Professional services organizations have distinct and unique requirements, especially when it comes to professional services automation software.
Generic, one-size-fits-all project management tools often do a poor job of managing projects effectively for such organizations. These cookie-cutter tools provide minimal visibility, require too much manual work, and frankly leave much to be desired.
This is where the professional services automation software comes in. This is a tool that was created with you in mind. (i.e. a professional services business). To help you get a true picture of the business value of professional services automation software, we’ve put together a list of these ten key benefits.
Professional services automation software allows you to;
1. Do fewer admin tasks
Do away with the need for unnecessary manual tasks once you switch to PSA software. Your software will automate the drudgery and automate many tasks that previously seemed to require endless hours of manual processing.
PSA tools are designed to weed out work-intensive processes. This includes but certainly isn’t limited to project planning and scheduling, invoicing, workflow management, financial reporting, and more.
With these tasks automated, project stakeholders will automatically benefit from more time to do more meaningful work instead.
2. Get full data visibility
Without a good PSA tool, it’s likely your existing projects live in siloes and the data doesn’t “talk” to each other. This means it can often take days and lots of back and forth to get the information you need about schedules, costs, or anything else related to your projects. This in turn slows down decision making which slows down project progress.
PSA software removes this unnecessary back and forth and removes data siloes. You will now find all your information in one centralized dashboard with macro and micro level reports. This gives you a better overall view of project performance at a glance—making it much easier to keep projects moving.
3. Improve the workflow
Better data visibility can also contribute to an improvement in workflow for your staff and other project stakeholders.
Since all the data is now organized and maintained in a centralized dashboard within your PSA software, it can help improve and/or automate managerial processes and workflows as well. This can lead to improvements in product or service planning, customer service, invoicing, inventory management, order tracking, and more.
4. Stay within budget
PSA tools will help you monitor and stay on track with your project budget much more effectively.
You can feed in information about your planned spending and track it against your actual spending to make sure you get a real-life picture of the project finances. This ability to monitor and react faster will help you ensure timely action and prevent budget overruns.
Being able to track what’s working and what’s not working can also help predict and plan for future project budgets more effectively.
5. Boost project profits
PSA software may also hold the key to a more profitable project for you. The tool can not only help you manage your budget (as mentioned above), it also gives you a clear picture of project profitability information.
You get an accurate idea of which clients contribute to profitable project margins, project costs and revenue, resource distribution, and more. Monitoring this data can not only lead to making existing projects more profitable but can also be useful to predict future project profits.
6. Centralize stakeholder communications
Too many project cooks spoiling the broth? Generic project management tools can make stakeholder communications a nightmare. Not everyone uses the tool. There are endless emails, Slack messages, phone calls, and more.
Professional services automation software takes away the chaos and brings peace to project communications by centralizing it all in one location. All stakeholders can update and access the information they need about the project from within the PSA tool. This will keep all stakeholders happy and eliminate the need for manual status updates
7. Use resources better
Optimize your resource usage with a quality PSA tool by your side. Your tool will help you plan and manage your resources for optimum utilization.
You can identify resource needs, find the best fit for projects, and allocate resources effectively for revenue-generating work. Additionally, it will also show you when you’re not quite making the most of all your available resources so you can optimize even further.
Further, your software’s built-in teamwork and collaboration tools like kanban boards can help add a further layer of effective resource utilization. These tools boost team agility and collaboration ensuring your people resources are functioning at optimal levels.
8. Keep your customers happy
As we’ve mentioned, a great PSA solution can become the central hub for all things and people related to a project. This is especially helpful when it comes to communicating and collaborating with your customers.
Your customers or clients can log into your PSA solution at any time to get an “over-the-shoulder” view of the project and monitor its progress. This streamlined approach is likely to lead to much higher customer satisfaction.
9. Accelerate cash flow
With better and automated workflows, invoicing is simpler and much faster. Further, with all data points connected within a project, the cash flow process becomes much more streamlined within your PSA software
All of this put together ultimately helps to accelerate cash flow into the business. This in turn can also help with better revenue prediction and overall business budget planning in the future.
10. Focus on what matters
Finally, the biggest benefit of professional services automation software is that it eliminates the chaos that often unnecessarily surrounds professional services organizations.
By automating tasks and centralizing information, PSA solutions significantly reduce stress for you, your staff, and anyone else involved in your projects. By taking away the focus from repetitive and manual tasks, PSA software can help you focus on work that truly matters.
Further, you can free up the time to truly analyze the data at your disposal to spot any further business opportunities and capitalize on them before it’s too late.
Like the sound of these benefits? Mission Control may just be the tool-rich and easy-to-use professional services automation software your business needs.
