The term Professional Services Automation (PSA) is defined as an end-to-end software or system that helps professional service businesses manage their projects and processes efficiently. It brings all facets of professional services project management together. Traditionally serving as an Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP) solution, in today’s world it provides essential automation for resource management, cost tracking, pipeline management, billing and reporting to improve day-to-day operations. And can be integrated with other accounting software as well.
WHO USES PSA?
Professional Services Automation software is generally cloud-based and can be used by any company offering professional services such as financial and consulting firms, IT, marketing, advertising and software agencies. It is used to track metrics such as billable and non-billable hours, actual vs planned revenue and project margins to create a world-class organization for professional services delivery. With this insight the PSA tool becomes a single source of truth, with which companies can make informed decisions with the capability to scale and retain customers.
VALUES & BENEFITS OF PSA TOOLS
A key requirement of PSA beyond traditional project management is knowing critical information that makes your product and services profitable, ie billable tasks of resources on a particular project.
Do the work. Not the admin Let’s be honest, doing admin is possibly one of the most procrastinated about manual tasks that never seem to end. Most of the time a build up of this ends up in hiring an extra resource just to keep up with it. Never fear, PSA software is here. It can automate your admin process therefore increasing capacity and reducing costs and labour so that focus can be on growing the business.
Improved Forecasting Every time data from a project is input into the PSA tool, it accumulates the learnings to help users plan and optimize their processes every day. With access to this advanced AI data and insight, management teams have full visibility of their team’s capacity months in the future to make better decisions on when projects can be delivered.
Increased Resource Utilization Being an end-to-end platform, PSA software is an enabler of productivity. With the transparency to see where resources are allocated for multiple projects at the same time, businesses can ensure the right people are on the right projects. Strengths and weaknesses can be addressed immediately, avoiding re-workings and wasting time and efforts by the team, which can in turn cause a loss in morale as well.
Decreased ‘leaky buckets’ A silicon valley proverb we often use internally is ‘Leaky Buckets don’t Float’. A seamless process between professional services delivery teams is a critical part of avoiding revenue leakage. PSA software can generally also capture non-billable time and expenses helping these teams identify where the budget is being blown and fill the gaps. The cost of failed implementations can impact future projects, create customer dissatisfaction and cause churn.
Greater customer satisfaction The customer is not buying your software/service for the sake of it. They want to see value from it and for you to deliver on the promises made. It is critical that your team communicates with the customer throughout the entire customer journey to ensure their business goals and your action plan are aligned. A good PSA tool allows you to share progress with the customer in real-time any time. A high quality of service increases your chance of loyalty, retaining the customer for life. `````
All data in once place Keeping all data on a centralized, automated platform keeps disparate processes at bay and avoids knowledge gaps between teams. It reduces chances of miscommunication and error in transferring information from one system to another. Implementing services delivery with a PSA tool brings together sales, services delivery and customer success teams, giving the foundation to help businesses scale and see success faster.
Taking the above into consideration, a good PSA tool will help keep all the cogs of your services business turning smoothly. Leveraging this software will give teams transparency, allow better time tracking, communication with the customer while adding value to their experience and truly understanding their level of performance. Maximizing the capabilities of a PSA good software will only allow the users to gain more intel from it and create a smarter narrative from the data it collects.
"Precursive was a deliberate investment to support our focus on the client and deliver value."
"[Precursive’s] margin tracker is a great tool for us, it really drives change and gives team leaders the data they need. it was easy to drive adoption as it is easy to use."
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