In this article, we’ll investigate what the best professional services automation software tools are for information ...
In this article, we’ll investigate what the best professional services automation software tools are for information technology consulting companies and managed service providers.
Professional Services Automation software is typically an integrated application or suite of applications, bringing together various departments within a consulting or people centric business to optimise efficiency. Professional services automation software is used predominantly by businesses such as marketing agencies, legal firms, engineering practices, architecture firms but also by managed service providers (MSP) businesses.
PSA software solutions can cove the following functionalities and modules:
Although some professional services automation (PSA) solutions will cover all of the above functionalities, some will cover more or less. We will cover which solutions cover what modules in the following sections.
The terms Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) & Professional Services Automation (PSA) are complimentary and sometimes interchangeable. They do often do the same things and professional services software can also be an enterprise resource planning solution.
To learn more about the definition of professional services automation, the benefits and more, check out our in depth post here.
Starting with business development and sales, MSP's need the ability to manage leads and opportunities through to won business. The key differentiator in this process for MSP's & IT consultancies in particular is the estimation of effort and the ability to locate and book out the correct skill sets internally to meet client needs. MSP's also need the ability to combine several types of products & services such as professional services, support, IT hardware & software (Cloud & On-Premise).
The best PSA solutions understand the business logic and flow of data post sale into contract management, project management and IT service management, removing the need for human intervention.
For professional services businesses, especially IT consultancies and MSP's, human capital is their number one asset and differentiator, but also their biggest overhead. Maximising the amount of time your consultants are being billed to client projects is crucial in running a profitable managed service provider business. But this is difficult to achieve without having the right data available regarding the availability and skills of your people.
Modern professional services automation software brings availability, skills and resource utilization KPI data to your fingertips, allowing you to identify resourcing bottlenecks, under utilized consultants and then act accordingly. This ensures that as soon as you have low utilization of your team, you can assign them to projects or bump up your sales efforts to remain financially healthy.
IT consulting and managed service providers (MSP) need to ensure that their customers projects are delivered on time and on budget, at a profit and that service levels meet or exceed any agreed service level agreements (SLA’s).
To achieve this, centralising project management, procurement, time recording and travel & expense data into one solution is key as it allows business leaders to quickly pull reports on projects that are unprofitable and adjust as necessary before it becomes a significant problem. This allows your finance team to be proactive in their approach and ensure costs are controlled.
MSP's & IT consultancies bill their customers using multiple variables such as payment terms, fixed cost, time and materials and more. They also can mix several of these variables into every contract, with software being paid on a predetermined basis regardless of project outcomes and services being billed for on an acceptance basis, for example. This can cause a huge amount of administration and complexity for your organisation as the amount of customers and orders stack up. Scale this out and you either need an efficient professional services automation platform, or more finance administrators.
Today, PSA solutions accurately feed data from your CRM, project management and other business areas into your billing engine, giving you one less thing to worry about and optimising cash flow by invoicing customers on time. This can help your MSP business to ensure it maintains positive cashflow.
Every company needs a finance system capable of handling at least basic accounting, but for managed service providers and MSP's, some additional capabilities are needed. Due to the nature of the MSP business, you need to properly account for a variety of professional services, support, subscriptions and more on multi-year contracts with varied payment terms. Revenue recognition is therefore key, as well as project accounting.
Many PSA solutions include financial management, allowing you to reduce the time spent moving data from project specific tools to your finance system. This removes the possibility of human error, data duplication and is a great time saving bonus.
You may also have interenational ambitions for your organization and in that case, you probably have a few legal entities too. Having a robust financial management backend to your PSA software will help with quickly analysing operational and financial data, plus in operating across multiple geographies and accounting jurisdictions.
Choosing the best professional service automation for your managed service provider (MSP) organization always depends on your size, growth ambitions, current IT landscape and more.
We recommend that businesses always go through a thorough requirements gathering process and vendor evaluation process when selecting new enterprise resource planning or professional services automation software.
With that said, here are some of the most popular PSA solutions available on the market today:
Sage Intacct serves many of the needs of Managed Services Providers in it's integrated suite of functionality suited to professional services based firms.
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SAP Business ByDesign is a Cloud solution designed for SME businesses with service, projects, HR, billing and finance in one solution, perfect for growing IT & MSP providers.
Find out more about SAP Business ByDesign >>>
Organise a SAP Business ByDesign Demo >>>
Get SAP Business ByDesign Pricing >>>
Netsuite brings together a rich set of functionality useful for MSP's including sales and marketing, professional services automation plus finance for total business visibility and control.
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