3 Steps to Improve Your Professional Services Organization
Historic struggles for professional service firms and how to fix them.
Services Firms Face Challenges Around
Project Planning
Comprehensive project planning can make or break your profit return and even your relationship with the client.
Project Visibility
Lacking real-time info on a project’s status undermines your ability to identify potential cost or schedule overruns.
Billable Hours
Optimizing billable hours while also empowering your workforce is the bottom line. And a hard balancing act.
3 Ways to Grow Your Services Firm Profitably
1
Plan Ahead
Things To Consider
Increasingly risk-averse clients are turning to fixed rate jobs.
The fluctuating needs of the market can make it hard to hit targets.
So, to plan better…
Managing employee skillsets and workloads helps optimize returns.
Historical data allows you to give realistic deadlines and project quotes.
2
Adjust Accordingly
Things To Consider
Cost of Overrun
Only 40% of projects meet schedule, budget, and quality goals.
The average cost of an overrun project is an additional 30% to the project.
Priorities
69% of firms list “managing changes in client expectations” as one of their top issues.
In Addition To:
33%
that also listed poor communication and understanding client expectations as an important issue.
24%
also had trouble appropriately matching employee skillsets to tasks in real time.
Adjust In Real-time
Project Visibility
Inability to see a project in real time leads to inefficiency in addressing potential overrun.
Priorities
Get in front of potential problems by evaluating project data in real-time. This allows prioritization of the most important jobs with the best resources.
3
Maximize Margins
Things To Consider
Maximizing billable hours while also minimizing administrative overhead is the best way to increase profits.
Utilization rates are the best barometer for measuring productivity and revenue.
Improving utilization rates has an immediate impact on the corporate bottom line.
Replicon’s solutions help improve these services industries
By sucessfully improving utilization rates in a low impact manner, companies have reported a 5%-10% increase in productivity per worker.
Firms using Professional Services Automation see an average of 29% profit margin on projects and a 12% increase in profitability.