Cost Estimating
Estimating cost is both an art and a science. Making it too much of an art means engineers "guessing" what it will take. Making it to much of a science means ignoring the vast experience of your team. Our solution helps you both get the most from your team and your data, to create one integrated cost model for estimating all types of cost in your projects - such as engineering, manufacturing, procurement, sub-contractors, services, financing, travel, overhead, fringe, G&A, and so on
Building your Cost Model
Engineering & Services Estimates
Create labor estimates using performance history, prior estimates, or parametric formulae based on sizing metrics
Integrate your engineering plan with our cost estimates using MS Project, Primavera or SAP, and re-use activity / cost center rates pulled directly from SAP, adjusted for inflation
Enter estimates with confidence scores and weighted risks, or use three-point estimating (best, most likely, worst-case) to calculate standard deviation or estimating spread
Manufacturing Estimates
When estimating a manufacturing build, the first step is to define the indentured part configuration, creating a "proposal BOM". This bill of material is often unique, based on re-usable elements from previous work, including similar-to items with complexity factors
Create proposal BOMs from a configuration imported from SAP or PLM, and adjust make/buy, producing site and other pricing parameters by part or program phase
Then run a "simulative-MRP" algorithm which converts proposal line item (CLIN, phase or option) demands into lower level part requirements, groups demands based on lot-sizing rules, and creates aggregated production proposals. Convert these proposals into resource utilization estimates using routing standards, learning curve logarithmic calculations and production history
Procurement & Subcontract Estimates
To accurately estimate purchase or sub-contract material costs you must combine the closest matching historical buy, based on recency and quantity price-breaks, with the option to incorporate vendor quotations from major subs and for high value parts
Twenty5's purchased part estimating module scans your entire purchasing history (POs, LTAs, PIRs, RFQs) to find the best matching source, and automatically initiates vendor RFQs based on a combination of part value and estimating confidence
Travel Estimates
Travel costs can also be estimated by expense category (flights, cars, hotels, per diem) or by trip, covering both international and domestic travel. Or use parametric estimating formula to calculate travel as a fixed % of certain (e.g. on-site) labor
Integration to US Gov't GSA website is already in development, for automated per diem rates by city
Add Indirect Costs
Automatically calculate indirect costs such as Overhead, Fringe and G&A using overhead rules and rates based on cost element groups, just like SAP's costing sheets. Re-use overhead rates read directly from SAP, or maintain your own inflation adjusted, or proposal-specific, rates and overhead pools
Other Costs
Add other costs such as currency hedging, sales commissions, introduction fees, and so on, to your proposal WBS. Factor these into your margin or associate other costs with specific risks, distributed over your proposal timeline
Speaking of currency hedges and vendor management costs, we provide reports of total cost by source currency, country and vendor SBA classification to help you decide what hedges to buy
Factors, CER's and Autocalcs
There is no limit to the scope and number of indirect cost "factors" or cost estimating relationships (CERs) you can apply. For example, in-bound/out-bound freight, shipping & handling and hazardous materials handling - all can be automatically calculated using base parameters and formulae
Base parameters contain business rules for what costs to include, for example "all labor in India", "cost elements A, B & C in 2020" or even all estimates with custom tags filled out in a specific way. Factors & rates can be a fixed %, varying by fiscal year, or formula based
Designed on SAP HANA for organizations running SAP
Our solution takes full advantage of SAP's powerful HANA database and is natively integrated with SAP to re-use master data already in SAP, such as resource pools, BOM's, items, routings and vendors, while leveraging and referencing your rich transaction history sitting in SAP such as quotes, contracts, purchase orders and production history
That said, we know that even long-time SAP customers have non-SAP data sources that are critical for the bid & proposal process; such as DOORS, Ariba, Primavera and MS Project. Don't worry, we've got you covered
Our solution is architected to allow for deployment directly in your S/4 HANA instance, in an on-premise HANA sidecar to your SAP ECC, or for deployment in the cloud
