It’s 2020, service firms still face the same recurring issues in how they operate, preventing them from growing and increasing revenue as a business. One of the legacy and still current problems with professional services firms is that they’re often very manual in how they operate, both in terms of back-office and front office administration. There can also be something of a disconnect between the front and back office, making them inefficient as a business.
As veterans in the world of project management, we hear the same pain points from these firms on a daily basis, ‘each of our departments within our business operates on their own software; sales have their own CRM, time, billing and procurement are done in our accounting software. We track projects from conception to completion all on spreadsheets. None of our systems speak to each other leaving our resources and management in the dark!’.
In reality, almost all service-based businesses will start this way. Coordination and hand-offs between departments are managed with e-mails & face to face conversations. Data from the different systems is re-entered from one system to another or is gathered in spreadsheets for job costing and reporting purposes.
Think about this for a minute, how many solutions is your business using right now to manage its day to day operations? Does this range from individual solutions for CRM, resource management, time tracking, project management, financials and more? Ok now calculate how much you are spending on license fees for each solution and the time you and your team spend re-keying data from one solution to another. I bet the results are shocking for most of our readers!
Professional Services Automation engages the core components of your business and consolidates them into one, this allows the most necessary operations to be run through one central platform. PSA software becomes the heart and the engine of your business. It becomes the single resource for all your key operational items. Not only does it organize, but it will consolidate processes streamlining your business from top to bottom.
Keep in mind, PSA software is more than just a handful of features grouped together and integrated into one solution. PSA has an underlying business process infrastructure that provides a structured and standardized approach to the delivery of services. PSA software enables you with real-time visibility of your business processes, which in turn, improves, eliminates and streamlines the way in which your team operates – seen in the SPI Research image below…
During your workday, you might be finding it increasingly difficult to gain control over your projects, accurately invoice your customers or deliver efficiently.
Here are 3 situations that may cause you headaches on a daily basis:
1. Project & Accounting
Disconnected systems will make the cross over of project management & project accounting data a time consuming, admin heavy headache on your daily work life. Using different systems to operate your business processes is costly and will directly affect your bottom line. You need to adopt a standard, integrated solution in place so project managers can gain on-demand insights around project costs and status when needed.
2. Revenue Forecasting
For a small service firm starting out, forecasting revenue can be achieved quite easily using spreadsheets and shared among project team members via email. But as your business expands and you start working with larger accounts this will become much more difficult and important to manage costs and have visibility into financials and delivery. Your spreadsheets are mistake-prone and small errors with large accounts can be very costly and unprofessional. The use of PSA software forecasting will provide significant functionality to your project life-cycle. In turn, enabling you with the ability to predict the delivery of services and profitable results.
3. Time & Expenses
The use of spreadsheets along with other tools to track your team’s time and expense is an outdated and unproductive way to operate in 2020. This will quickly lead to inaccurate project status and costs/revenue visibility. Nobody wants to spend their precious time on cumbersome administrative task but it’s a necessary evil that needs to be done. Using an integrated time-sheet management and expense reporting solution such as PSA, your services business can effectively account for project costs, track budget versus actual, and gain real-time accurate project time and cost data on demand.
If you can relate to any of the above, now is the time to start reviewing strategic goals and figuring out what people, processes, and systems need to be in place to achieve those goals. Professional services firms need to innovate constantly across their value chain to drive profitable growth and be agile in order to support how customers want to acquire, use, and pay for their solutions and services. The end goal is an efficient, highly automated back-office running in the background all the time and an agile front office where professionals are freed up to collaborate and innovate, supported by real-time insights.
To learn more about the benefits of PSA software, check out our blog – Why PSA Software is Crucial for Services Firms in 2020!
Trial the PSA Software Built by Service Professionals for Service Professionals!
CrossConcept Continuum goes beyond traditional PSA solutions available today by incorporating cutting-edge UI technology making the solution more user-friendly, resulting in fewer clicks within the solution and time spent logging data. CrossConcept Continuum has been built from the ground up to integrate with all major accounting systems to seamlessly synchronize projects and accounting within one unified system.
Our innovative PSA solution allows organizations to maximize profitability by integrating connecting projects and financial accounting, enabling you to manage all stages of your project from conception to completion and deliver on your promises. processes. Clients have ranged in size from a handful of people to over thirty thousand. The founder’s and team’s real-world experience is what drove and shaped the creation of CrossConcept Continuum.
Our solution is a simple, yet powerful PSA solution built with the end-user in mind – fast, flexible, powerful and user-friendly! We are offering all new clients a free 2-week trial with no contract obligations. This is a great opportunity for any business to try out the solution and decide if PSA software is for you!
To book a free 15-minute consultation, email: marketing@crossconceptinc.com or call: 1-888-528-3898 x110.
