From Gut Feeling to Daily Visibility: How ENSOL 360 Transformed Engineering Project Tracking

The problem with monthly estimates

Before Microsoft Dynamics 365, hour reporting worked like this: at the end of each month, every team member would estimate how many hours they had spent on each project. By phone, by email, or in their own spreadsheet each person had their own system, and none of them connected.

The result was data that was already weeks old by the time it arrived, structured differently by every person who submitted it, and based on memory rather than reality.

For a Head of Engineering trying to build accurate planning coefficients the factors that determine how long future projects will take and how many resources they will require this was a fundamental problem.

"Before, it was a bit more of a gut feeling. Now we can actually track hours on a daily basis and see them automatically recorded in the system." 

Nataša Kocjančič, Head of Design and Engineering, ENSOL 360

What daily tracking actually changes

With Microsoft Project Operations in place, every team member logs hours daily against specific tasks and work categories. The data is in the system the same day it is created not reconstructed weeks later.

For Nataša, this changes two things fundamentally.

First, she can see in real time how much time remains on each task and whether the project is tracking to plan not at month end, but on any given day. If something is running over, there is time to act.

Second, the historical data is now reliable enough to use. ENSOL 360 can update their planning coefficients based on actual project performance making future estimates more accurate with every project completed. The gut feeling has been replaced by data.

The handoff that used to happen manually

Engineering doesn't work in isolation. When the design phase of a project is complete, the bill of materials needs to move into procurement every component, every specification, every quantity.

Before, this meant manual data entry. Someone had to take the output from the BIM tool Archicad and transfer it into the procurement workflow by hand. Every manual step was a potential error, and every error had downstream consequences for ordering, delivery timelines, and project budgets.

Now, when engineering completes the design phase, the bill of materials is automatically exported from Archicad and loaded directly into Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. The handoff that used to require manual intervention happens without it.

Seeing the forest, not just the trees

One of the structural challenges of running a design and engineering function across multiple simultaneous projects is perspective. When you are deep inside a single project, it is easy to lose sight of the portfolio as a whole how hours are distributed across projects, which phases are consuming more time than planned, where the team's capacity is actually going.

Dynamics 365 data feeds directly into ENSOL 360's Power BI environment, giving leadership a consolidated view across all active projects simultaneously. Time distribution by project, by phase, by team member visible in one place, updated automatically.

As Nataša puts it:

"Instead of seeing individual trees, we can now see the whole forest."

A platform that grows with the business

One of the things Nataša highlights about the implementation is its flexibility. As the team has worked with the platform over time, new requirements have emerged — requirements that only become clear through actual use. Custom forms and workflows have been added to meet the specific needs of the engineering team, without rebuilding the foundation.

"This is a super platform that we can build on for our own needs. Of course, those needs only become clear after months or even years of use. But the foundation is there, and we keep discovering new ways it can support us." 

Nataša Kocjančič, Head of Design and Engineering, ENSOL 360

What comes next

A live integration between CRM and Project Operations is currently in development allowing project timelines entered at the point of sale to flow automatically into Project Operations, eliminating duplication at the handover from sales to delivery.

The team is also exploring greater use of resource management capabilities within Project Operations, including leave planning and capacity oversight further strengthening workforce planning as the business scales.