The Requirements:
IHFC required an all-in-one platform to manage and allocate all the Grand projects and their sub-project, maintain the financial budget for each project (that includes GST and TDS), and store all the data and resources in one place for future convenience.
The Solutions:
After ideating and discussing all the requirements with the IHFC team, we developed an all-in-one platform called Grand Project Management app to help IHFC manage all their projects from one place.
We used Zoho Creator to create sections like the Registration form, financial accounting and budget, master reports, meetings, and emails.
There are some Grand Projects and under these are sub-projects. For each Grand Project, they have more than one sub-project. Grand Projects have GPCs (Grand Project Collaborator), and sub-projects have PI (Principal Investigator) and Co-PIs.
Registration Form: It is a form where the admin can create a project inside Zoho Creator. They can fill in the details like type, name, timeline, and project description. Moreover, they can add financial budget, approved DPR files, PI and Co-PIs, and Industry collaborator details accordingly.
The registration reports show the number of ongoing projects and GPCs and PIs allocated to a specific project.
Dashboard: the Intelligent dashboard summarizes all the data according to the type of project and user. For example, if Co-PI wants to glance at the progress and details of the project, the dashboard will show them all the data according to their designation.
Master Reports: The Master reports contain the all the data related to all the projects, like all organizations and Institutes, Grand project details, PI, Co-PI, startup reports, and the list of all the admin. Whenever some changes are made in the project details, it automatically gets updated in the Master reports.
Financial Accounting and Budget: This is a significant part of the app where the financial budget and record for every project is prepared. In this section, the admin can update and see the approved, released, and utilized budget for a particular project.
This section also has three parts. The first is for academia/research Institutes, the second is for the startup and industry, and the third is the combination of both.
The Budget for academia/research Institutes includes GST, whereas the budget for startups and industry don’t have GST. The data in the third section, which is the combination of both sections, is automatically updated as per the changes in the above two.
Mails and Meetings: We also created a section to make it convenient for the admin to schedule Microsoft meetings and send emails from one place. They did not have to use another application to send mail and schedule a meeting.
We also automated the process of sending notifications and the status of the projects. The process admin would now get a status email every three weeks, and then the PI would get alerts about the deadline, due dates, meetings, and progress status.
Tech stack – HTML, CSS, Deluge
Third-Party Integration – Microsoft Meetings
Zoho Platform- Zoho Creator
The End Results:
Instead of numerous platforms for managing their projects, they were now using a single application to properly track all the Grand and sub-projects.
Everything was possible with a few clicks, from creating a project and allocating a budget to giving feedback and sending emails. It saved a lot of time and improved the efficiency of the people working on the project.
When it comes to financial accounting, often there is a chance of calculation errors that humans can make. But, with this app, they didn’t have to worry about the correct calculation because everything was automated and managed by the software. So, there was no chance of errors.