Cost management
Budgets, budget changes and transfers, funding, commitments, and actual costs roll up to a cost sheet organized by cost codes. Costs can be tracked at company, program, and project level, and funding sheets track funding sources.
Oracle Primavera Unifier implementation.
Cost control, contracts, business processes, and project documents in one configurable platform. MethoSys assesses, configures, integrates, and supports it.
A change order, as a Unifier business process
Illustrative. Your own process is designed with you.
- Request raisedA change is logged against the contract with its scope and cost.
- ReviewedThe right people see it, with the supporting documents.
- ApprovedApproval follows your own authority levels.
- Cost sheet updatedThe approved amount reaches the project cost sheet.
- ReportedBudget, commitment, and variance views reflect it.
What Unifier is for.
Oracle describes Unifier as a platform for automating business processes, with extensive configurability and prebuilt processes, available on-premises or in the cloud. For a project-based organization, that means the money, the paperwork, and the decisions around a project: budgets, contracts, changes, payments, documents, and the approvals that connect them.
Primavera P6 manages the schedule. Unifier manages what surrounds it, and the two are often used together, with schedule data feeding Unifier's cash flow and cost views.
Organizations typically use it to
- Keep budgets, commitments, and actual costs in one controlled cost sheet.
- Put contracts, changes, and payments through consistent approval workflows.
- Replace spreadsheets and email approvals with processes that keep a record.
- Give owners, contractors, and project teams one place for requests, submittals, and logs.
What it covers.
Contracts, purchase orders, and commitments
Contracts, change orders, payment applications, purchase orders, amendments, and invoices run as business processes with approval workflows, so commitments and payments reach the cost sheet through your approval steps.
Business processes and workflow
Request, review, and approval processes for changes, RFIs, submittals, daily progress reports, and meetings, with statuses, assignments, and alerts. Oracle ships prebuilt processes as a starting point.
Documents
Document management with permission controls, check-in and check-out, version control, and search, so project records sit next to the processes that produce them.
Portfolio, schedule data, and cash flow
Project requests can be collected and compared as portfolio scenarios. Cash flow and earned-value measures can draw on schedule data from Primavera P6 or Primavera Cloud.
Dashboards and mobile
Configurable dashboards and reports at project and portfolio level. Mobile apps for iOS and Android let field users act on tasks, including while offline, and sync when connectivity returns.
Oracle also offers Facilities and Asset Management as a Unifier base product, covering real estate portfolios, capital projects, facilities, maintenance, sustainability, and utilities. The scope of this page is project controls and process automation. If asset management is in scope, say so when you contact us.
What MethoSys delivers.
Assess and plan
You need to know which processes belong in Unifier, in what order, and what has to connect to it.
- What MethoSys provides
- Readiness and gap assessment
- Review and prioritization of budget, commitment, change, payment, and document processes
- Cost code and data structure planning
- Cloud or on-premises deployment options
- Integration planning and a phased roadmap
- Methods and technologies
- Business process review and solution architecture design, with Primavera P6, Primavera Cloud, and your financial systems in the picture.
- What you should be able to do afterwards
- Agree a prioritized scope that sponsors, finance, and project teams can commit to.
- Next step
- Request a PMIS Assessment
Configure business processes and workflow
Standard processes rarely match your approvals, roles, and records exactly.
- What MethoSys provides
- Process modeling and optimization
- Custom forms, workflows, statuses, and logs
- Shells, managers, and role-based access
- Data definitions and master data alignment
- Promotion of changes through development, test, and production environments
- Methods and technologies
- Oracle's uDesigner is used to create and publish customized shells, managers, workflows, and business processes. Custom modules and scripting are used where configuration is not enough.
- What you should be able to do afterwards
- Run requests, reviews, and approvals through processes that follow your own rules and keep a record.
- Next step
- Discuss a Unifier project
Cost management and commercial controls
Budgets, commitments, and payments live in different places and are reconciled by hand.
- What MethoSys provides
- Cost sheet and cost code design
- Budget, budget change, transfer, and funding processes
- Contract, change order, purchase order, and payment application processes
- Cash flow and variance views
- Links to schedule data for earned-value measures
- Methods and technologies
- Unifier cost sheets, funding sheets, and cost-type business processes, with schedule data from Primavera P6 or Primavera Cloud where it applies.
- What you should be able to do afterwards
- See budget, commitment, actual, and forecast on one controlled cost sheet, with the approvals behind each number.
- Next step
- Discuss cost controls
Integration and reporting
Financial, scheduling, and document systems each hold part of the picture.
- What MethoSys provides
- Integration design with ERP and financial systems
- Schedule data exchange with Primavera P6 or Primavera Cloud
- API integration and automated data loads
- Dashboards and reports in Unifier
- Power BI reports built on Unifier data
- Methods and technologies
- APIs, scheduled data exchange, Unifier reporting, and Power BI.
- What you should be able to do afterwards
- Enter project data once, use it where it is needed, and report on shared definitions.
- Next step
- Discuss an integration
Test, migrate, train, and go live
Go-live is close and the configuration and legacy data have not been proven together.
- What MethoSys provides
- Test planning and execution: UET, FIT/SIT, and UAT
- Legacy data mapping, cleansing, and reconciliation
- Import utilities and migration scripts
- Go-live and cutover planning
- Role-based training, job aids, and post-go-live hypercare
- Methods and technologies
- Staged testing, scripted and repeatable data loads, and train-the-trainer programs.
- What you should be able to do afterwards
- Make the go-live decision on test evidence, with trained users and clean legacy data.
- Next step
- Discuss a go-live
Support and continuous improvement
After go-live, new processes, new projects, and new releases keep arriving.
- What MethoSys provides
- System monitoring and health checks
- Helpdesk support, patches, and upgrades
- Review of each release's impact before it reaches production
- Enhancements, change requests, and release management
- Periodic review of processes, adoption, and reporting
- Methods and technologies
- Oracle publishes release notes and impact guides for each Unifier release, and we use them to plan upgrades and enhancements.
- What you should be able to do afterwards
- Keep the platform stable, current, and aligned with how the organization works.
- Next step
- Discuss ongoing support
Typical use cases.
These describe what the platform supports. Your actual scope is set during assessment.
- Capital programs. Control budgets, commitments, and cash flow across many projects on one cost sheet.
- Contract and change control. Run contracts, change orders, and payment applications through consistent approvals.
- Owner and contractor collaboration. Manage RFIs, submittals, and change logs between internal and external users.
- Portfolio intake. Collect project requests and compare them as scenarios before approval.
- Field data capture. Log issues and progress from site, including where connectivity is poor.
- Replacing spreadsheets. Move email and spreadsheet approvals into processes that keep an audit record.
Questions about Unifier.
How is Unifier different from Primavera P6?
P6 is built for scheduling and resource planning. Unifier manages cost, commitments, business processes, and documents. They are often used together, with schedule data feeding Unifier's cash flow and cost views.
Does Unifier need custom programming?
Most of it is configuration. uDesigner creates shells, managers, forms, workflows, and business processes, and Oracle supplies prebuilt processes to start from. Custom development is used where configuration is not enough.
Can it connect to our ERP or financial system?
Unifier can exchange data with financial systems. The design depends on your system, who owns each kind of data, and how often it has to move, and we define that during assessment.
Cloud or on-premises?
Oracle offers Unifier on-premises and in the cloud. The choice is part of our advisory work, and we set it out with the trade-offs visible.
What does an engagement involve?
Assessment, process and cost design, configuration, integration, testing and data migration, training, go-live, and support. Scope and duration depend on how many processes, integrations, and users are involved, so we estimate them after assessment.
Can you support a Unifier system we already run?
Yes. Health checks, enhancements, upgrades, and support are part of our ongoing-support service, and an assessment can review how the existing configuration is being used.
Works alongside.
Oracle, Primavera, Unifier, uDesigner, and Aconex are trademarks of Oracle Corporation and its affiliates. They are named here to describe products MethoSys works with, and do not imply sponsorship or endorsement. Capability descriptions summarize Oracle's published product documentation; the scope and release you have licensed determine what is available to you.
Start with the project in front of you.
Tell us what you are running, replacing, or planning. We reply with what we would look at first.
Consulting and implementation
Platform selection, implementation, integration, reporting, and support.
Schedule Intelligence
A roadmap concept for schedule quality and what-if analysis. Availability has not been announced.