Counterintuitive? Yes. Keep reading to know why.
Management Gurus exhort companies to focus on customers. They say that companies need to develop an outward-looking culture. They are of course very right. But what is happening in IT services companies?
Let us take a detour.
IT companies have been rendering a wide range of complex technology solutions to industries and institutions. The industry is now examining how to arm business computing with AI technologies.
The need for IT companies to stay abreast of technology, engage with their customers, and train their own people has been urgent and persistent. While leading their customers for adaptations of new technologies, their own business operations too have become incredibly complex.
IT companies face multiple challenges in managing their own organizations.
The challenges
Their main challenge is project management. Executing even a single project to the satisfaction of the customer, on time, and within its budget is tough. Planning multiple projects, allocating resources, tracking costs, and project deliveries and costs are incredibly complex.
Managing 1000s of knowledge workers for delivering various projects requires efficient resource management. A fine balance between benching (underutilization) and resource overuse (burnouts) while avoiding shortages (missed revenues and profits) is tough.
With the double whammy of falling productivity and employee attrition, it is no more just an operational issue. It has acquired strategic dimensions. (Listen to this podcast .)
Keeping customers happy isn’t just about keeping them informed. IT companies need to earn their trust by anticipating their need for information, providing it, making timely deliveries, and ensuring error-free billing. Making customers feel that they are part of the project team and that they have a degree of control is essential.
Have the IT companies fully leveraged available enterprise software to meet the above challenges?
Is this a familiar scene?
Every meeting starts with a discussion on the correctness of data and consumes a lot of time. Spreadsheets get discussed and the data that they show gets challenged. All this must happen before any discussion on decisions and actions.
The managers who must manage projects, reallocate resources, prepare project estimates, train and acquire talent, track costs, deliverables, and billing spend a huge time collecting information and validating it.
It is not just about time wasted. The decisions can be wrong due to outdated data. And it may take a while before their consequences like dissatisfied customers, missed revenues, and frustrated employees become apparent.
There is a need to look inward.
The need for looking inward
Looking inward is necessary for putting operational processes back on track and gaining a degree of their control. It is necessary to identify gaps in the use of enterprise software for managing business processes.
Well-oiled, fast, and highly visible end-to-end workflows are necessary to meet the above challenges. The spaghetti of software leads to a lot of manual effort, shortcuts, and poor decisions. Higher costs, poor productivity, missed project deadlines, missed billing, higher DSO, loss of trust by customers, employee demoralization, etc. are some of the symptoms.
The industry has relied too long on a mish-mash of standard -but made-for-products-business software – and homegrown solutions.
With the technology that we have today, the time and effort needed for data collection or validation should be Zero. Managers should have real-time information at their fingertips.
There should be ‘A Single Version Of The Truth ‘.
The Gurus are right, but for a confident outward stance you need strong operational capabilities.
What is the solution?
Professional services automation (PSA) software is the solution.
Kytes PSA integrates all existing software like CRM, ERP, HRMS, etc. It presents information needed for collaboration and making decisions. Your managers will be free to collaborate, make decisions, communicate, and support their people.
Kytes PSA has well-tested workflows and yet it is highly configurable. You will see your revenues, profits, and customer and employee satisfaction going up!
To find out more and for a demo contact us at [email protected]
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