The management consulting industry has been adapting to a rapidly shrinking world, with clients routinely requiring global consulting teams to help solve some of their most challenging operational issues. PRTM has responded to this challenge in part through its implementation of the NetSuite OpenAir solution to manage its global projects. With over 600 professionals serving global organizations from its 19 offices worldwide, PRTM manages and operates its business as a global whole rather than individual country operating units, however, the volume of globally driven projects is at unprecedented levels. Implementing the NetSuite OpenAir solution has enabled PRTM to commit to a greater number of large multi-national clients and efficiently allocate resources on a global basis.
The Challenge: For over 35 years, PRTM has been serving an expanding slate of customers drawn mainly from the Global 1000 in industry sectors ranging from automotive, industrial and aerospace, life sciences, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, energy and public sector. By 2007, PRTM recognized that new challenges were coming with the global economy. That meant finding better ways to manage over 600 consultants and deliver consulting services in 36 countries, with one global management team and governance structure and a single view of global resources. When the company relied on a more regionalized project management system and spreadsheets for rolling up a global project view and resource management it was enough to keep bench time at a minimum.
The Solution: PRTM worked with NetSuite OpenAir to replace its legacy system and manual processes for accumulating time and expense on global projects with a state of the art professional services automation solution readily accessed through the cloud by its consultants. The solution can track consultant skill sets, language proficiencies, and vertical market and practice experience making it possible for projects to be staffed globally. Projects and resource requirements are managed from the project opening and resource allocation stage to final invoice in the OpenAir system, delivering a unified view of all of PRTM's client activities on a global basis. The software as a service model has enabled PRTM to turn over responsibility for maintenance, software upgrades and functionality development, enabling the firm to focus on its core business.
The Result: PRTM has successfully transitioned to a truly global business solution and has enjoyed strong growth, surging over 20 percent in 2010 and a significant increase in consulting headcount enterprise-wide. The cloud-based software as a service solution has simplified PRTM's IT and technology consulting needs, allowing PRTM to eliminate a full-time developer position. With a broader, larger, and more far reaching global client base, and the overall complexity of client commercial terms increasing dramatically, PRTM is well positioned to respond to its global client needs that its legacy systems simply were not designed to support. Overall, project accounting overhead has decreased 30 percent, and resource management cycles are down 40 percent.
Editor's Note: Susan Kantor, chief financial officer of PRTM, submitted the case study to Consulting magazine on the work the firm has done to replace the firm's legacy systems and manual processes with NetSuite OpenAir's software-as-a-service model.
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