5.4 What Characteristics are Important for Time Management Data?
5.4.3 Investing in Time Management Systems and Mobile Apps
All interviewees state that their time management system has support for different roles, such as user and administrator. The most common is that a consultant is a user who just reports time, while a manager is an administrator who can create new projects, approve time reports, and export data for analyses. There is no consensus on whether an IT consultant firm should develop its own time management system or use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software. One manager is of the opinion that a consulting firm should not build its own systems, while another believes that it is a good technical exercise for a new employee to develop a time management system. As a bonus this makes it possible to tailor it for the
CHAPTER 5. EMPIRICAL RESULTS
company, a ‘homemade’ system usually develops over time. Three companies have elected to buy a business system, where two of them have a complementing app.
At one company they have recently developed their own time management mobile phone app. With the launch of the app, an improvement in the punctuality of the employees’ time report submissions has been noticed. One sales employee believes the consultants will have greater benefit from it, since they often are located at the customers’ office where it can be a bit tricky to access the company’s time management system. C4 (2013), who works at a company that does not have an app, states “I believe I would benefit
from an app, they are always fun!” and continues “it is a perfect task to do on the train, to summarize the day.” A consultant at another ‘app-less’ company believes that an app would give greater usability
to the system, since it would lower the threshold to the time management system. One consultant has split opinions about the app; it is good to be able to report the time when you are out on a contract, but there is also a risk that the time reporting will become something that intrudes on leisure time when it is accessible from everywhere.
In table 5.2 a summary of the time management systems the participating companies are using is pre- sented. The table shows that there is a connection between more frequent deadlines and the level of data usage. The companies with high usage are also the ones with an app.
Company System Characteristics Submission
Deadline MobileApplication DataUsage
Company 1 Business system with ‘homemade’
web-based frontend. Yes, weekly Yes, for allemployees High Company 2 Business system where time reporting
is only a small part. Yes, monthly No Low
Company 3 Web-based time management system. No No Low
Company 4 ‘Homemade’ time management system,
customized to fit the company’s needs. Yes, monthly No Medium Company 5 Web-based business system with focus
on time reporting. Yes, weekly Yes, but onlyfor iPhone users High Table 5.2: Summary over time management systems used by the participating companies.
Part IV
Chapter 6
Analysis and Discussion
This part will present the analyzed results from the literature review and the empirical findings. The chapter is split into four different sections based on the research questions, in order to present answers to all of them. The first section will begin by explaining why IT consulting firms work with time management. After that, a discussion about what time management data can be used for follows. The third section presents the analysis of how employees can be motivated to work with time management. Finally, time management data’s characteristics are discussed.
6.1 Why do IT Consulting Firms Work with Time Manage-
ment?
During the empirical study the authors got the feeling that many interviewees and observation participants did not know the real reason for why they work with time management. Our study later showed as expected that IT consulting firms work with time management in order to be able to bill customers and pay their employees the right amount. As Yakura (2001) and the interviews showed, it is hard to measure the competence that the consultant delivers to the customer, one consultant’s work is seldom equivalent to another consultant’s work and consultants solve this problem by quantifying delivered value into hours.
Our analysis showed as expected that time management is important to IT consulting firms. As stated above, without time reporting the invoices sent to the customers would be arbitrary or incorrect. Arbi- trary or incorrect invoices will make the customer insecure, making it hard to build long-term relationships built on trust. This will in turn minimize the chance of repeat business, which many sources of informa- tion, also during the interviews, have stated as the most profitable for a consultancy firm (Basil et al., 1997; Kirkham, 2006).
As stated earlier, salary payments are also based on information from the time management system. Since consultants, according to the interviews, observation, and Plantenga and Remery (2002), often work at the customer office, time management data can be a way for the management to control and care for the employees. This implies that time management is not only an accounting tool, but also one for keeping track of the employees’ well-being. This increases the importance of time management in IT consulting firms. Time management does not have to imply advanced time management systems, in smaller IT consultancy firms it is possible to use spreadsheets or just oral communication.
There are of course some disadvantages with time management. People just do not like to be monitored and controlled (Wilkens et al., 2011). Time management could make it possible for management to
CHAPTER 6. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
scrutinize details of an employee’s time reports, maybe even interfering with that employee’s integrity, but according to our interviews this is not a big issue. It is still a factor that needs to be considered when working with time management, but our study shows that none of the interviewees think of this as a problem.
To ensure profitability when turning time into money, time management can be used for controlling that customers are not over ‘treated’ to time, which Yakura (2001) and one interviewee stated as a risk. Our analysis shows that if time management data is going to be useful, it is important that all employees report their time, it is otherwise impossible to control the ratio between billable and non billable hours. We have now explained why it is important for IT consultants to work with time management, but what can the time management data tell us? In the next section we are going to explain how performance can be measured with time management data and why those metrics are good.