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You’ve probably been there. You’re in the middle of a turnaround event, trying to keep track of found work, budget spend, forecasts, schedules, parts and materials…and contractors.
Your office is suddenly full of technicians looking for a flat surface to write down work order numbers and hours. Once they’ve scribbled down the information, the slips come back to you.
Then the real challenge begins. Even assuming that the raw information you’re getting from technicians is accurate, you’ve then got to manually get the numbers into the system, while also trying to interpret handwriting and enter the information quickly and accurately.
Then there are availability sheets, overtime equalization, and approval processes. All so that you can get back to other productive work.
On top of the headache this labor-intensive work provides for you, it also creates a lot of opportunities for miscommunication with your contractors around goals, expected targets, scopes of work, and performance. Worst-case scenario, this can lead to soured relationships, bad blood, terminated contracts, and unsafe working conditions for your employees and your contracted workers.
For enterprise-contractor relationships to run smoothly, you need a clear, shared basis of trust, knowledge, and expectations. Continue reading to learn how WorkTech CCTS (Contractor Cost Tracking System) can help you create two-way visibility, accountability, and trust.
1. Consolidate Data to Make Better Decisions
To be able to set expectations and best practices with contractors in the first place, you must be able to capture and integrate data effectively. WorkTech provides the following benefits:
- Simplified, electronic invoices
- Critical data collection
- On-time contractor payments
- Accurate and quick approvals
- Improved data analysis
- Clear spend information
- Robust user acceptance
- Full CMMS integration
With this data consolidated in an easy-to-access and easy-to-understand interface, WorkTech provides the information necessary to improve contract negotiations. By storing and updating your labor, materials, equipment, and markups all in one system, you’re able to cross-reference contractor rates and spend to ensure that you’re contracting with the best people.
At the same time, you’re also able to provide transparency regarding your business rules and requirements from the outset, meaning that your contractors have all the information they need.
With WorkTech, you’re able to set a baseline so that both parties can agree on clearly defined terms and conditions, project specifications, expectations, timelines, remuneration, and payment methods. Moreover, these terms and conditions aren’t just pulled from thin air—they’re based on agreed-upon contract terms.
2. Have Real Ways to Measure Success
WorkTech also makes it easy to apply business rules at the beginning of your contractor management process, which can simplify approvals and validations. In practice, this also means that both you and your contractor can better measure the success of your relationship.
There are a whole host of ways you might choose to measure success in your contractor relationship: financial-based metrics and incentive-based contracting systems are two major options. Overall, you’ll want to make sure that any contracting relationship you have related to maintenance is justifying your investment and resource allocation, while also managing knowledge, remaining adaptable, and ensuring safety standards.
When you’ve set the rules for your contractor relationship in advance based on the best available data, you then have a firm foundation for making sure expectations are met on all sides. WorkTech CCTS helps you and your contractor evaluate success in real-time through:
- Clear communication
- Change order approval
- Transparent payment terms
- Data entry accuracy
- Labor data capture
- Material and rental equipment inputs
Because Prometheus WorkTech is a single, integrated system, it ensures that all relevant data is imported and validated for timely, accurate responses. It draws together your HR system, payroll system, gate management system, CMMS, and more to ensure that the performance data you’re reviewing is fair, accurate, and real-time.
That transparency, which extends to the contractor, means that all parties have visibility into the work being performed, and how it aligns with established goals and expectations, continuing to build trust. When everyone knows what the performance expectations are, how to get there, and where they stand now, there is a clear pathway to success for both your contractor and your organization.
3. Build Your Contractor’s Trust in You While Ensuring Safety and Worker Productivity
Contractor relationships are a two-way street, and everyone benefits from more visibility and accountability. How do you do that? The key is implementing a more effective and transparent communication vehicle between your enterprise and your contractors.
WorkTech’s powerful tools capture labor data in real time for your staff and your contractors, so that you can:
- Use one system for time and attendance data
- Ensure compliance with governing regulations and unions
- Improve productivity through mobile data entry and geolocation
- Predict fatigue risk, manage worker availability, and assess leave requests
- Optimize overtime assignments with business rules and permissions
- Make approvals or adjustments, verify invoices, and expedite contractor payments
Above all, Prometheus WorkTech contractor management solutions help you strengthen your organization’s relationships with your contractors, by providing solutions that increase productivity and prioritize worker health, compliance, and plant safety.
Using Prometheus WorkTech to mitigate worker fatigue, for example, reduces the risk of accident or injury, increases labor productivity and employee satisfaction, improves scheduling capabilities, and guarantees you’re meeting governmental and industry standards.
These proactive measures place technician and contractor health, safety, and well-being at the forefront, while also increasing productivity and ensuring compliance with standards. All parties win.
How WorkTech Helps You Manage Contractors
Prometheus Group’s WorkTech suite of solutions allows you to reduce the errors from data entry, keep track of availability, assign overtime in a fair and even-handed manner, and more.
Prometheus WorkTech helps to eliminate redundancy and reduce human error by auto-applying complex wage rules, calculating workers’ fatigue scores, and levelling overtime. It also integrates seamlessly with your other asset management solutions and readily exchanges data with your existing ERP or CMMS, including SAP, Maximo, Oracle, and others.
Ultimately, by creating fair, transparent, and accountable systems for capturing labor data, assigning overtime, and tracking costs and requirements, WorkTech provides a clear framework for contractor relationships. That provides you with a better foundation to build real, collaborative partnerships.
Improve Your Contractor Relationships with WorkTech
We know that the contractor relationship is built over time—there’s no overnight solution for building trust and reciprocity between your organization and a third-party contractor.
However, contractor management solutions like WorkTech provide transparency and structure to your working relationships with third-party contractors. This clarity empowers all parties to make better decisions and act in good faith—from negotiations to contract closeout.
Ready to learn more about how WorkTech helps create trust and stronger relationships between your maintenance employees, contractors, and your operations, finance, and executive teams?
Contact us today or check out our whitepaper on how contracting management solutions save you money.
