Our last major update before we move to a new AI-power tool named after a type of Eagle (version Aquila) coming out later in 2025, includes the following enhancements:

 

Navigation Improvements 

Continuing the journey which we started in versions 2.2 and 2.3, we have provided a number of additional options to aid users in navigating between proposals and estimates, as well as further developing the single app proposal/estimate concept for simpler or smaller projects. Users can now navigate or open an estimate directly from the proposal search screen (“Estimates” column), from the phases tab, and from the contract lines tab, in addition to our existing options to navigate to the estimate from the WBS tab and from the more toolbar button ‘Open’ menu. Open menu navigation is now full-circle, meaning that users can navigate from proposal to estimate to cost/price analysis tool, in all directions, from the same menu. 

 

Other Cosmetic Improvements 

Other cosmetic improvements include: 

• An improved empty table message 

• Extending the ability to lock specific table columns from scrolling 

• Additional sub-totals, for example in the phases/sets tab 

• Improved rich text editor 

• Real-time or ‘push’ notifications for costs requiring update or roll-up and for reports such as the cost/price analysis pivot when costs are not yet up to date. 

 

More cosmetic and styling improvements including the option for client-specific color themes to compliment our existing option to display the client’s logo in our application, are coming. 

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM Extension 

Most proposals especially in service-based industries start with an opportunity in our client’s CRM, the vast majority of whom use Salesforce or MS-Dynamics. So it is natural for Twenty5 to build an extension to these CRM applications with full end to end integration to iPE, allowing clients to seamlessly (automatically based on stage, or on user demand) convert CRM opportunities into proposals in iPE, create and price product-based quotation lines in their CRM tool, based on resource plans and costs directly imported from iPE, and sync up data between CRM and iPE such as products sold, customers, proposals, opportunities and proposal or project cost and revenue breakdowns. We are currently in the process of certifying this extension app with Microsoft. .

 

Clients have the option to install our CRM extension directly within their MS-Dynamics environment, providing additional tabs and screens for proposal cost and pricing data, replacing the need for a bolt-on or custom developed ‘CPQ’ (configure, price & quotation) CRM extension. Alternatively, clients can retain their existing CRM in-house developed extensions or purchased bolt-ons, and use Twenty5’s CRM integration to connect their existing tools to iPE. 

 

Salesforce CRM Extension 

In parallel to building an extension for MS-Dynamics, Twenty5 has built a similar extension to Salesforce, which is used by a large majority of our clients. Built directly in Salesforce’s Lightning platform, our extension offers future-proof, commercially supported off-the-shelf software to enrich the opportunity proposal development process and facilitate communication between sales and program delivery or client engagement managers preparing project-based proposals in iPE. Similar to our clients using MS-Dynamics, our Salesforce CRM clients have the option to adopt our extension in place of in-house developed or third party CPQ tools, or to integrate iPE with their existing Salesforce extensions. Either way and with either CRM application, Twenty5 commits to supporting and upgrading our CRM extension and integration technologies with every future release of MS-Dynamics or Salesforce, allowing our clients to upgrade or even switch with lower cost and risk. 

 

Proposal Versions in CRM and SAP 

Creating proposal versions provides a simple way to perform what-if analysis, compare scenarios and revert to a prior version if a change is subsequently rejected by the client or prospect. New proposal versions can create integration issues with SAP, if one version is sent to SAP, and then a new version is made active sent to SAP in update mode. It’s hard to do this across versions without deleting and re-creating all the resources in the SAP project, which might not be desirable for a number of reasons. Fortunately, new versions are typically created as back-ups, with the original remaining as the primary edited version, especially prior to winning the contract and sending the resources to SAP for staffing. For this reason, we have provided additional checks when integrating proposals or projects between CRM, iPE and SAP that prevents back-tracking to prior versions which are different to versions previously sent to SAP at or close to contract award. 

 

Opportunity Link to Proposal 

Opportunities can be set up as proposal-specific - meaning that the same opportunity cannot be assigned to more than one proposal - or as shared, based on the proposal type configuration. 

 

Customer Currency 

The customer currency, previously available from the Edit Rates popup of the proposal Set-up tab, has been replicated to the Set-up tab itself based on client request. Other clients can still hide this, or any other, fields via our screen control set concept. 

 

Customer and Supplier Codes 

Customers and suppliers in iPE have a code or number assigned, numbers which are normally imported from SAP (suppliers) and/or CRM (customers). While these codes are visible in iPE, we have extended the visibility of the customer and supplier codes in iPE to more places such as additional table columns in the material cost estimating tab, as well as display of customer number in the proposal Set-up tab. 

 

SAP Project and WBS Mapping Enhancements 

As well as our interface for iPE to generate the SAP project and WBS hierarchy automatically in SAP, we have enhanced our SAP project/WBS mapping for when a certain level of the WBS is created manually or directly in SAP, including: 

• Option to lock down or allow editing of the SAP project and WBS, by proposal type 

• Option to link the SAP project to the proposal header (one SAP project for the whole iPE proposal) or to the proposal WBS (multiple SAP projects from one iPE proposal) 

• Out of the box support for SAP project and WBS views in both SAP S/4 public and private cloud. 

 

Contract Line Quantities per Month 

Our contract line delivery schedules, whereby users can specify how many deliveries are made, and when, over any time periods, including support for delivery and pricing of subscription items or leases, has been further enhanced with a ‘quantity per month’ column in the contract line tab. We also now provide a pivot-style display and edit of quantities by month across all contract lines at once, with columns for each year and month.  

 

We have also extended our Excel upload of contract lines to allow direct upload of different quantities per month - with columns for each month over the duration of the project - as well as automated creation of WBS elements and even phases or sets from the contract line Excel upload sheet. 

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Pricing Formula Expressions 

Our pricing formula enhancement in version 2.3 - which allowed prices to be calculated based on outcomes such as ‘business benefits realized’ or ‘power by the hour’ (usage based) maintenance and support fees – has been further extended with the following features: 

• Ability to define an expression for any price element. A pricing element could be based on, for example, cost, T&M revenue or on the equivalent T&M revenue at standard company rates. Expressions use MVEL - a powerful rules-based scripting tool – to fully support complex pricing scenarios. T&M revenues at company standard bill rates is also explained further below under Labor Bill Rate Enhancements 

• Segregation of pricing formula quantity and percentage inputs from money ($) inputs. Instead of maintaining all these inputs in the same column, there are now separate columns for input of monetary amounts, percentages or rates and quantity inputs such as number of flights or usage hours for a maintained asset priced by usage 

• Pricing elements which automatically aggregate the risk reserve or sum of weighted risks and opportunities, as well as pricing elements which sum up the cost of money based on pre-defined interest rates 

• Cosmetic improvements to the layout of pricing elements such as highlighting or hiding specific rows and adjusting the order in which price elements are output to a PDF. 

 

Labor Planning Enhancements 

Enhancements to our labor planning - which as a reminder supports role-based planning by work-package, task or milestone, resource group, grade/seniority or skills and based on flat-line, curved or manually distributed hours, days or full-time equivalents by week or month – were made in version 2.4 to support daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly cost and billing rates. These rates are automatically converted to their equivalent hourly rate using each resource group’s work-schedule or working hours by day, week or month. 

 

We have also fixed the configuration of decimals used in resource labor planning, allowing our clients to specify how many decimals they want to plan units of hours, days or full-time equivalents in. 

 

Finally, we have improved the column locking and sub-total displays in our labor tab, and you have an option to hide obsolete resource groups from being displayed without deleting them. This way, they are still visible on existing projects but cannot be selected on new projects. 

 

Staffing Tool (such as ProFinda) Integration 

Twenty5 and ProFinda are the two main third-party vendors certified by SAP as part of their industry cloud for professional services industries. Up until the current version all integration between Twenty5 and ProFinda was via SAP S/4 project and resource management, with roles created in SAP S/4 from the proposal in Twenty5’s iPE tool, which were then downloaded and imported into ProFinda for skills matching, booking and staffing and then returned to SAP S/4. 

 

This integration has been significantly improved in this release with a direct integration between Twenty5 iPE and ProFinda (or other) staffing tools which provides additional support for weekly resource planning schedules in iPE and ProFinda. Weekly planning is something SAP S/4 does not do, due to current limitations. iPE / ProFinda integration also supports skills and certification requirements by role in iPE which are then picked up and used by ProFinda for skills matching against available resources. There is also a quick-availability check feature in iPE, which simulates the role in ProFinda to see how many people might be available, prior to confirming and sending the role to SAP S/4 and then onto ProFinda (with weekly hours and skills coming directly from iPE) for staffing. 

 

We have built a staff availability viewing panel in iPE, where estimators and engagement managers can see the provisional staffing situation from ProFinda - i.e. who is available and how good a match - directly within the iPE labor staffing screen. This allows estimators not only to check on resource availability which often impacts the cost of a role, but also to update the resource plan in iPE directly based on available resources from ProFinda. This might include delaying or shortening a role, or splitting a role from one full-time person into multiple part-time (and available) named resources. Tracking of named resources in iPE, updated from ProFinda based on who is booked to a role, is also available. 

 

Labor Billing Rate Enhancements 

Twenty5’s advanced price book (rate card) and bill rate determination built in version 2.2 - extended in version 2.3 to allow multiple price-books by service offering on each contract line within a single proposal - has been further extended to support: 

• Billing rates which can be determined based not just on the resource group (seniority, role, or job classification of the role or resource) but now also based on ‘customer role’. The customer role is like a contract-specific set of resource codes or groupings, to suit the needs of the end customer. While cost rates still depend on the resource group, grade and optionally the named resource and/or supplier, the billing rate can now depend on the customer role in addition to the price book, resource group, named resource and/or customer 

• Advanced search capabilities have been added for both the resource group - based on location/department, skill/seniority or grade, cost center etc. - and the customer role, based on any number of attributes or custom tags assigned to classify and search for customer roles and their associated billing rates. The ability to filter resource group selections by grade is also new in this release 

• Automatic determination of billing rate price book based on end item product line, customer/customer grouping, and organizational attributes, with the option to further edit the price book not just at the contract line but on each labor resource or role 

• The concept of a company standard bill rate, in order to automatically calculate the equivalent T&M revenue at company standard rates and thus the associated realization factor or the actual T&M revenue compared to the T&M revenue at company rates. Company standard bill rates use a separate price book and can be based on resource group even while client MSA bill rates might be by customer role. Company standard bill rates are automatically set and rolled-up the WBS hierarchy to contract lines in your proposal, so that pricing strategies can be configured based on (or simply to display) a combination of cost, T&M revenue rolled-up and now also equivalent T&M revenue at company standard bill rates, all rolled-up based on WBS assignments to contract lines. 

 

Product or Service (Master Data) Clean-up & Attributes by Department 

Up until version 2.3, product or service master data in iPE was managed at enterprise level with one set of data per part number used by each client across their enterprise. As larger and larger companies, with individual business areas or segments of more than $10B revenue each, adopt our tool, so the need to segregate some material master data by department, location or “plant” (as SAP calls it) became necessary. We have therefore implemented the option for our larger clients to manage separate product or service master and estimating data by department, location or plant-code, including importing plant-level data directly from SAP S/4. While taking advantage of the benefits this brings in terms of simplifying the SAP S/4 integration and allowing different estimating methodologies or costing hierarchies for the same part number between different business areas, we have taken pains to avoid inheriting the problems that this brings to SAP S/4 users, such as duplicate data maintenance and inconsistencies between plants. To avoid these downsides this is still only an option, plus our clients can manage material master data at company or segment level, and not just at location, department or plant level as supported by SAP S/4. Any fields not maintained at the lower level are automatically inherited from the product or service at enterprise-wide level. 

 

As well as supporting segment, company, location, department or plant level data, we have cleaned up the product and service master screens incorporating travel item specific attributes into the planning and estimating tab, splitting the cost and price book or catalogs (standard/moving average costs vs. catalog prices) into separate tabs, and adding new attributes such as default template, minimum/economic lot-size, cost distribution rule, escalation factor and quantity adjustment power curve selection (e.g. by commodity). For in-house produced, maintained or manufactured parts, we have added fields or tabs for routing or task-list selection rules, master bills of material definition and edit, and learning curve attributes such as the start/end lots for hours-per-unit reference documents like master routings or production order confirmation history, as well as the learning curve %’s to apply to future requirements based on production rates and proposal delivery schedules. 

 

Finally, we are excited to confirm configurable pricing whereby price catalogs can be defined for products with prices not only varying over time, currency, customer/price book, but now also based on any number of options and features. For example, if you sell cars of various colors, you can set up a tag for color and maintain a price for each color of car that you sell. 

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Resource Group (Master Data) Clean-up 

The resource group master data application has been cleaned up along with additional fields for number of employees or resources in that role, utilization/availability, forecasting group and ProPricer base resource code (BRC) assignments. The list of resources assigned to that specific resource group has been extended to show more resource and even HR data such as contact information. 

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Proposal (or Sales) Bill of Material Enhancements 

A significant number of proposal bill of material (BOM) enhancements have been implemented primarily for our aerospace & defense and complex manufacturing clients, including: 

• Improvements to the BOM selection and prioritization process including rules for scanning BOM usages/priorities across plants or locations, default and user configurable rules to include or exclude bulk items during the BOM import, and a greater variety of BOM sources including the option to maintain master BOMs directly within iPE 

• Making it easier and more reliable for users to assign and import a proposal BOM (from PLM or SAP for example) guiding them through the process of assigning an estimate and WBS element to the contract line which is the proposal BOM end item 

• Option to import multiple proposal BOM contract lines at once vs. individually 

• Inheriting key information from the contract line down the BOM structure such as the CLIN reference and phase/set 

• Support for model/unit effective bills of material whereby changes to the BOM are implemented not only based on dates (valid from…) but based on end item model/unit or serial number combinations. These are referred to as ‘parameter effective’ BOMs in SAP S/4. iPE can now import parameter effective BOMs from SAP, with users in iPE selecting the parameters – such as model and unit or serial – directly in the contract line 

• Fixes for model/unit effective and configurable BOMs around the re-use of existing proposal BOMs for the same material or part number 

• Enhancing our version 2.0 configurable BOMs where individual components can be selected (or not) or quantities calculated based on rules and what options or features are selected on the end item. You can now define a range of options or features - such as car model, engine size, color, seat material etc. - which can influence other options (defaulting, setting, hiding other options, for example), influence the price (based on configurable pricing tables) and influence the proposal BOM directly. Twenty5 is now a true project-CPQ tool with the ‘C’ standing for ‘configure’ (P=price/Q=quote) 

• Support for negative BOM quantities or contract line (end item) quantities 

• More options to add BOM components and material estimates to the change log, to re-cost when running ‘changes since’ material costing. 

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Independent Requirements 

Commercial project-based organizations generate material demand from quotation or contract lines with proposal BOMs. Organizations using iPE for capital projects don’t use contract lines, other than for the generation of asset settlement rules (explained further below). To support organizations which do not use contract lines to generate material requirements (like MRP), we have now provided an option to mark proposal BOMs as ‘independent requirements’ so that they are costed without an associated contract line. The schedule is inherited from the WBS assignment, while the quantity and WBS itself is maintained directly within the proposal BOM. 

 

Generation of Independent Requirements in SAP S/4 

Materials estimates, especially ones generated from contract lines and proposals BOMs, are not normally transferred from iPE to SAP S/4 when the contract is awarded, and project delivery starts. This is because the contract lines in iPE are converted to sales order lines in SAP S/4, with real manufacturing BOMs developed directly in SAP S/4 or from a PLM system feeding SAP. MRP is then used to generate material requirements for lower level BOM components as ‘dependent requirements’ in SAP. 

 

Long lead-time materials may however need to initiate procurement in SAP S/4 prior to the manufacturing BOM being developed and MRP being run. For this reason, we have developed an interface to generate ‘planned independent requirements’ in SAP S/4 for certain long lead-time material estimates. These planned independent requirements generate procurement proposals in SAP S/4 to trigger advanced procurement, but are then automatically netted off against dependent material requirements from SAP S/4 once the manufacturing BOMs are completed and picked up by MRP. 

 

Material Costing Enhancements 

A significant number of enhancements were completed in this release to our material costing procedure – which as a reminder consolidates the various end item delivery schedule requirements throughout proposal bills of materials to generate and cost in-house produced material fabrication and assembly estimates, as well as subcontract and purchased material estimates. The main enhancement is extending support for purchased part estimates from purchase order history and standard or moving average cost in the prior release, to now support supplier contracts, long term agreements, supplier quotations from vendor portals or sourcing applications, and manually created cost estimates such as Cost and Price Analysis documentation. The following additional enhancements were incorporated into our material costing for aerospace and defense companies as well as for larger complex manufacturers: 

• Additional control via the concept of a ‘costing profile’ (which is stored against the estimate and/or phase/set and/or proposal for re-use in future) for material cost estimates to control more parameters that impact material costing, such as what escalation factors to apply, what special charges to consider, whether to perform quantity curving, whether to consider actual costs, and how far back to scan for production order history. Several of these attributes cover existing features in material costing and some cover new features outlined in the points following…. 

• More powerful rules in terms of what source documents or cost sources are considered in each estimating source - such as what document category, or type, in SAP S/4, or mapping to a customized set of ‘cost source codes’, the document age in years, and/or whether the document is expired, for the same segment or business area as the current proposal, and so on. There is a balance between speed and complexity, but essentially iPE costing hierarchies can be constructed to scan through cost sources in any desired pattern or rule, with the highest confidence or best fit (for purchased items) or an average of all history up to a certain age or document count (for in-house produced and/or purchased items) being computed accordingly 

• Selection of the best-fit pricing condition for supplier quotations and contracts which have multiple prices spanning different contract or quotation terms (e.g. yearly prices), as well as multiple price-breaks based on different volumes or quantity ranges. When multiple end item requirements are consolidated into one material estimate, the prices for each requirement are calculated and escalated separately based on each specific end item delivery date minus the cumulative BOM lead-time offset 

• Support for pricing and escalation based on anticipated (and historical) delivery date vs. pricing and escalation based on anticipated (and historical) PO placement date 

• Option to limit costing to specific phases/sets, or to consolidate pricing quantity (quantity price breaks and set-up charges) with some or phases/sets in another proposal 

• Support for approved supplier lists and supplier or make/buy quota arrangements 

• Special charges or non-unitized or quantity-based fees for purchased items. Special charges are supplier fees such as for expediting, certification, first article inspection, packaging, tooling or engineering. Up to six categories of special charges can be detected from special purchase order lines and/or pricing conditions in SAP S/4, mapped and imported to iPE, and used as recurring or non-recurring, quantity-independent, charges in material cost estimating 

• Reading of actual costs from actual purchase and production orders in SAP S/4, for example on an ‘indefinite delivery indefinite quantity’ or IDIQ contract, for proposals or estimates being refined on programs which have already started to be delivered. Based on the project/WBS assignments - or ‘pegging’ record assignments in SAP’s GPD/PMMO module if that is used – iPE can determine which production and purchase order ‘actuals’ apply to the current proposal and pull in the actual costs for these completed production order and in-process or received purchase orders, without escalation, as the preferred cost source. Any material requirement quantities over and above what was discovered in SAP S/4 as ‘actuals’ continue to be ‘estimated’ based on our estimating methodology or costing hierarchy, as normal. There is even a report which displays actual costs not found in, or in excess of, the proposal BOM quantity 

• Automatic splitting of consolidated material estimates when a quota arrangement exists to direct procurement to a range of different suppliers, or to split estimating on a % basis between make vs. purchased portions, or when a valid and unexpired supplier contract was found as the best cost source but it expired mid-way through the requirement dates, or if only some of the required quantity is covered by actuals (see below)  

• Calculation of quantity adjustment factors using a power curve in addition to our ‘stepped curve’ approach which was previously supported. Power curves can default based on the product/service being costed (or its commodity) or they can be automatically derived based on the spread of quantity price-breaks across a range of quotation or contractual pricing conditions in your procurement system 

• Calculation of learning curve factors during material costing using industry standard power/learning curve methodologies, based on knowing the mid-point of the historical or reference history (the routing, task list or production order confirmation history sampled to derive an average hours per unit by work-center/cost center) as well as the mid-point of the required lot-size for this proposal (derived from the end item delivery schedule and current production rate or velocity). A learning curve of 90%, for example, means that the hours per unit reduces by 10% for each doubling of production, or as the mid-point of the required lot reaches 2x the mid-point of the reference historical lot 

• Addition of a decrement factor for purchased material to indicate by how much the supplier’s quoted price might be reduced (from further negotiation) or increased (due to hidden or missing fees) when the project is in process 

• Separate complexity factors for make vs. purchased parts when referencing a similar to material in a proposal BOM 

• Aggregation or roll-up of hours, in addition to cost, up the proposal BOM 

• Support for customer or government furnished material and equipment, which are furnished and therefore not costed 

• Enhancements to carrying forward locked or ‘retained’ cost sources when re-running material costing to consider and carry forward sourcing or RFP information, project change request dependencies, and special charges at the same time 

• Parallel servers, running costing across multiple servers at once to support literally millions of dependent requirements from larger multi-billion-dollar material proposals. 

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Cost Source History Application 

We have fundamentally changed the way we integrate purchasing history within procurement systems such as SAP ERP. Instead of ‘viewing’ purchase history directly from within your ERP tool, we now sync and copy purchase history from your ERP system(s) into iPE. This allows users to more easily integrate multiple procurement systems or databases – such as for example combining together purchasing history from pre and post-SAP conversions or S/4 upgrades, easier integration of historical supplier quotations from sourcing systems such as S/4 Product Sourcing, Ariba or Coupa, and support for manual creation of historical source documents such as manual cost and/or price analysis or corrections to inaccurate or badly input ERP purchasing history. A full audit trail is provided so that your DCAA auditor always has a direct link from the material cost estimate back to the historical source document in your original ERP system, even when that source was copied and corrected in iPE. There is even a way to open the purchasing document within your ERP system from a link in iPE. 

 

In keeping up with all modern procurement systems - iPE supports purchase orders, contracts, long term agreements and supplier quotation cost sources, as well as manual (e.g. CAPA) documents. iPE also supports multiple pricing conditions both unitized (quantity dependent) and non-recurring (special charges) with different price points over different timeframes or quantity ranges, as well as the option to upload and attach detailed files (e.g. PDF/Word). 

 

Now you can have your cake and eat it – with estimators having direct access to the rich purchasing history across a range of procurement, sourcing and ERP systems, as well as the flexibility to create their own cost source history with audit trails. 

 

Sourcing for Supplier Quotations 

The sourcing application within iPE, which gathers together the purchased part material cost estimates which need to be sourced or gather supplier quotations, has been essentially rebuilt to support Truth in Negotiations Act requirements (TINA), supplier recommendation and selection capabilities (who to send RFP requests to), as well as integration to SAP S/4 Product Sourcing and SAP Ariba, in addition to our existing Coupa interface. 

 

Material estimators can now filter their estimates based on top percentage of spend, confidence, accuracy or nature of the estimating cost source, and total supplier spend for materials not covered by a contract valid on the requirement date and/or with a commercially available ‘off the shelf’ price. The latter is important for anyone bidding on a US Govt. contract where full cost and pricing information is required from the supplier for any supplier spend which exceeds the TINA threshold of $2M.  

 

Our clients use a variety of methods to solicit and track quotations from their suppliers, from emailing PDF documents, to custom in-house developed supplier portals, to commercial software applications such as Coupa, SAP Ariba and more recently SAP S/4 Product Sourcing (Ariba sourcing built inside SAP S/4). Twenty5 works with all these options, not only providing off-the-shelf interfaces to all three tools, but also helping buyers in iPE to view, recommend and select suppliers to send each RFP to, by grouping materials into RFPs or ‘sourcing events’ based on the buyer, commodity or recommended suppliers. iPE has access to your full ERP history of purchase orders, contracts and previous supplier quotations, as well as access in many cases to approved supplier lists, disbarred suppliers and supplier performance databases. This vast mine of information allows iPE to recommend suppliers for RFPs based on purchasing history (volume and recency), as well as based on supplier certifications and performance. Supplier quotations often span a range of dates and quantities – for example when the end client has requested as number of independent or optional sets or quantity ranges of end items. iPE can therefore track supplier quotations across a range of dates and quantities, and will always select the best-fit (most recent/highest quantity) quotation as a cost source, as well as escalating for inflation and curving for quantity adjustments. 

 

While best practice is to select a supplier for each RFP within your sourcing tool, iPE provides the option to compare multiple supplier quotations side by side for the same RFP, add decrement (negotiation) or increment (missing fee) factors, and to select specific supplier responses for cost estimating purposes. If a supplier selection is not made in either your sourcing/RFP system, or in iPE, then the lowest cost bidder is assumed for each cost estimate. 

 

Change Notifications 

It can take our clients several months to finalize costing for large proposals with thousands of materials or parts, during which time production and purchase history is changing. iPE material costing works on the principle of ‘freezing’ the cost estimate once it has been submitted for approval, with options to lock or ‘retain’ existing satisfactory cost sources during the material estimating process prior to submission. That said, it would be useful for estimators to be made aware of new purchase or production history even on ‘retained’ cost estimates, which might impact how they want to cost something. 

 

For this reason, we have developed a change notification framework to detect changes in history sync’d from your production and procurement ERP systems, scanning for new, changed price or new versions of history for in-process proposals and estimates. Notifications are provided to material estimators, via a discrete notification/check rule column which uses icons, traffic light colors and tooltips to indicate if new changes occurred since the last costing run for that specific part number. Users can then click on the icon to view the changes, accept or reject (or mark as ‘in review’) and update the cost or mark the item to be re-costed in the next costing run, accordingly.  

 

Change notifications are currently provided to detect new purchase orders, purchasing contracts, supplier quotations or changes in the quota arrangement or supplier split percentages for a given part number, for purchased items. For manufactured parts change notifications are provided to detect new and completed production orders impacting hours per unit confirmation history, routing changes and new SAP product versions. Bill of material, material master and even end item contract line delivery schedule (date/qty) changes notifications are also provided for all parts – both make and buy. 

 

The same column is also used to provide information on our configurable consistency check rules, explained next. 

 

Consistency Check Rules 

We have also developed a consistency check rule framework which is a series of configurable rules fired on request / save, or prior to triggering an interface to another connected system. These rules are incredibly flexible and essentially provide user input and data validations beyond what is available as standard. For example, if you want all phases to be marked as optional – there’s a consistency check rule for that. Or if you want all labor estimates for offshore resources to have a grade/seniority assigned – there’s a check rule for that. Or perhaps you want all BOM components which are make parts to have sub-components – there’s a rule for that too.   

 

Consistency check rules can be technically configured as an SQL query, as a formula expression, or using one of our expanding list of pre-delivered back-end server APIs or front-end browser methods to perform pre-delivered checks on your in-memory data prior to saving it. If you have requirements for special checks talk to our consultant; they can either create an expression or SQL view for you or they will talk to our developers to build a suitable API or JavaScript method. 

 

Once the consistency checks are fired the results are displayed in a popup and updated in the consistency check rule traffic light icon column explained under Change Notifications, above. 

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Proposal Re-use and Copy Enhancements 

As part of our desire to encourage best practices and re-use we have enhanced the proposal, phase and WBS copy to include options to copy from a prior (in execution or completed) project as well as a template or a prior proposal, to select tasks vs. WBS elements separately for copy, and splitting the version 2.3 option to copy ‘estimates’ into four discrete options to copy labor, proposal BOMs, material and travel/other cost estimates separately. The copy checkbox displays have also been improved with more meaningful counts and more robust validation of selected options for what to copy. 

 

We have also provided support during the proposal, phase or WBS copy for:  

• Advanced search for historical proposals and projects including filtering results based on client-defined facets and fuzzy search, as well as rule-based template project selection 

• Adding complexity factor during proposal copy, and complexity/efficiency factors during WBS copy, with complexity/efficiency factor rationale 

• Swapping department during proposal or prior project copy including looking up revised resource costs and rates based on the new location or department 

• Retaining a cross-reference from the master/original proposal when copying from one proposal to another, with a more toolbar button navigation option back to the original. 

 

Proposal Categories 

We extended proposal categories or classifications of the proposal header from 4 to 16 categories, with proposal categories added to the proposal and project search views. Categories are assigned to proposal header, whereas our existing concept of tags should be used to apply custom tags to the cost model at all levels of the proposal - header, contract line, WBS and individual labor or material cost estimate. 

 

Enhancements to Depreciation and Base Term 

Depreciation or amortization (for services, labor and software) has been further enhanced to provide configurable rules for the default start and end of depreciation, including options to trigger depreciation automatically based on hardware or software unit or total cost, as well as options to start depreciation from a user input date, a date input at the WBS, the project go-live date or from the start of costs being incurred for that specific estimate. Depreciation typically ends at start + term, but you can now also configure rules to end depreciation at contract end or to transfer the asset balance at the end of the contract (which is essentially a cliff-depreciation). 

 

We have also introduced the concept of a base term which is the duration of the non-optional or base phases. Depreciation can be configured to end (or asset balance to be transferred) at the end of the base term, but only for cost estimates which are contained within the base term. Estimates which span into the optional phase terms will still be depreciated until, or transferred at, the contract end. 

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Design to Cost 

The bottom-up estimated cost can now be copied to the design to cost or top-down cost target at any level of the WBS hierarchy. This is useful, for example, for clients who manage multiple versions or phases of a project and wish to create a new version or phase with the cost target for a specific ‘leg’ of the WBS hierarchy based on earlier estimates. 

 

Formula Updates in Real-Time 

Formula in iPE are updated when the formula is opened/edited as well as when triggering ‘update cost incl. formula’ in the widget or more toolbar button menu. This is generally fine since we already developed a way to run update cost in the background every few minutes, automatically. However some clients have requested formula to be updated more in real-time, so we have introduced a special formula parameter which triggers a real-time update anytime a dependent parameter within the formula is changed, like how Excel works. These formula - which can often be extensive in nature and thus slow to update - are also removed from the ‘update cost’ algorithm which has the added benefit of improving the ‘update cost’ performance at the same time. 

 

Other Formula Enhancements  

• More control over when formula costs are distributed with options to distribute formula costs based on the underlying direct costs, based on the up-front costs, or based on the maintenance cost distribution profile. 

• Minor fixes to the formula set-up application, especially the adhoc formula creation popup which end users can trigger from within a proposal.  

• Automatic generation of the formula rationale text, for inclusion in the basis of estimate, to explain how the formula was calculated with embedded description of formula inputs, results and assumptions. 

 

The formula set-up application will be completely refactored in a future release to use AI-powered formula generation based on industry best practices and predictive analysis of costing history. 

 

Settlement Rule Generation 

Capital project management in iPE often entails the creation of complex settlement rules in your SAP financial system to allocation actual costs in the project and WBS to your capital program assets based on pre-defined rules and percentages. You can now set up these rules as end item assets directly in iPE, including allocation of WBS costs on a percentage basis or one or more assets at any level of the project’s WBS hierarchy. You can also limit how these rules are configured in iPE, for example from WBS to WBS, WBS to asset, cost center to profit center etc. Finally, the settlement rules are seamlessly interfaced to and created in your SAP system avoiding the need for manual creation of these complex rules in SAP. 

 

Planning vs. Execution WBS 

Once estimating is nearing completion and the proposal or capital project request has been approved, it is typically converted into an executable project for execution in your SAP ERP or project management system, with the option to track plans, funds, risks, forecasts and project changes through the delivery life cycle in iPE. 

 

In practice, especially for larger programs, this is not a linear process. Earlier project phases are completed before estimates for the later phases are developed. It is not always practical to transfer the entire project from a planning to execution phase, or rather, once the project is in execution the planning and estimating continues. For this reason, we have developed the concept of converting individual WBS elements and hierarchy ‘legs’ from planning to execution, allowing you to restructure the WBS and task hierarchies during the execution phase while retaining planning structures and estimates for reference purposes in future project estimates. Using our mass edit capability you can update the WBS/task assignments for your estimates and resources once execution starts, but retain the original planning WBS/task assignments. 

 

Project Change Requests 

As well as extending workflow to project change request approvals, we have also enhanced the user interface when selecting or creating a new project change request including giving the user to option to link the project change request to one change vs. all subsequent changes made in the same user session or proposal.  We have also provided a link from project changes to funding sources and risks, including the option to require a funding source for anything changed with respect to a project change request. 

 

A number of fixes have also been applied to our project change request module, as we see our first clients starting to use this feature in production. 

 

ProPricer Integration 

ProPricer is a pricing tool used by many larger aerospace and defense firms for submittal of proposals in a Govt. mandated format. While Twenty5 supports all the features supported by ProPricer and much more, we also provide integration to ProPricer for users who have been using ProPricer for decades and do not wish to change. Our consultant can very quickly tweak the SQL views used in our application, which are delivered free of charge with the product and not as an extra-cost item, to create ProPricer .tsk and .res files either as downloaded files (for manual upload into ProPricer) or via a direct API request into your ProPricer web server.  iPE provides support for ProPricer’s distribution rules or discrete monthly values, calculation of factors and cost estimating relationships in either iPE or ProPricer, complex mapping of ProPricer task and base resource codes (BRCs) and custom tagging to support any client-specific tags built into ProPricer. 

 

Rules-Based Selection 

To support client requirements for more sophisticated rule-based determinations of default proposal templates we have built a rules-based selection process whereby consultants and system admins can set up rules for the selection of proposal templates, escalation factors, quantity curves, workflow templates and ProPricer base resource codes based on: 

• Proposal or project type 

• Resource group, role or group type 

• Product or service code, commodity or type 

• Cost element or account 

• Company or department (organization delivering the project in other words) 

• Major vs. minor proposals 

• Total proposal hours thresholds 

• Subscription vs. non-subscription items. 

 

Cost/Price Analysis Dimensions 

The following dimensions have been added to the cost/price analysis tool: 

• Adjustment Contract Line (adjustments were added in version 2.2) 

• Customer Role (for labor bill rate determination) 

• Forecast Group 

• Grade/Seniority (for labor cost rate determination) 

• Project Change Request impact yes/no 

• Sourcing Event. 

 

Risk Management Enhancements 

Some minor enhancements to the risk management application in Twenty5 include: 

• Improvements in linking risk to WBS elements in both iPE and directly from SAP 

• Justifications when adjusting risk management reserves 

• Tracking the original risk cost impact (prior to being edited due to mitigations). 

We are in the process of developing a RAID log. 

 

Data Import/Export Utility 

An exciting new development in this version is our data import/export workbench which allows consultants (currently … this will be rolled out to client system admins in the near future) to configure custom or tailored data imports and exports to/from MS-Excel, Google Sheets, CSV or TSV files. Sophisticated mapping from both columns in multi-sheet Excel documents as well as to individual cells on summary Excel sheets, allows data to be mapped from literally any format to tables and fields within Twenty5. While Excel is limited to around half a million records, our CSV/TSV support enables millions of records to imported into Twenty5 in minutes. Not only can any cell or column position or name be mapped to any table/field in iPE, this utility also provides support for: 

• Data conversion or transformation during upload, such yes/no to Boolean 

• Mapping of numerous date/time formats 

• Field value mappings allowing values in your legacy such as legacy SAP ECC plant codes to be automatically mapped to new values in your new iPE system such as revised new set of SAP S/4 plant codes 

• Triggering of custom checking rules and API-based updates, such as looking up the resource group cost and billing rate and calculation of total cost and T&M revenue when uploading labor, following the upload. 

 

When it comes to exporting data down to multi-sheet Excel documents, our data export utility allows any data from iPE to be downloaded to Excel in any format. Either download tables you can see in our apps, or directly from our database, or quickly develop SQL views to aggregate, summarize and join data in iPE to connected systems such as your CRM or ERP, and download the results directly into a customized Excel file or template with formatting, summary or pivot tables and even charts which automatically summarize the data exported and downloaded from iPE, in real-time. 

 

To compliment this utility we have enhanced all of our grids where Excel upload or download is enabled to allow system admins to upload new templates directly to tables you can see in the screen, or to upload larger volumes of data directly from Excel in search lists. We have extended our screen control set concept to combine output forms or PDF outputs, external report links or URLs to PowerBI or SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) dashboards, and our data export templates, into one concept. You can now configure your own report output menus and sub-menus, by application or screen control set (proposal/project type, user role etc.), with each menu or sub-menu invoking a PDF output form, Excel download or external reporting dashboard URL depending on how it has been configured. 

 

Workflow Extensions 

As well as some fixes to our workflow setup application (where consultants and system admins can configure, copy or tweak workflow networks and rules), we have enhanced our workflow regarding: 

• The scope of roles, including multiple role-based owners working in parallel (first to approve) 

• Support for parallel steps going to different owners including rule-based connected (all need to approve, approvers based on target margin or threshold value etc.) 

• Integration of APIs and system interfaces to workflow steps, and extension of workflow and approvals to project change requests and price books 

• Cosmetic enhancements and fixes to the Pursuit Milestones or Due By tab. 

 

Integration Framework 

Twenty5 now has around 50 interfaces to and from various CRM, ERP, PLM and project management or resource management systems such as SAP ECC, SAP S/4, Salesforce, MS-Dynamics CRM, Cora, Cognitus and ProFinda. To better manage this complexity, we have rebuilt our integration framework and the way our interfaces are run to support system admin. configuration of how interfaces are triggered, either as regular background jobs at pre-defined intervals, based on workflow status changes or at user request, or based on events.  

 

The same console also allows system admins to test run and monitor each interface. Interfaces can be point to point (i.e. direct links from iPE to the connected system) or work via an integration messaging framework such as SAP’s CPI or ‘Cloud Integration’ as it is now termed.