The world has changed dramatically in the past fifty years, and with it, the global economy. Once a system largely based on physical production and manufacturing, we are now entering an age of knowledge work, where people work mainly with information.

This article discusses the ways in which companies can adapt to this new knowledge work-based economy through tracking time for payroll and billing, regulations compliance and project management purposes. It addresses one of the primary impediments to success —employee resistance to time tracking—and offers solutions on how to overcome such impediments.

In the last 50 years, we have seen the cost of knowledge workers—individuals who work mainly with information, not with physical materials—rise to become a significant portion of the economy. In 2003, nearly half of the US workforce fell into the knowledge worker category. These numbers continue to grow and will soon include the majority of workers globally, as the age of manufacturing and farming fades away. Demand for Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions, which often contain project accounting abilities, is currently growing at a rate of 11% annually. Sales of project accounting products have also shot up.

The high level of interest in PPM, time tracking and project accounting solutions indicates a shift in how the world does business. Our predecessors implicitly knew their costs, as they could easily account for how many fish they caught or how many products came off the assembly line. In today's knowledge economy, however, it seems that we do not know our costs, which is hazardous to our profitability and threatens our success.

Projects & Profits Magazine, Project Accounting, Global Economy, Project Management, Portfolio Management, knowledge Economy, Project Accounting Systems, Sales Management, Customer Relationship Management, knowledge Management.