Please do not confuse this list with a "MUST LEARN" list, as it doesn't always suit all Drum customers to use all of these features and in many cases, it makes more sense to migrate to the core consulting business requirements (listed below) and as required for the business, implement additional usage over time.
If you're not sure how to approach the training or transition period as you plan your migration to Drum, please reach out to our support team and we'll be more than happy to help.
Core Consulting Requirements
The below list of features is what we consider to be the "core" set of Drum features that enables most of our customers to achieve their key requirements and ensure an effective migration.
Many of the features listed in the next section support the core features and enable event more efficient workflows, but the below is a great starting point.
These features are listed as "jobs to be done" or "activities" to help your team understand the actual activity that they need to achieve within each area.
Drum Data Setup
The below items do not require a deep understanding and are not often interacted with after the initial Drum account setup, but are helpful for at least one administrative team member to understand at a high-level.
A team member can:
Create and manage deliverable templates to set the default structures of project and opportunity deliverables.
Create and manage project and opportunity templates (including the 'baseline' versions that set defaults for all other templates).
Create and manage proposal templates and their associated budgets (which should use the templates created above).
Create and manage user permissions and assign them to staff.
Create and manage staff roles.
Create and manage project roles.
The above is not an exhaustive list of Drum settings or available customisation, but is a fantastic starting point for setting up and maintaining your Drum account.
General Housekeeping
A team member can:
Invite and remove team members from their Drum account, with appropriate levels of access.
Create and manage billable rate cards.
Connect a financial integration to their account (or help others with the same process).
Project Management
Appropriate team members can:
Add a new project with the required details (name, client, template to use).
Change the status and tags of a project.
Allocate staff to the project roles.
Edit the "original budget" or project structure of a project by manually setting the requirements via the "Original Budget" option or changing the assigned project template.
Add a variation to a project with appropriate budget adjustments.
Manage the invoicing plan to change estimated invoice dates and values.
Understand the available and used budget figures on the project views.
Understand the project "health" (financial work-in-progress) and other key project budget metrics in Drum.
Filter and sort projects on the project dashboard to easily view their key requirements.
Task Management
Appropriate team members can:
Manage assigned staff and due dates of tasks.
Change the task or deliverable names if required.
Change the status of a task.
Prevent time or expense allocations to a task.
Allocate an "event" task on the calendar (optional, only if helpful for workflows).
Add and rename tasks.
Re-position tasks by dragging and dropping.
View their assigned tasks on their Drum dashboard and manage them as required.
Understand how notifications work upon task assignment.
Time Tracking
Appropriate team members can:
Add project tasks to their timesheet.
Pin project tasks on their timesheet.
Add a new time entry to a task for a certain day on their timesheet.
Editing time entries against tasks by toggling open the task and viewing each entry.
Deleting time entries against a task by toggling open the task and deleting what is required.
Submit their timesheets, ready for approval.
Administratively, at least one team member should be able to:
View all staff's time entries on the "staff" version of the timesheet.
Approve individual timesheets per week.
Invoicing
After integrating Drum with your finance software, an appropriate team members:
Can raise an invoice on a project by choosing an "invoice type" as a starting point.
Understand how to allocate time to invoices (even for fixed-price milestone payments or payment upon completion engagements).
Can attach or download a time report based on the time allocation to the invoice to provide to the client (if required).
Can integrate an invoice with their financial software and understand how Drum and the financial integration "sync" after connection.
Reporting & Insights
Appropriate team members:
Understand the key reports in the "Insights" area of Drum that allow them to view their key business metrics or requirements.
To recap, the above items allow for "minimum-viable usage" of Drum and allow your team to:
Manage projects and associated budgets
Manage task requirements
Allocate time to budgeted tasks
Invoice clients based on time entries (or other payment structures)
This is a great starting place to be sure that your fundamental business continuity will not be affected during a transition period and will very likely result in a fantastic operational experience, even without the features listed below.
Leveling Up: Advanced Drum Workflows (listed in recommended implementation order)
Depending on your Drum implementation plan, the below items will either be incorporated as part of your initial migration or implemented as incremental improvements as your schedule allows.
The below are listed in recommended implementation order based on our experience with other Drum customers, but you can of course adjust the order in which these are used within your business.
Project Expense Management
Directly impacting your project budget, expense management via the "Costs" tab of a project allows staff to easily allocate non-labor costs (e.g. contractors, travel costs, consumables) to a project and potentially add a markup to suit.
Appropriate team members can:
Allocate a cost to a project by dragging and dropping an invoice or receipt.
Allocate a cost to a project by manually entering the required details.
Ensure that costs have the correct supplier and project task allocation.
Approve costs to ensure they're reflected in the project budget.
Allocate costs, along with time entries to invoices to allocate them as "billed".
Sales Pipeline
To create a true "single source of truth", using Drum's sales pipeline tools is an excellent option for all customers. Building competence in this area of Drum is not complex and it shares a lot of similarities with "project management" above. The proposals feature is unique and worth implementing well to enable easy conversion of proposals to active projects.
Appropriate team members can:
Create a new sales opportunity from a forwarded email.
Create a new sales opportunity by manually entering contact and project details.
Manage sales opportunities from the opportunity dashboard by adjusting statuses, lead scores, estimated dates and notes.
Assign opportunity tasks to staff with due dates.
Proposals
From an opportunity in Drum, you can access proposals (quotes) from the tab shown on the opportunity screen. You'll be prompted to choose a template as a starting point. Proposal templates can be managed in the settings area of Drum where both the client-facing line items and internal budgets and project structure can be customised to suit your exact requirements.
Appropriate team members can:
Create a new proposal for an opportunity using a proposal template as a starting point.
Set the key details for a proposal, including expiry date or description.
Adjust the invoice sections and line items, including prices and quantities.
Manage the backing project budget of a proposal, including:
Adding, deleting or adjusting project deliverables.
Adding, deleting or adjusting project tasks within deliverables.
Changing the backing project structure completely using the "Change Structure" option and selecting a template to use as a starting point.
Sync a proposal project budget to the client-facing line items to reflect internal prices and deliverables.
Convert a proposal to a project.
Progress Claims
An optional feature in Drum, progress claims (or pay applications) allow your team to create structured claim documents where you can easily claim a percentage-based payment or fixed-value payment for each project deliverable or task over a period of time.
Once integrated with a finance system, an appropriate team members can:
Create a progress claim from the "Claims" tab of a project.
Adjust the claimed amounts per task or deliverable via the percentage or fixed price option.
Allocate project time and expense entries to the claim to view profitability.
Generate a claim or time report document.
Approve a claim to convert it to an invoice for financial integration.
Email Tracking
Another optional feature in Drum that allows you to tracked client or internal email communication automatically to opportunities or projects simply by including your unique Drum project email inbox address in your email BCC and by including the project or opportunity number in the subject line within square brackets. e.g. "[P24-00101] Meeting to start engagement".
Appropriate team members can:
Save the Drum project email as a contact in their email client for easy forwarding.
Track emails against projects or opportunities.
Access saved emails on projects or opportunities via the "Emails" tab.
Project cost-to-complete estimates
An optional feature in Drum, project cost-to-complete estimates allow project managers or directors to nominate how "complete" a task is, regardless of the budget used and will adjust the earned revenue figures of the project, and therefore the "financial work in progress" to suit.
Cost-to-complete estimates are a fantastic way of managing project risk, especially in longer engagements and can be a great way of ensuring that project managers are auditing their project progress on a regular cadence (e.g. monthly).
Appropriate team members can:
View the cost-to-complete estimates via the "Budget" tab of a project.
Add a new cost-to-complete estimate.
Adjust the estimated completion of active tasks.
Approve the cost-to-complete and view the adjusted project health figure as a result.
Dynamic Staff Notifications
Within the settings area of Drum, there is an option called "Event Triggers" that allows you to trigger notifications upon certain events occurring within Drum. These can be simple use-cases like when a team-member changes an invoice's status to "awaiting approval" or the budget of a project goes above a certain percentage.
This system also allows you to group notifications into a once-per day email to prevent overwhelm and to allow you to manage your requirements effectively.
A team member can:
Manage event triggers for notifications based on the business requirements.