Open Source Posts

Most organizations that provide services to their clients would breakdown their service charges either by the hour or by the day. photo credit: roland

Because of this, it is important to know exactly what each employee has worked on every single hour of the workday in order to calculate costs and earnings made for a particular project.

The best way for the accounts department to find out exactly what each employee has been working on every day is through TimeSheets – a method for recording the amount of worker’s time spent on each project / job.

With my previous employments, I’ve had several experiences submitting timesheets.

With one organization, we were required to submit a timesheet every month and with another, every 2 weeks.

Personally, I felt that it’s better if we’re require to submit every fortnight so that we won’t have much trouble remembering what we’ve done in within this shorter period.

The best practice for every employee is to record down what he has accomplished by the end of each day. But sometimes, we tend to procrastinate and leave things to the next day and so on.

If you’re like me, you would have difficulty in remembering what you’ve done in the last 30 days.

There are times when you would be working on the same project for 3 months. Your timesheet would be very easy to fill up. But if you’re working on different projects every single day, then it’s really important to log that down at the end of each day.

Some organizations would just provide a timesheet template in Excel format for all staffs to key in and submit by month end. The problem with this is the reconciliation by the accounts personnel becomes a hassle. Imagine having to open up 50 Excel sheets and summing up the total number of hours spent for a particular project. This process itself could take days to complete, depending on the number of employee and projects you have.

If your organization is still managing worker timesheets using Excel, then you might want to consider implementing a web based online TimeSheet Software. Continue Reading »
Open source web based online Timesheet Software

Organizations who are being left behind, without utilizing BI software, may soon find out that their competitors with an optimal BI solution will be able to do better market analysis, better strategy planning as well as implement better budget control.

Although there are investments to be made at first, the pay-offs of a successful BI solution will soon show. Image by lumaxart.

Companies without BI solutions often find it difficult to integrate financial and operational data to get a holistic overall view of the company’s performance. They thus fail to see some essential trends, which they could have utilized to their advantage had they known about it.

Managers without BI solutions often wastes unnecessary time to gather information, which should have been available to them at the press of a button, thereby not finding themselves in a position to manage their business optimally.

The risk however is also there, that an organization may not yet be ready for a sophisticated BI solution, and by spending resources and time on that, could put them backwards instead of forwards if the project fails.

Sometimes a simple Excel spreadsheet is more than adequate to meet the information needs of a particular small organization, and advanced software is thus unnecessary. Continue Reading »
List of Top Open Source Business Intelligence Solutions

I have always wondered what systems are used to assist utility operators in powering, managing and automating the utilities. When I mention utilities, I’m thinking of water, electricity, oil, gas. Photo by Team New Orleans, US Army Corps of Engineers.

How are utility operators managing the various complex aspects of these utilities? When it comes to water pressure, electrical voltage, temperature, proximity, etc, all these measurements are important information to know and managed well.

To support the business of utility management, SCADA systems are commonly applied to provide real time strategic information for utilities operators to make informed decisions.

What is SCADA? It stands for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. SCADA functions by collecting data from remote locations and sending the data back to a central location for the data to be processed and controlled. It is extremely useful for SCADA systems to be implemented on areas which are dangerous and far away from the core area.

A SCADA system usually includes a combination of the following components:

• Remote Terminal Units (RTU)
• Human Machine Interface (HMI)
• Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC)

I’m really no expert in SCADA related solutions but after some Googling, I’ve put together a list of free and open source SCADA solutions for you to test and learn. Continue Reading »
List of free and open source SCADA software

Most organizations these days own at least a few vehicles for various purposes. A construction company would have several trucks and tractors while a travel agency might own several vans and multi purpose vehicles (MPVs).

Just like equipments in the office such as printers and servers, vehicles too needs to be maintained and most importantly tracked.

Lets just say that you’re an owner of a waste management and garbage collection company. If you have twenty (20) trucks deployed to several areas, how do you ensure that each truck has gone to the area that it’s supposed to collect garbage from? Photo by PinkMoose.

The only way to know is when a customer calls in to complain that their garbage hasn’t been collected for more than a week. And when you ask your truck driver if he’s been to the area, he said that he has, but both parties doesn’t have any proof.

To eliminate cases like this from happening, it’s good to implement a fleet management system (FMS) where vehicles can be equipped with a GPS device which sends the following data to the server on a predefined interval:

• Date & time
• Location (longitude & latitude)
• Altitude (feet)
• Speed (mph)
• Street Address

If every garbage truck is installed with this GPS devices to send information of its whereabouts, it’s now possible to track:

• where your trucks have been to
• if the truck drivers were speeding
• where was the truck on a specific date and time
• how long did the truck drivers take their lunch breaks

Another benefit of a fleet tracking system is to record a vehicle’s mileage and its last service repair date. It is vital for all vehicles to be serviced and maintained on time in order for it to work well and to prevent accidents from occurring.

There are many types of FMS available out there in the market today. If budget is tight and you have some time to create a prototype of your own then an open source fleet management and vehicle tracking system may be right for you. Continue Reading »
Open source fleet management and vehicle tracking system