| At a glance Professional Services Automation (PSA) software can significantly improve both productivity and project profitability. By integrating all existing software packages, capturing and validating data, and making it available in real-time, PSA software enables data-based collaboration and better decision-making. It helps with project proposals, resource allocation, and project planning, preventing wasteful work and avoiding duplication of data. Overall, PSA software provides all the necessary tools and real-time data for high-quality decision-making, leading to improved operational efficiency and increased profits. |
You can achieve 10% to 40% productivity gains and 2 % to 5% improvement in project profitability.
“Wait”, you might say, “we already have good enterprise software packages and we always keep investing in productivity tools. Can we achieve these kinds of improvements? How?”
The short answer: Yes you can. By deploying Professional Services Automation (PSA) software.
The long answer:
PSA software helps you overcome all the problems that affect your productivity and project profitability such as:
- Wrong estimation of project costs while making project proposals.
- Missed billing due to non-availability of the right resources at the right time.
- Having too many people on the bench due to faulty resource forecasting.
- Unrealistic project planning.
- Not tracking project tasks, deliverables, and to-date costs and profitability in real-time.
Your present situation
If you look closely enough, you will notice that your managers work very hard to avoid the above problems. They gather information from various departments. They enter the information in their spreadsheets.
When they discuss their spreadsheets with others for making decisions, they come across different versions of the same data. A lot of their time is validating data and reworking their spreadsheets. They often use outdated information.
In every meeting, your managers spend a lot of time sharing and discussing spreadsheets. This is a clear sign that various problems that reduce productivity and drain profits are present in your organization.
Your best-in-class enterprise software packages are very useful in their respective domains. But they create islands of automation causing additional work that results in faulty and delayed decisions. Critical information like to-date-project costs and projected costs are not even possible to obtain in real time.
When you deploy PSA software
PSA software integrates all your existing software packages. It captures data as it occurs, validates it through consistent and tested protocols, and makes it available wherever and whenever it is required.
By removing the need for entering data again and again, it prevents productivity-sapping work and by avoiding multiple copies of the same data it preserves its integrity. PSA software thus makes available a ‘single version of the truth’ in real-time to all those who need it.
Moreover, PSA software calculates up-to-date project-wise costs and project margins. It also shows projected costs and margins.
PSA software, through all the above, enables real-time data-based collaboration across various functions and improves decision making speed and quality.
You can make project proposals based on your experience in formulating WBS, resource allocation, and costing of completed projects. Proposal building gets templatized through well-tested workflows.
PSA software helps in rational resource allocation by skillset matching and forecasting. It prevents excessive benching resources. It also helps in timely resource availability.
It helps in better project planning through more granular WBS and task allocation based on previous project experience. It helps in the consistent tracking of project tasks and deliverables. It thus helps in timely billing.
Summary
Professional Service Automation Software provides your managers with all the necessary tools and reliable real-time data to make high quality decisions with speed. PSA software makes it possible to achieve the above gains in productivity and project profitability.
Related
Faulty resource allocation leaks profits -part 1
Faulty resource allocation leaks profits – part 2
Reduce the gap between as-sold and as-built project costs
