Before we understand the stakeholders that benefit from professional services automation software (PSA Software), it is important to review the life cycle of professional services projects.
From the above graphic, it is evident that there are multiple stakeholders involved in professional services projects including –
- Business Development Team
- Pre-Sales / Proposal Management Team
- Senior Management and Sponsors
- Project Delivery Teams
- Other Cross-Functional Teams (Finance, Procurement, Legal, etc.)
Each of the above stakeholders have different reasons to rely on a professional services automation Software. Globally, professional services firms have trusted TouchBase PSA Software and the reason is obvious – TouchBase PSA Software is designed to deliver the business impact to the entire stakeholder spectrum.
Let us see why professionals choose ProductDossier for PSA Software, i.e., TouchBase PSA!
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND PRE-SALES
Pursuing ‘right’ opportunities
Professional Services firms can pursue only a limited number of opportunities at any given point in time as they are driven by constraints of resources, both people and financial. Businesses must act at top speed to evaluate and pursue ‘right’ market opportunities that are more complex than ever.
Leaders must ensure that the process of opportunity qualification and ranking is comprehensive and immaculate so that the decisions are rock-solid. TouchBase PSA Software reduces the entire process from weeks to just a few days irrespective of the size, value, and complexity of market opportunities.
PRE-SALES AND SPONSORS
Profitable Proposals
There is no point if organizations go after numerous deals – the key is that every deal must be profitable! The proposal management teams must ensure that the proposals must be very granularly estimated for revenue, costs, and profitability.
Consider a software services company pitching for a client project 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.
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
Collaboration
In the past, the projects were undertaken with minimal to zero involvement with cross-functional teams such as engineering, project delivery, finance, procurement, legal, etc. As a result, organizations experienced severe conflicts between the sales and project delivery teams. In today’s business scenario, proposal management teams can no longer commit to proposals without appropriate level of collaboration with cross-functional teams. 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.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TEAM
Project management approach & methodology
Even within the professional services industry, organizations approach project management very differently. It is very common to observe professional services company deliver projects based on diverse approaches including predictive, agile, and hybrid. The business processes, decision-workflows, templates, etc. vary in line with 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 the project-specific needs.
Meticulous Planning
While winning a customer project is laudable, the value realization starts with project planning. Depending on the size, complexity, and value of the deal, the project teams have their tasks cut out; they must ensure meticulous planning. 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.
Flawless Execution
Strategies and plans are important, but execution is the key to value realization. Managing large professional services projects with global teams is a herculean task even for the 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.
FINANCE TEAM
Guardrail Project Profitability
As mentioned earlier, there is no use to just deliver projects – they must be delivered profitably! For not compromising profitability, project managers must have visibility into planned costs, actual costs, and cashflow regularly and seamlessly; 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.
SENIOR MANAGEMENT
Robust Decision Making
The biggest challenge for the senior management is decision-making. Unfortunately, most organizations operate on multiple and disparate systems leading to questionable data integrity. In such a scenario, senior management 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.
To summarize…
While we have highlighted the key benefits that could accrue to diverse stakeholders, there are many more reasons for professional services firms to take a serious look at PSA Software. On a different note, we could not find one reason why we should not consider investing in a PSA Software!
The ball is now in your court!
