Technology is all around us. There is no industry that is untouched by technology and professional services is no exception. However, the business case for investing in a Professional Services Automation Software is not adequately presented. Most of the justification is around elementary – improvement in efficiency and effectiveness. In our opinion, this is a very narrow approach.
Business leaders must consider a holistic view before mandating the implementation of any Professional Services Automation Software.
Let us start with an overview of the life cycle of professional services projects.
It is evident that there are multiple stakeholders (Business Development Team, Pre-Sales / Proposal Management Team, Sponsors, Project Delivery Teams, Finance, Procurement, Legal, etc.) that stand to benefit from the right PSA Software.
Let us review some of the salient key reasons that drive the implementation and adoption of professional services automation software. On a slightly different note, globally, professional services firms have trusted TouchBase PSA Software and the reason is obvious – TouchBase PSA Software is designed to deliver visible business impact from day one!
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION # 1
Opportunities Pursuit – Faster and the Right Ones!
Like every other industry, Professional Services firms can pursue a limited number of opportunities at any given point in time as they are driven by constraints of resources, both people and financial. Business development and marketing teams must spend time where the outcome impacts are high. Further, business development teams must be agile and operate at top speed to evaluate and pursue the ‘right’ market opportunities that are getting more complex than ever. Senior leaders must establish appropriate processes of opportunity qualification, comprehensive ranking, and immaculate analysis to drive robust decisions.
TouchBase PSA Software significantly shortens the entire opportunity identification and evaluation process from weeks to just a few days – irrespective of the size, value, and complexity of market opportunities!
Profitable Proposals
Organizations are under tremendous pressure to consistently showcase their growth and profitability. It is a no-brainer that organizations should not go by a number of deals – every deal must be profitable! The proposal management teams must be equipped with the right PSA Software that offers proposal estimation/forecast of revenue, costs, and profitability – at a very granular level.
As a professional services company offering software services involving software design, deployment, and maintenance for multiple years, imagine the challenges of accuracy, integrity, and speed of proposal creation! TouchBase Professional Services Automation Software for IT companies equips the proposal management teams with a superior level of templates, processes, workflows, and estimates than any spreadsheet-based approach.
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION # 3
Smooth Collaboration
Traditionally, projects were undertaken with very little involvement from the cross-functional teams such as engineering, project delivery, finance, procurement, legal, etc. Such an approach led to the creation of severe conflicts between the various cross-functional teams. This is no longer a choice today. Proposal management teams must be able to collaborate with relevant cross-functional teams before committing to customer proposals. Collaboration must be seamless at multiple levels including discussions, documentation, commitments, roles, responsibilities, workflows, etc.
TouchBase Professional Services Automation Software for IT companies fosters real-time collaboration across functional teams through clear workflows and transparency.
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION # 4
Contemporary and flexible project management approach & methodology
The rise of projects has led to industries and organizations considering diverse project management approaches. Today, professional services companies deliver projects based on predictive, agile, and hybrid approaches. Further, the business processes, decision-workflows, templates, etc. may also be tuned to fit to the nature of the project. The governance mechanisms are tied to the strategic nature of the project as well as the complexity, value, and duration of the project.
TouchBase Professional Services Automation Software is designed to offer its clients a high level of configurability based on project-specific needs.
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION # 5
Granular and immaculate project planning
Customer value realization is built on the strong foundation of project planning. Project teams must ensure meticulous project planning as warranted by the size, complexity, and value of the project. TouchBase Professional Services Automation Software offers holistic project planning, some of which are listed below.
- Scope documentation and requirements traceability.
- Adoption of predictive, agile, or hybrid project management approaches.
- Creation of a detailed Work Breakdown Structure.
- Defining a project schedule by incorporating task estimations, relationships, lags & leads, and constraints.
- Estimation of resources (people, materials, and financial) and their assignment to deliverables.
- Capturing quality parameters.
- Identifying risks and defining response plans.
- Stakeholder collaboration and communication plans.
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION # 6
Execution is the key!
While planning lays the foundation for value realization, flawless execution unlocks the key to value realization. Managing large professional services projects with global teams is a herculean task even for seasoned project managers.
With a top-rated TouchBase Professional Services Automation Software for IT companies, the process of reviewing the project progress, identifying bottlenecks, analyzing variances, recommending preventive or corrective actions is just a click away! With the capabilities of real-time collaboration, project managers find it relatively easy to coordinate work irrespective of the team members’ time zones.
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION # 7
Uncompromised Project Profitability
There is no use to just delivering projects – they must be delivered profitably! To ensure that profitability is not compromised, project managers must have real-time visibility into planned costs, actual costs, and cash flow; this requires systems to ensure real-time tracking of deliverable progress, milestone completion, revenue recognition, customer billing, and money received.
TouchBase Professional Services Automation Software offers the capability of automating revenue recognition and invoice generation with deliverable completion.
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION # 8
Decision Making
Even with so many options at their disposal, robust and confident decision-making appears to be the biggest challenge that senior leaders face today. An important reason behind poor decisions is attributed to the organizations operating on multiple and disparate systems leading to questionable data integrity. Senior leaders find it difficult to take data-driven and conviction-based decisions. TouchBase Professional Services Automation Software offers a single version of project management truth by seamlessly integrating applications such as CRMs, ERPs, Accounting, etc.
In Summary…
The business case for professional services companies to invest in PSA Software was never stronger! Further, any delay in this decision is akin to putting your organizational survival at risk!
You now have a choice in TouchBase PSA Software!
