Businesses of all sizes and in all industries will take on some project throughout their establishment. Whether that’s a proposal to win a new client, a website build or an aviation manufacturing project, there are several different scenarios where you may find your business taking on a project. One of the main downsides to projects within many businesses is that they often run over the time they are supposed to be completed by, ultimately running over budget. This can be dangerous, particularly for SMEs where every penny counts. If your business is regularly going over budget, you could be losing more money than earning, leaving the business in the red. However, there are several different ways that you can keep your projects within budget.
Invest In A Project Manager
The simplest and most efficient way to keep your projects within budget is by employing an experienced project manager with the skills, experience, and proficiency to help manage your project’s budget. There are many different ways to manage a project’s costs better, which is through earned value management, which tracks costs and expenditures on a much closer basis. Investing in a project manager will help ensure that the project’s scope is completed, and you will have someone regularly and closely monitoring everything about the project.
Consider Training A Current Employee
The only downside to investing in a project manager is that they are generally quite expensive to employ. This is because they will generally have a lot of experience in the field, and many of them will have managed large teams and large projects around the globe. This will put them in a position to demand a lot more money than many other employees consider. A way to keep the cost of this down is to train an employee who is currently already working in-house, whether they are an experienced professional or a new member of the team. There are some different project management courses that you can consider, whether that’s PRINCE2, lean six sigma courses, or Agile – all of which have their own benefits. This is a form of investment that your business can benefit from instead of having an outside perspective changing the business.
Get Together A-Team
One of the easiest ways to help ensure that your projects stay within budget is to have a group of people put together the budget instead of a singular person. While a project manager may be able to get a realistic budget together according to what they know and what they understand, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they can match this up to the expectations the other team members who will be involved in the project may have. This way, the business can not only have a better understanding of timeframes, but you will also be able to better distinguish between project budgets and actual predicted project costs – before the project begins.