Professional services companies don’t have to manage inventory or shipping of physical products. However, there’s quite a lot that does need to be tracked, measured, and accurately billed in order to deliver top quality services to clients. When this type of project based accounting is done on an ad hoc basis with spreadsheets, documents, and other siloed systems, clients can suffer and a business can be on the path to failure.
A professional services business is only as good as the work it produces for its clients. It's essential to find professional services automation software that makes it easy to deliver top quality services. That software also needs to help keep profit margins from getting too thin and keep clients happy.
The problem with legacy, siloed project management systems
Since many professional services companies start out small and grow with time, they develop legacy systems that offer a disjointed and siloed approach to project management. Project management spreadsheets used for the initial projects are copied and recopied, despite a firm's capabilities and client list growing. Accounting is often relegated to invoicing that doesn’t accurately reflect the time or resources spent on a project.
These legacy practices can leave big gaps of visibility in the project lifecycle, and major questions about utilization rates. With siloed approaches to project management, companies are left in a constant “catch up game” of trying to track project accounting among other things. Other tracking traps include keeping tabs on the time and expenses spent, as well as human resources used, to complete the project and billing to the client. Not only is this inefficient, but increases the risk for error and miscalculations. These errors can easily become client dissatisfaction, lost revenue and, eventually, business failure.
Effective project management for modern professional services companies
Successful project-based companies rely on effective project management, and it's clear that siloed systems don’t deliver. The solution is to find an integrated, project-based accounting software that eliminates inefficiencies and helps deliver top quality service to clients without wasting resources.
The data-based project bids help a company become more efficient at delivering what they promise while facilitating visibility on margins.
This all starts with the bidding process. With integrated project-based accounting software, a company can accurately make smart project bids using data from past projects, and current information on staff availability and materials required. As a result, the data-based project bids help a company grow and become more efficient at delivering what they promise while facilitating visibility on margins. This wouldn’t be possible in a siloed system that keeps time-tracking, billing, and project workflows completely separate.
More accurate bidding is just one of the benefits of ditching a legacy system for project-based accounting software. By gaining visibility into all aspects of the process, a project-based services company can offer a better experience from start to finish for their clients.
Sage Intacct’s project accounting software captures 100% of client billable time and expenses. With everything captured in one location, it streamlines the entire order-to-cash process. In addition, you’ll gain unprecedented visibility into the bidding, project delivery, and accounting processes through real-time dashboards.
At RKL eSolutions, we’re dedicated to making sure our services company clients get the support they need - from bid to delivery. Contact us today to find out more about moving past your siloed system with the #1 ranked cloud ERP solution.
