Iridium Communications: Time Tracking & Dynamics GP

Iridium Communications Finds the Right Solution for Dynamics GP Project Accounting

Iridium Communications Inc. is the only satellite communications company that offers truly global voice and data communications coverage, advancing the way global enterprises conduct daily mission-critical activities through reliable, low-latency communications services.

They have 425 employees worldwide, including contractors working in the field. Many of these contractors are tracking time against projects and for billing.

The finance team at Iridium was using Microsoft Dynamics® Great Plains (Dynamics GP), and utilizing Project Timesheets with Business Portal. When they upgraded to GP 2013, though, issues began arising.

According to Sandra Dodge, Sr. Financial Reporting and Systems Manager at Iridium: “During the upgrade testing, we discovered the Business Portal was not compatible with our current operating system software or current versions of GP.

“We chose to continue with the upgrade and keep the old server running for capturing the timesheets. For a full year, we migrated that data from the old GP environment to the new environment while we searched for solutions.”

Solution

That’s where Journyx came in. As she was searching for a project timesheet solution, Dodge became aware of Journyx via the Dynamics GP User Group (GPUG) community, where she was inquiring about a timesheet solution to replace Business Portal and work with GP Project Accounting.

In addition, Iridium needed multi-level approval workflows based on department, projects and employee’s position, data validation to reduce corrections, overtime and accrual calculations, and a mobile solution for traveling employees.

“Journyx has a tight integration to GP Project Accounting and the price was right,” said Dodge. “With the Journyx team’s guidance, we set up a solution that requires very little maintenance, allows employees to enter time daily from anywhere, and has better approval and notifications than previously existed at Iridium.”

Many of Iridium’s contractors have a need to track time to projects, and Journyx provides the perfect solution for their project accounting needs. By tracking time in one system that syncs project time back to Dynamics GP, they now have faster visibility to the hours worked and a consistent interface for time and approvals.

Results

All employees at Iridium are required to submit a timesheet for projects, payroll, and billing. The notifications capability within Journyx allows for automatic reminders for submitting timesheets, which results in better response time at Iridium.

“By noon on the second day after the close of the time period, we have 90-95% of the timesheets submitted and approved,” said Dodge. “This is a great improvement from before and allows all of the close processes to move faster in the accounting team.”

In addition, the process of calculating effective labor rate on all exempt timesheets used to be completely manually, taking up to 4 hours to complete. The Journyx Professional Services team came up with a solution that eliminated the time spent on this process completely!

“The Accountlink tool [for Dynamics GP] and support team at Journyx assisted us with adding these calculations to the integration for an accurate unit cost,” said Dodge. “The Journyx support and implementation teams do an outstanding job.”