Manufacturing Project Management Software Buyers’ Guide: 3 Practical Benefits with Cora

This Buyer’s Guide for Manufacturing Project Management Software looks at 3 areas where Cora PPM is particularly strong: advanced financials, document management and strategic workforce planning.

Introduction: The manufacturing sector today

"Manufacturers seek an upper hand by integrating operational data... The risks from not 'connecting the dots' can be significant." - Deloitte

According to Deloitte's 2022 Manufacturing Industry Outlook, there are five principal challenges that the sector faces today. The first is supply chain disruption.

key takeaways from this guide

1. Real-time cost tracking protects margins. Manufacturing projects face constant cost changes. Cora's Project Controls tools let you track estimate-at-completion (EAC) changes continuously, so you can spot project risk early and adjust before costs spiral.

2. Document management prevents disputes. When contractors and subcontractors end up in court, daily logs matter. Cora automatically time-stamps and user-stamps every action, giving you an audit trail that supports dispute resolution.

3. Strategic workforce planning reduces labor waste. Manufacturing teams need the right people on the right projects. Cora's workforce planning solutions identify skills gaps months ahead, so you can schedule project resources without overstaffing or scrambling for contractors.

4. Centralized data enables smart factory integration. With IIoT sensors producing mountains of data, you need a single source of truth. Cora acts as your control tower, organizing inventory management data, safety metrics, and quality control information in one place.

5. Legacy software creates cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Modern PPM software helps protect against cyberattacks. The biggest threat isn't sophisticated hackers; it's outdated systems that haven't been updated.

Supply chain disruption affects effective project management

All your parts, products, machines and people produce an ever-growing mountain of data. More and more, every single square inch of everything has a sensor attached to it, monitoring progress and tracking every move.

Your software gathers and organizes all that data in a central location, so everyone who needs to can access all that information. When parts arriving at your factory in Florida are delayed because of a driver's dispute in Michigan, you won't have to pay for people and machinery sitting idly on the factory floor.

All those data sets are constantly updated in real time and immediately available for everyone. Watch this video on Cora's Supply Chain Sync with Schedule.

Labor shortages require smarter workforce solutions

One of the clearest trends in the current labor market is that employees want more than a healthy salary. They want to feel they're actively contributing and making a difference.

One of the most common complaints from workers is being assigned tasks they're clearly over-qualified for. Or, alternatively, being asked to do things they weren't trained for.

Companies constantly take on projects they're not capable of delivering, because they think they can't afford to say no. The wrong people end up working on the wrong projects. You need to see, at a glance, exactly what assets you have at your disposal so you can properly plan your portfolio.

Effective capacity planning and efficient resource management is only possible with Strategic Workforce Planning functionality. The role of your PPM tools is to match skills to projects before problems develop.

Smart factories drive manufacturing competitiveness

“Smart factories are one of the keys to driving competitiveness.” – Deloitte1

Over the last decade, manufacturing has been transformed by the advent of smart factories. These work in three key areas for product development and production.

First, next-generation robots now include self-driving vehicles, drones and 'cobots' (robots that work in collaboration with you). Increasingly efficient machines count, catalogue, store and collect, freeing workers to perform more productive tasks.

Second, analytics come from everywhere thanks to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and 5G bandwidth. Components, parts, products and machines have sensors producing reams of data, analyzed and organized via the Internet. This data supports inventory management and quality control across your operations.

Third, technology means a huge amount of manufacturing work can be performed by people working from anywhere. Development teams can collaborate across locations when your data is managed, organized and constantly updated in real time.

Cybersecurity risks grow with digital operations

All the things that make smart factories possible also make manufacturing especially vulnerable to cyberattacks. The vast number of moving parts, and the fact that data can only be efficiently organized digitally and online, means anyone can mount an attack from anywhere.

Spyware, ransomware, malware and trojan horses blackmail companies and target commercially sensitive data. This data can be sold to rivals or used to produce fakes. But the biggest vulnerability comes from continued use of legacy software systems.

The latest software packages are good at keeping pace with criminal technology. It's not sophisticated tech that makes cyber criminals dangerous. They rely on the fact that most businesses are too busy to update the software they rely on. Safety and security depend on keeping your systems current.

ESG investment demands verifiable metrics

"Investors, boards, customers, employees, and policymakers continue to focus on ESG (and) diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are increasingly a business imperative." - Deloitte

You need to demonstrate that how you source, make and distribute whatever product you provide is done in a way you can stand over. That means no child labor, no dealings with morally reprehensible regimes, and doing everything possible to reduce emissions.

You demonstrate all of this with metrics. It all comes down to data. Once your data is managed and organized in a centralized depository, you can access any of those metrics whenever anyone asks.

"Centralizing a manufacturing control tower can bring together data from different facilities, production lines, and equipment and visualize dependencies on suppliers and effects on logistics." - Deloitte

Cora's software solutions enable you to address all of the above because it makes you the control tower. You can orchestrate all activities. Three areas specific to manufacturing show where Cora has been purpose-designed to help teams improve.

1. Advanced financials enable effective project management controls

“Manufacturers face near-continuous disruptions globally that add costs and test abilities to adapt.” – Deloitte1

Cora's Project Controls has been designed to give manufacturing clients exactly the kind of advanced financials they've been asking for. A client approached us not long ago to ask whether they could take their financials and populate their schedule with them.

They'd been finding it frustratingly difficult to get project managers to keep schedules up to date. The PMs had no difficulty inputting financials, forecasts and estimates at completion (EACs). They understood how important all of that was. They just didn't get around to inputting everything into the actual schedule.
For PMs, focusing on financials matters more than schedules because project costs are the priority. You need tools that let you track all the cost changes that occur over a project. If you're not on top of EAC changes, you lose control of your project risk fast.

If you're building a new factory and cement costs go up 20% mid-project, you have to factor that increase into your costs to produce revised estimates. Those costs might also be 10% less than forecast. Either way, adjustments need to be made on a continual basis as projects progress.

This is what differentiates Cora from other products. Many systems have extraordinarily limited scope around tracking costs. That's strange, because costs are central to all businesses, especially manufacturing.

Cora's ability to track costs in a detailed and continuous way makes it a powerful tool. It gives invaluable insights into your financials and lets you carefully track a project's costs through each stage of its lifecycle. Learn more about how project controls work in manufacturing by exploring our resources.

2. Daily logs power document management for all manufacturing operations

“53% of surveyed organizations plan to enhance data integration for supply-and-demand visibility and planning.” – Deloitte1

Manufacturing involves a myriad of moving parts, sets of machines and groups of people. You need people on the factory floor tracking daily interactions. Every day, thousands of change orders get generated.

Because of the large number of registers detailing workflows, many companies continue operating with mountains of spreadsheets. That's because most software products aren't designed to flexibly handle change orders, or the PM doesn't trust the one they have.

When something goes wrong on a large, sprawling project and you end up in court with contractors and sub-contractors, you'll be asked for the daily logs in your document management system.

You need to demonstrate that the reason you failed to meet your deadline was because contractor Y failed to complete task Z by their deadline. It wasn't physically possible for you to do what you'd contracted to do. You need documents and images backing up your claims, detailing all exchanges.

Cora provides seamless dispute resolution and document management

Cora provides a user-friendly interface and a system that time, date and user stamps every action. This gives you an automatically generated audit trail. This feature is invaluable when documenting activities outside the schedule.

Cora's logically structured system simplifies information retrieval. With a simple export function, you can compile necessary documentation. The platform's adaptability and easy configuration help provide an accurate daily log, making it an indispensable tool for avoiding fines and penalties.

3. Strategic workforce planning supports all manufacturing teams

“We estimate a shortfall of 2.1 million skilled jobs by 2030.” – Deloitte1

Manufacturing goes through periods of high and low demand. Some of this is predictable but much comes unexpectedly. The decrease in microchip demand during the pandemic and sudden increase after the correction that followed illustrates this volatility.

A project manager puts in a request for someone with a specific skill to work on X. He has no idea who's going to get assigned to that task. His request goes into the system, and the system deals with it. When you're part of a large organization, you don't have dozens of large projects; you have thousands. Each one has hundreds of mini projects within them.

You need an accurate and up-to-date idea of exactly what resources you have, what current projects need, what you're going to need, and for how long each resource or asset will be needed on each project.

Should you move people from within your organization, or bring contractors in from outside? For how long, and on how permanent a basis? You have to stay lean and agile. You need to identify that you'll have a problem with X in 4 months if you don't address that skills shortage now.

What you need is to identify the skills required across all your projects and when you'll need them. Then roll that up across your schedules in a reliable and accurate way. This is what Cora's strategic workforce planning functionality has been designed to do. These solutions help you schedule project resources and manage development teams effectively.

1. 2022-manufacturing-industry-outlook.pdf

Cora – ‘famously easy to use’

We put a huge amount of effort into making Cora something people genuinely look forward to using. That's why we've acquired the epithet of being 'famously easy to use.' It genuinely is.

That's because it's been built as a no code/low code platform. It gets configured twice.

First, when you decide to go with Cora, we sit down with you to configure the out-of-the-box Cora so that it does exactly what you need. That's the low code part. We then pair you with a Customer Success Team to make sure implementation goes exactly according to plan. They make any further tweaks needed in how your Cora is configured.

Once you 'go live,' you'll quickly see Cora champions emerge. Whenever you're starting a new project, or setting up a Portal from existing templates so a particular stakeholder only sees exactly what you want them to, you simply drag and drop whichever features you want included. It really is that simple.

And if you still feel a little lost, you can consult the Cora Assistant. It's there on the top right-hand corner of your screen.

Cora offers a uniquely flexible solution for whatever your challenges are. Whether you need that 30,000-foot, bird's-eye view of your portfolio, or a detailed, granular view into each stage of your project's lifecycle. Or both. Cora provides unrivalled visibility. It's all there on your dashboard.

See how Cora works for manufacturing

Manufacturing project management demands software that handles complex cost tracking, document management, and workforce planning. Cora PPM was built to give manufacturing teams control over all three.

Request a personalized demo to see how Cora can help you track project costs in real time, maintain audit-ready documentation, and schedule project resources months ahead. Our team will show you exactly how the platform handles your specific manufacturing challenges.

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