Procim

How to Get the Most Out of Your Christmas Holidays

Whether you’ve taken time off, get to work from home, or still have to come into the office during working days, most people get some form of a break over the Christmas period. Two bank holidays sandwiched in between weekends gives us all a much-needed chance to recuperate. Not to mention, work can become a little less busy when everyone’s collectively focusing on family time.

The mini Christmas break is a great time to recharge your energy and get in the right headspace for January 2019. Recovering from work is important, not just for you but for your business. A study carried out in the Netherlands by Jessica de Bloom of Radbound University showed that “holidays contribute to ‘recovery from work’ in two ways – passively, through the process of being free from work, and actively, through engagement in non-work activities”. As de Bloom showed, it’s important to get the most out of your Christmas holidays by mixing up relaxation and fun. Here are our top tips for starting January with a rested mindset.

Put family first, but don’t forget your own needs

Family can absorb a lot of our holidays without us noticing. It’s important to reconnect during the holidays, but it’s also important to make sure you’re not drained when it’s time to get back to work. Try to make sure that for every hour you’re being rushed off your feet, you get an hour of watching no-stress Christmas films.

Try not to compulsively check your work emails

Everyone does it, you’re so used to checking work emails that it’s just a habit at this point. But to have a real break that will refresh you in time for the new year, it’s important to exercise a little control. Your eyes need a rest from bright pearlescent screens and your mind needs to actively let go of work life to be able to reboot and get the most out of this break.

Don’t offer to do everything

When aunt Mildred asks who’s going to be baking cookies with your 27 nieces and nephews, it’s okay for silence to fall. By not offering to contribute towards every single Christmas activity, you’ll make the contributions you do offer far more valuable and thoughtful. Most importantly, you’ll save yourself that stress of trying to figure out how to make cranberry sauce (for anyone who’s already volunteered, just put cranberrys, sugar and orange juice in a saucepan for about 5 minutes).

Let yourself buy little things to make you happy

It’s good to be frugal, but it’s also okay to buy cute £4 baubles to hang on the tree, no matter how many you’ve got in the attic. Buying frivolous rubbish we only use once a year is part of what makes Christmas the best, don’t feel guilty about it. It’ll help you soak up all that glittery magic, consider it an investment in your happiness.

But, don’t go overboard

The last thing you need is to reach the 27th and realise you don’t have enough money to eat. Giving presents can get us into a giving mood and it becomes easy to lose track of finances in the heat of happiness. Let yourself go but put a certain amount of money where it can’t be touched so you know you don’t have to stress about overspending.

Get Christmas shopping done before the Christmas period begins

If you’re reading this on Wednesday or Thursday, tonight’s the night. Get it done today after work and you’ll walk in tomorrow knowing you’re scot free and ready to do some hard-core relaxing. Doing it now will let you start your holidays free of undue stress and able to get into the mindset required for properly enjoying the Christmas period.

Don’t be afraid to recycle unused gift cards

On that note, research shows that since “2005 Americans have left more than $45 billion in unredeemed gift cards on the table”. Gather together all those unused gift cards from last year and take them with you. Use them to buy presents and you might have enough left over to hit the January sales

Project Management Software for Film, TV and Video Production Agencies

The application of project management techniques to film, TV and video production has been thus far been underutilised. Agencies predominantly focus on creative processes, rather than effective project management. This to some degree, includes the appropriate utilisation of specialised project management software that focuses on improving efficiencies and controlling costs.

Traditionally software designed for film and video production agencies has focused on assisting with the construction of storyboards, call shots, script breakdown, and so on. However, agency software that addresses core project management, as well as complex budgeting and costing requirements are few and far between. Procim is designed to fill this gap.

Procim is ideal for creative, film, TV and video production agencies and provides structured budget creation and management, easily accessible cost updates, resource management, timesheet and expense capture in a way that encourages efficiencies in both employees and freelancers. It helps companies improve and manage profit margins, manage resources, create a strong agency workflow and improves visibility across revenue and cost streams. It helps agencies achieve strong profitability and a stable platform for growth.

Procim as a film and video budgeting software

Procim gives producers and line managers the best possible tools to budget for and manage costs across all stages of production, from commissioning to editing. It is cloud based, multi-user and multi-currency and comes with predefined budget templates that include Pre-Production, Casting & Talent, Production, Post-Production, Expenses, Travel and Accommodation costs. Cost reporting, budget revision snapshots, estimate comparisons and optional additions all work seamlessly with resourcing and purchasing capabilities.

Procim prevents mistakes, tracks costs and in turn increases profit margins. With a highly flexible budgeting environment, producers feel secure in their ability to stick to delivery commitments. Actual costs are automatically updated in the budget as they are raised, giving producers an instant overview of costs to date. Procim integrates with various financial and accounting applications and where this is implemented, costs automatically flow across to prevent unnecessary duplication of work.

Effectively manage time costs

Tracking minutes and hours may seem unnecessary to some, however when charging hourly for services it’s important to stay profitable and prevent over-servicing. The amount of work put in by an employee may not be reflected by the amount paid for services by clients, yet it will negatively impact on profit margins.

With freelancers, the consequences of over-servicing are more direct. When a freelancer works many more hours than originally projected, there is often no option other than to absorb the cost and take a profit hit. Over-servicing eats into productivity and profitability with startling speed.

Procim’s time and expense capture are fully integrated with production budgeting features, resource management and a strong project lifecycle to provide a more in-depth understanding and visibility of over-servicing.

A stable platform for growth

Procim provides your agency with a stable platform for growth. The software is continuously being improved and fine-tuned in a way that aligns with our client needs.

“Procim is an extremely user-friendly tool, suitable not only for properly managing all the logistic and financial aspects … for TV/Cinema Production companies … Everything can be customized in coherence with the specific needs of the company, and the support coming from Procim is always efficient and on time. You never feel alone when you face something that requires consultation. I strongly recommend it.” – Alexander Astore, Cost Controller, Filmmaster

Book a demo today to find out how Procim can help your film, TV or video production agency grow.

A Day in the Life of Support

Chris is a Business Process Analyst at our London Procim office. Proper support is one of the biggest concerns when buying event budgeting software. With everything centred around the all-important day, the events industry need to know their software is being taken care of by the right people. We caught up with Chris to find out what he does for our users.

Hey Chris, tell us how you ended up at Procim?

Having studied for a Business Management & Finance degree whilst being involved in creative industries like music and photography, I became very passionate about business and offering top quality service. I went off to work for a very reputable company, but found that the culture wasn’t for me. Everything felt too contained and there wasn’t enough space for imagination and learning. At Procim, I feel free to help clients in any way I can, I’m kept on my toes. I knew the minute I walked in for an interview that something innovative and fun was going on here. I was right.

What does your average day look like?

I’m in at nine with a big cup of coffee. Clients will either call with their queries or send emails and I’ll respond. That’s the jist, but really it’s a lot more than that. Since our clients are all creatives, they’re all full of exciting energy and are really interested in learning more about Procim and how it can help them. Typically, there’s a lot of problem solving involved, plus I have a great team around me to bounce ideas off. The emotional return is unlike any other company I’ve seen, everyone is always so happy and that makes me happy.

Where do you see yourself in two years?

The next step for me is to start training clients. It’s always nice to meet our clients face to face. Being able to introduce beginners to the world of Procim and hear existing users’ experiences with Procim is great. Once I’ve gained the right skills and experience with Procim I can then get involved with implementations which I really look forward to.

That’s not all though, the team here are really motivating. Having heard about my videography experience they have supported my creative ambitions by getting me involved with the marketing team. I aim to create some new adverts for the company but also combine my support and editing skills to create a video tutorial series for our users.

If you’d like to join our team please head to our careers page.

To find out about the impressive support we offer, book a demo.

5 Ideas for Alcohol Free Events

Yoga

“Alcohol is relaxing.”

Right, it sounds stupid, but what if your/your client’s birthday party started with a yoga session. Just picture it, instead of everyone arriving scattered and stressed from the day so far, everyone connects with physicality in a playful relaxing way. I’m not saying go through Vinyasas with extreme focus, but a few happy babies, a little bit of wild child, finishing off with a supta baddha konasana could create lots of happy giggles and connect everyone in a way alcohol just doesn’t. Having everyone on a floor will create an ease and flow throughout the night, breaking down the barriers of who can I or can’t I talk to, potentially making for the start of some great friendships. It’s definitely more relaxing than accidently hitting on Ted from the office. I’m definitely sticking to this one as the best idea for alcohol free events.

Mocktails

“But I like the taste.”

I have to admit, I’ve never ordered a mocktail. I think I’ve been embarrassed, it’s like getting alcohol free beer, weird. Why is it weird though? It’s just a nice tasting drink. Surely drinking nice things came before fermentation? If your client says they don’t want alcohol, it might be for religious reasons. They may not have had many cocktails, and may never have had the joy of finally getting sick of that much sugar. Getting some nice mocktails in can be a way to show them you care about their experience, and their choices. I’m not talking about mojitos made with soda water and mint. All the fun parts of cocktails, like the foam on top, the blending of flavours and the strange colours don’t come from ethanol. Get the egg whites, rose syrup and dried lavender out in martini glasses to give non-drinkers an enjoyable change from their cola and coffee.

Animals

“It helps me talk to people.”

I’ll give you this one. I am not a team player. Most of the time, if I’m drunk it’s because I do not want to be around the random guys who have flocked to our table and alcohol is the only way I can force a sociable smile on my face. I hate games, I don’t want to dance, the words networking and team player make me throw up in my mouth a little bit. But a) so does alcohol so which one’s really worse, b) if I don’t want to be around someone, maybe I should just leave, instead of forcing drunkenness on myself and c) maybe it’s time to grow up, maybe this anti-social behaviour really came from wanting to be accepted but somehow, the rude exterior became who I am instead, and now it’s time to let go of that. I’ll tell you what I can’t resist. Animals. Can anyone? Who cares about social blahdiblahs and anxious this and that’s when there’s cute animals in the room. Wall’s break down, barriers are broken, self-conscious habits are lost and everyone’s just happy to be in the room. Pop an emperor tamarin, a sloth and a meerkat in the room and everyone will be too confused and endeared to feel shy for much longer.

Shoes off

“It makes me let go of my inhibitions.”

This one sounds like it would do the complete opposite, but bear with me. Before the event, you send out an invite saying we’re not going to be drinking, we are going to have our shoes off and we’re going to have a judgement free environment. If anyone would like to be silly or playful, that’s fine, we’re all going to lower our inhibitions and feel free around each other. Just setting the intention, and giving the group a physical sign that when they walk in judgement’s left at the door will create a safer environment. After all, isn’t half of the reason our inhibitions are lowered a result of the cultural response to alcohol induced activities rather than the actual effects of the drug itself? I hate waking up the next morning embarrassed, but I love feeling spacious and free around my friends, feeling like I don’t have to worry. Drinking is a change, it’s a shift in your normal physiology. You start drinking with the plan to feel different and the belief that you’ll have fun. The way I see it, you could just set up the same environment with some well worded text on a bit of paper, and a physical sign that it’s all going to be alright now.

AV

“I just want to feel drunk.”

Everyone’s heard of that place where you sit in a silent oddly shaped room and things get weird. Or the one where you lie in water and darkness and you start to hallucinate. I certainly know I’ve been sober at raves before, filled with endorphins and staring up at the lights I’ve felt more distorted and happy and, well non-sober, then just being drunk. I don’t know anywhere near enough about AV to be able to figure out how it would work, but if rave lights can make me feel out of it by accident, I’m of the belief that someone could use lighting and sound to do it on purpose. I know those hallucination videos on Youtube were a load of rubbish, but if the principle’s sound, wouldn’t it be fun to give your client a drunk/distorted alcohol-free experience.

5 Things Event Profs Should be Doing Before Bed

Take a look at your calendar

And then mentally fit the rest of your stuff around it. Make a mini-plan for tomorrow so that when you wake up you know exactly what you’re getting up to for the day. You’re not going to forget to tell your Project Co-ordinator to pick up the ghost chairs, or that you’ve run out of lunch and need to stop at Tesco on the way to work. When you wake up, you’re going to feel certain, which makes it a lot easier to get out of bed.

The three minute sweep

Pop a three minute timer on so you know how long it’s taking. Right before you settle down for the evening, after you’ve mentally tracked the following day, run around tidying whatever you can within three minutes. You’ll find there’s a LOT more you can get done in that time than you’re thinking, and that each day will feel just a little bit more satisfying. I haven’t yet met an event professional who doesn’t have a sweet spot for good organisation and waking up to that predominantly tidy house tomorrow is going to fill you with such joy.

Stay away from social media

The blue glare shines up at you from your lifeline. Your eyes are starting to hurt so you close one at a time. You check the time, midnight. Six hours of sleep, IF you turn your phone off right now. But it’s hard, right. People are arguing over whether or not the straw ban is insensitive to people with disabilities and you haven’t read enough to form an opinion yet, you can’t stop reading now. Half past midnight, five and a half hours sleep. You must have insomnia, check Google.

It’ll be hard at the beginning, but start ignoring your phone at least half an hour before bed. Tech has a way of keeping you hooked, but it’ll get easier and easier to ignore the sweet pull of midnight’s shiny light, and you’ll find your life dramatically improved.

Read for fun

Now that you have this spare half an hour without technology, read something. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare or Heidegger to start with. Nor does it have to be magazines on keeping up with event trends or books about successful business mastery. Try mini books with titles like My First Love and The Evil Billionaire. They’re sort of like watching Facebook, but potentially less jarring. Or if you can’t bear to give up that many brain cells, read some books you’ve been wanting to get into and feel free to put them back down if they get boring. The point isn’t education and self-improvement, event professionals get enough of that in their day to day lives. The point is in two weeks you’ll find you’re probably feeling much happier and better rested.

Decide if you really want to be drinking chamomile tea

I know chamomile tea is great for you. I also know that sometimes it feels like every lifestyle magazine is pushing the chamomile tea on us kind of aggressively. It’s reached the point where I feel so guilty that I can’t get it into it, I can’t be the only person who has had to live with the crippling guilt of not really wanting a chamomile tea at night. Stress and guilt are a lot more damaging to health than not drinking chamomile tea. Event profs already suffer enough with their endless to do lists. If you don’t want the tea, don’t drink it. I’m glad I got that off my chest.

How Time Tracking Benefits Event Agencies

A minute here, a minute there. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Off runs the rabbit carrying your freelancer’s time. Is that all you charged your client, I’m sure you worked more than that? For small event companies, time tracking can sometimes feel like an extra unnecessary burden. Keeping every minute logged takes up a good portion of your evening, and you know how much you’ve agreed to charge your client so what’s the point?

You’ll naturally optimise your hours

It’s an important part of cost control, and there’s a reason everyone’s doing it. Time tracking encourages you, as an individual, to focus. It shows you how your hours are being spent. The life of an event planner can sometimes feel like there’s no extra space for something like admin, but you’ll find with the extra productivity boosting fuel provided by time tracking you’ll be optimising your hours in a way you didn’t know was possible.

So will everyone else

You can’t log “checking Facebook” into a time tracking system for work. I’m not saying everyone will start working every minute that you’re paying them to, but they’ll be a lot more aware of the time they’re wasting, and what that time’s costing you. They’ll also be aware of what does, and doesn’t, take them a long time, and be able to adjust their working days accordingly.

You’ll have a better idea of what your margins REALLY are

Event companies can have a terrible habit of losing out on revenue they deserve. Keeping track of every minute means you know how much you should be charging your client.

7 Creative Project Management Tools

As you’ll be very much aware, project management involves a whole plethora of working roles. Much in the same way PM’s come in all shapes and sizes, the software designed for them is versatile. It can be hard to figure out which one you need. Each system differs from the other, sometimes slightly, sometimes dramatically. The marketing can get overwhelming, leaving agency leaders to slog back to their Excel spreadsheets and wait another year before attempting the search for their project management tools.

With creatives, it’s even worse. A lot of the time, it feels like the things that are “made for them” are secretly the same as all the other project management tools but they’ve just put the word creative in front. That doesn’t mean you should give up. An insane amount of money is lost to budgeting for projects in Excel. I’m not talking money is wasted on misused time, although that’s also true. I mean that numbers are entered incorrectly, so budgets are wrong when completed and money is quite literally physically lost. They’re tiny boxes, and even though we’re capable of inhuman feats, project managers are only human. Finding software that protects your bottom line is just as important as ensuring your company is collaborating properly. And no, using Skype for all your company communication is not a good idea. Don’t worry, we’ve been there and we’ve got one for that.

On that note, we’ve compiled a list of 7 creative project management tools. Everything mentioned is multi-user and will help run your creative projects. We’re not promising that they’re all made specifically for you, but they are at the least more favourable towards creative agencies. We’ve also categorised them and explained what they do so that you’re not just looking at a list of 7 of the same thing. Here’s an honest review of software we think could work for you.

*We’ve supplied a list of software that we think is good for creative agencies, the list is by no means exhaustive and we are not saying that any one software is better than any other, these are just the ones we like.

Fully integrated

PROCIM

Procim is rooted in the budgeting process, making it unique. The project is run from within this web based system, so resources are allocated, timesh

eets are entered and documentation is automated.

Procim comes with a range of useful and unique tracking documents to create a smooth budgeting and reconciliation process. Each line item is entered into the right category and profits etc are automatically calculated by the system. Any losses are highlighted in red making it easy to catch mistakes. With each phase of the project process being recorded and tracked within Procim, the software gives you an instant oversight of your actual costs to date. When someone fills in a timesheet or raises a purchase order or expense, Procim subtracts that amount from the available budgeted item giving project managers a complete understanding of their bottom line at any one moment and making Procim the perfect all round creative project management tool with a twist.

Creative

Procim was originally created for the live events industry. As its client list started to grow, it spread its specialisation into other creative areas. However, each area happened slowly meaning Procim have honed and specialised their software selectively for each creative industry they work in. Procim comes with everything from industry specific templates to a support team that understand the needs of creatives.

Downside

Procim requires a minimum of 5 users, so while it’s a very good project budgeting solution for small businesses, it can’t accommodate really small businesses.

Collaboration

ASANA

Asana has these wonderfully designed boards where you post your company to-do’s and project plans. Everyone can comment on projects making it a great environment for collaboration. This creative project management tool is a platform from which people can see their assigned tasks and report back without needing to send each other countless emails. People can check their calendars in a visual way that lets them see if project managers have assigned them overlapping tasks.

Creative

Let’s face it, most creatives are notably unsettled when looking at something hideous. Apparently, no one else seems to care because most of the project management software out there looks like patchwork code wrapped in ugly grey boxes. Asana’s interface isn’t ugly, that’s the main reason it’s up here. It’s pleasant and enjoyable to use, you can drag and drop tasks in a nice satisfying way. One of the industries they’re crafted for is Marketing, making them a good project planning choice for a lot of creative agencies.

Downside

You have to keep Asana open at all times to see messages, it doesn’t notify you when someone’s commented on/edited a project. You can’t see all your tasks in one place. It needs integration with other software to be a fully functioning project planning platform. It’s very limited, which isn’t necessarily a downside but you should just be aware that unlike a software like Procim where there are loads of features, Asana is a project board and very little else.

Visually Blessed

TRELLO

Like Asana, Trello’s a place to co-ordinate your to-do lists and collaborate on ideas. You can create your project’s lifecycle in Trello and then allow everyone else to collaborate on it as the project unfolds. However, Trello allows for pictures to be attached to “cards” on the “boards”. Let’s say you need a project co-ordinator to check out venues, you can post up pictures with the to-do assignment so that everyone understands a little better what you’re after. The images are the project. It’s also free.

Creative

Trello is specifically made to be visual. The project is looked over in a visual way, making it a great choice for agencies who need a place to share visual ideas. Sort of like a Pinterest for project managers.

Downside

Again, like Asana, it’s not very feature heavy. You’re limited to task creation and to-do lists. Furthermore, for something so visually based, the actual interface isn’t very nice. Everything’s quite close together and it’s a little bit eh. Still though, it’s free so who cares?

For The Hipster Inside You

BRIGHTPOD

Brightpod users create Pods out of their projects. You then complete tasks and milestones that feed into the Pod until the project is finished. Everyone gets their own dashboard, and everyone feels just a little bit cooler when they’re working on a Pod rather than a boring old Project. The more relaxed feel of it gives the bitesize tasks more weight. Brightpod might be a good tool for anyone who liked Trello but is ready for something a lot more feature heavy. Everything feels very organised and manageable in Brightpod.

Creative

Specifically made for marketing agencies. It specialises in digital marketing and creative teams, so you know you’re getting something that’s right for you rather than something thrown together to expand that company’s user base.

Downside

Doesn’t integrate with invoicing and billing systems, meaning you can’t automate those processes.

Communicating

SLACK

Remember what I was saying about Skype? Well here’s your alternative. Emailing and Skyping each other can waste a lot of time. Slack is a nice company messaging system that you can use to communicate directly with one another and as a group. They’ve got a mobile app. It’s just a much easier way to communicate with each other. There are loads of understated features, for example, when you copy and paste an image into the chat box it sends it so pleasantly as a file. Apparently, 73% of Fortune 100 companies are using it. It’s free, so if you’re still using outdated messaging systems, give this one a try. In fact, try it even if you’re not using outdated systems.

Creative

This one wasn’t made for creatives, but the ease, flow and organisation of it makes it perfect for collaborative teams on the move. Creative project managers can share their ideas and plans without the strain of oppressive clunky systems.

Downside

Slack’s the best. Nothing else to say.

Timesheets

HARVEST

Time tracking is a vital and occasionally underestimated part of creative project management. It deserves its own section. Especially since creative freelancers are famed for people trying to screw them out of their pay. Guys, track your time properly. Every, single, minute. Your time is so valuable and it’s very easy to overspend time on a project. Make sure your clients are paying you properly by having a proper timesheet process in place.

Enter Harvest. Harvest integrates with so many other creative project management tools, making it a great addition to your PM toolbox.

Creative

Nice layout in a lovely unoffensive orange. Harvest comes with stopwatches attached to the timesheets. While creatives may lose track of time and find it hard to remember exactly how many hours were spent, Harvest can essentially automate the process for them. Before settling down to design an advert or plan an event, creative project managers can simply press the button and then stop it when they’re finished, logging it under that project and making sure you bill for the correct number of hours.

Downside

It’s easy to forget to turn the timer off at the end of your project, it takes a lot of practice to start remembering when to use Harvest and even then people forget.

Goals

WEEKDONE

Weekdone sets structured goals on a week by week basis. It allows you to provide feedback to your team with 1-2-1 personalised discussions. You can also give feedback and recognition with emojis, praising progress as people complete their goals. It’s kind of like a fitness trainer for events. You can then organise your quarterly objectives using the week plans.

Creative

Again, lovely interface. Colourful, simple and playful. Weekdone is good for more goal oriented creative agencies. It’s very focused on feedback, goals and smashing targets.

Downside

It is what it is. It can be difficult to get the hang of and it’s a slightly different way of tracking projects. The company use words they’ve probably made up that feel very sales team, which adds to the goal centric personality of it. It’s a love or hate sort of software.

What is Cost Control? And How Can you Apply its Principles?

If you own a business, you probably do it already. There are two ways to make more money:

1) Increase revenue

2) Reduce expenses

Put very simply, cost control is the latter. Put less simply, it’s the management of your actuals against your budget. For this reason, it is deeply rooted in the budgeting process. Cost control helps you figure out how much you’re really going to be making. Furthermore, it gives you intelligent guidance to help you set proper targets.

The first step towards proper cost control is to build a proper budget. The next step is to track how much you’re actually spending. Analysing and addressing any discrepancies between these two figures is how you effectively control costs. Some good ways to apply cost control is to analyse your vendors, lower freelancer costs, and optimise current employee time.

However, cost control doesn’t always have to happen after the fact. Simply tracking your actuals as and when they happen will make a difference in profit margins. If you’re aware of how much you’ve spent against your budgeted amount at any given time, you’ll be better equipped to stop big overspends before they happen.

One place we regularly see a lack of cost control is the events industry. A lot of the time, event managers simply aren’t equipped with the right tools to be able to track their costs accurately and at the right juncture. This leaves event agencies with a much smaller net income than they deserve.

How Skype applied effective cost control

Skype Co-founder Jonas Kjellberg

Skype achieved so much success because Kjelberg and his contemporaries focused on decreasing costs in innovative ways. For example, a long time ago before fire and GDPR had been invented, newsletters weren’t as common. So rather than forking out money for marketing, Kjelberg figured if he had access to someone’s email, he could write a bit of code that would give him access to all their contacts too. And so began one of the earliest and most successful newsletter campaigns.

Anyone who remembers the beep bop boop of a dial up modem will probably also remember receiving an email invitation from your mate asking you to use Skype. Anyone observant may also remember how slow those modems became afterwards, or if they continued to beep and boop while you were trying to sleep. That was Skype using your coverage and data to keep itself running. Skype ran off everyone else’s internet steam.

If someone tried to do this today, I can’t imagine how big that “GDPR fine” would be. However, Kjellberg did it at a time when he could, when it was new and exciting and innovative. Cost control is about taking all the creative juice and analytic skill you pump into sales, and putting a bit of it into lowering your expenses.

Robbins, T. (2018). How to innovate in zeros. [podcast] The Tony Robbins Podcast. Available at: https://player.fm/series/the-tony-robbins-podcast/how-to-innovate-in-zeros-jonas-kjellberg-on-how-skype-eliminated-costs-and-took-the-company-to-a-26b-exit-in-just-two-years

We can’t all “innovate in zero’s” like Kjellberg, but with the right tools we can keep our costs within the budgeted amount.

If you’re struggling with cost control, click book a demo to find out how Procim can help boost your net income by lowering costs.

Budgeting Nightmare in the Live Events Industry

Anyone who has worked within the live events industry knows what a dynamic, but intense and demanding environment it can be. Periods of little activity are followed by spells of intense pressure when production managers, coordinators and all members of the event team are frantically striving to get things organised to meet the immovable deadline of the next live event date. The last thing that event team members want in this sort of environment is to have to worry about administrative tasks or providing costing information required for project accounting. On the other hand, it is extremely important that a project is well managed, budgets are set and a proper control of costs is achieved or the event can quickly get out of hand and thousands of pounds can be lost within a few days.

The dilemma faced by management is that in the live events industry, staff come from creative backgrounds and are often sceptical about software that attempts to structure their work or adds only an administrative burden but does not benefit them directly. There are many project costing applications on the market today but most of these simply focus on fulfilling the administrative tasks of recording committed costs through purchase orders or requisitions and timesheets.

Experience has taught us that project staff within live event management and production companies want much more than this. They want to be able to easily and quickly create budgets that can be submitted to their clients and where necessary create different versions of a budget or a single budget with optional items that can easily be included at a later date if accepted by the client. They do not want to use software that places restrictions on the presentation or layout of a budget to be presented to a client based on accounting driven cost centres or codes. When a project goes live, project staff want to be able to easily see how costs accrue against each of the originally budgeted items, to be able to raise Purchase Orders for budgeted items and be reminded if the cost exceeds the original budget.

Traditionally, project costing applications have been built as an add-on to an existing accounting application. The Procim software however is an independent software solution specifically designed to help manage margins as well as address the problems and requirements of “front office” personnel whether involved in event production, logistics, creative design, graphics and digital media or film and video, including aspects such as project budgeting and cost control as well as project based business process automation. Millions are lost every year in the creative industries to ineffective budgeting, not to mention the intense stress creatives and management suffer under the burden of outdated tools.

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How WRG Produced and Managed the Budget for the G20 Summit

The London G20 Summit took place at a time when the world faced the worst economic crisis since the Second World War. The aim was to bring together leaders of the world’s major economies and key international institutions to take the action necessary to stabilise the world economy, start recovery and preserve jobs. Leaders faced the complex challenge of averting an even more severe downturn whilst restoring growth in the short term, stabilising the financial system, preserving world trade, and laying the foundations for long term economic recovery.

Summit organisers at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) faced the complexity of creating and managing the event to host 25 world leaders and their delegations of over a 1,000 people, plus nearly 1,500 representatives of the world’s media, all to be housed in a secure environment with a requirement for near infinite space flexibility. More than 1,200 phone lines had to be installed with internet connection made available for nearly 6,000 devices that had to provide unlimited bandwidth. The event was to be broadcast worldwide and the content and discussions were to be made available to the public, both by the traditional media and online.

The sheer scale and profile of this global event, taking place under the gaze of the world’s media at a very difficult time, had its own challenges. Converting a 65,000m² space at London’s ExCel into a venue appropriate for 1,100 delegates from 28 countries, entailing five miles of trussing and 3,000 lighting units.

Registering and accrediting the world’s media and a production crew of 1,300 people, including security and police personnel, caterers and venue staff. With only a four day on-site build time and the additional requirement of a pre-summit reception at Buckingham Palace and dinner at No. 10.

The FCO issued a tender document specifying the detailed requirements for the Summit in search of an event management company with the experience and dedication to deliver.

Mike Kent, Project Director – Media Facilities, at WRG comments, “Given the tight timescale involved we decided to approach the tender process as if we had already been appointed to run the project. We identified guaranteed equipment partners to supply all of the required equipment, furniture, cabling, technology, security, AV, lighting and broadcast suites and accurately priced each individual element. This meant we were in good shape to hit the ground running when the contract was awarded by the FCO.”

From the start of the pitch process, WRG had full responsibility for producing and managing the budget for the entire project and did this using Procim. Procim is specifically designed to handle the management and control of complex projects, including budgets, cost tracking, document generation, workflow and process automation.

Kent continued, “With minimal input from WRG, the software was able to produce what the end client (FCO) needed: an accurate and full budget produced directly from Procim. At the same time WRG was easily able to identify its own elements of revenue and cost, and ensure that the whole project was delivered on-time and within budget.”

Procim has a rather unique approach to managing the actual spend against budget. As purchase orders are raised against the original budgeted lines, the software performs a number of checks before allowing the purchase order to be issued. WRG configured Procim’s workflow module to handle any deviations from budgeted spend and such transactions were electronically routed to authorised persons for approval. Managing the actual spend from the 130 suppliers and subcontract companies involved in the G20 in this way ensured that costs stayed within budget and that appropriate levels of purchase authorisation were held for all purchases.

In practice of course there were multiple revisions to the requirements and budget both up to and beyond the point of acceptance by the foreign office. It was important that the handling of all subsequent changes included a formal change request process and that the revised budget could easily be presented to the FCO. Change requests were priced up at the earliest opportunity and the costing duly amended. Procim delivers an integrated Project Change Notice (PCN) mechanism which identifies any changes in the project since budget sign-off, and includes them on a change notice document. These PCNs were regularly issued to the FCO for approval before undertaking the changes.

The software also provides an effective project reconciliation process that was utilised by WRG once the event was complete. Variances of actual spend from the agreed budget were highlighted by the system and where appropriate, these differences were then included in a final Project Change Notice to the FCO.

Kent said, “Because budget change issues were progressively managed by the software, 95% of all changes had already been communicated to the FCO prior to the event taking place, leaving only 5% to be dealt with during the final reconciliation process. This meant budget reconciliation took very little effort and time after the end of the project.”

The G20 was a large scale project of the highest profile. Importantly it was also regarded by many attendees as a huge success, described by the Prime Minister as ‘a superbly run summit that not only met but exceeded expectation’ and ‘an extremely well organised and effectively run event’ according to President Barrack Obama.