal time off management application, ensures scheduled vacations and other time off events are considered when projects are staffed. Integrated revenue and cost rate schedules give managers instant comparisons between the project budget and the value of the scheduled resources. Resource conflicts are displayed before the project starts and reassignments are easily done using drag-and-drop to an available resource. Additionally, actuals captured in Empire MOBILE, Empire TIME and Empire CALENDAR are available in Empire RESOURCE so managers can easily compare project schedules and the project budget to actual results. The combination of scheduling and actuals allows managers to forecast project completion dates and total cost and revenue at completion which can help managers identify projects in trouble while there is still time to avert serious problems.

In one case, WSG’s tools were able to identify a project that was going to go over budget before it was too late. The project was budgeted at 16,000,000 dollars (or 500,000 dollars per month). The project manager never exceeded his monthly budget but halfway through the budget the system flagged the project at only 8 percent complete. At that rate the project would cost 100,000,000 dollars so the project was canceled and an alternative approach was taken. “The client told us that without our tools they would have probably hit 20,000,000 dollars before canceling the project. They believe they saved 8,000,000 dollars by analyzing the project and changing course sooner than later,” says Cornfield.