The following is a Q&A between Ed Marshall, General Manager of Services Vertical, NetSuite, and Brian Becker, McGladrey National Leader, Technology Consulting, highlighting best practices the McGladrey team has identified in working with modern consulting and professional services firms.
Marshall: Please tell us about McGladrey and your unique offerings for consulting and professional services firms.
Becker: McGladrey is a leading professional services firm providing assurance, tax and consulting services. At the technology consulting practice of McGladrey, we understand how critical it is to partner with our clients to achieve their business objectives by providing innovative solutions that align people, processes and technology. Technology is instrumental in driving business growth and creating more efficient processes that contribute to increased productivity. By combining technical knowledge and business savvy with a full range of IT services, we're able to assess complex situations, devise effective solutions, and implement them quickly and cost effectively.
Marshall: What are the most important challenges to consulting firms looking to grow their business in today's market?
Becker: Modern consulting firms can take on nationwide and global business opportunities in ways that could have only been dreamed about a generation ago. But with those increased opportunities come increased complexities: more moving parts, more time zones, more billing and taxation considerations, and more potential to lose focus by engaging in projects that will not actually be profitable or even feasible for the organization to execute.
Firms also must realize that their clients are more educated, and more demanding, than ever. They have come to expect a high standard of service, not just well-written answers on an RFP and a compelling sales presentation. They are cost-conscious and keenly aware of the terms of their contracts, and are not afraid to cry foul if their needs are not being met. This means consulting organizations need to proactively manage any potential shortfalls or gaps in service—because if you don't catch them, your client certainly will.
Finally, they must be ready and willing to act as a single firm and present a unified front to clients.
Marshall: Can you elaborate on what it means to "present a unified front"?
Becker: Clients want full integrated solutions and not purely niche services. They understand that successful business improvement requires addressing business processes, technology, and organizational transformation in a seamless way by their consulting firm. This requires broad and deep technical, industry, and organizational skills. Also, the experience of transitioning from sales and account managers to project managers and field service personnel should be seamless, but all too often it is not.
This isn't because consulting firms are intentionally changing the rules of the game, but because so many of them simply do not have the systems they need to share information between roles and stages of the client lifecycle. As firms are often providing consulting services related to process optimization and if their processes are not managed well between groups, the client will have less confidence in a consulting firm's recommendations, so this is a critical element for a firm to succeed.
Marshall: What are some of the key considerations in selecting technology to support modern business needs?
Becker: Professional firms need to know what each of their resources is doing today, and which will be available tomorrow. And this information cannot be restricted to a privileged few, or only available in a monthly batch report. It must be real-time, it must be accurate, and it must be accessible to all key stakeholders in business development, service delivery, and upper management. At bare minimum, this means a commitment to a professional services automation (PSA) solution.
To meet the challenges facing today's consulting firms in terms of collaborating globally and operating as efficiently as possible, solutions need to be built for scalability, flexibility, and rapid deployment. Spending 12 to 24 months to implement a PSA solution is simply not an option, nor is needing six months or more to roll out a new territory. This makes cloud computing PSA solutions particularly compelling, as they can typically be deployed at a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time of conventional on-premise systems.
Cloud computing also means a significantly reduced IT footprint, meaning your company can continue to devote resources to client projects and professional development, rather than the care and feeding of server farms.
Marshall: What are your recommendations on technology to support today's mobile workforce?
Becker: It's a mandate of today's business climate—the workforce is more globally distributed than ever before. The more proactive consulting firms keep their consultants on the road supporting clients and meeting with prospects. This creates challenges for consulting firms not only from the resource management perspective, but in the finance department as well. Mobile technology devices help consultants be more productive while on the road, and minimize time spent on administrative duties as well.
Cloud-based PSA solutions that are accessible anytime anywhere, including on mobile devices, greatly increase the productivity of consultants. Time and expenses captured in real-time enable firms to invoice their clients with greater ease. There are even solutions that allow consultants to take a picture of a receipt that is automatically entered into their expense report, eliminating the paper-trail of receipts and speeding up invoicing cycles and reimbursement cycles. These types of small, yet important functions are critical to keeping consulting firms fluid.
Marshall: Is there any particularly "low-hanging fruit" that most companies can take advantage of by modernizing their professional services practices with PSA?
Becker: We have observed over the years that one of the most crucial make-or-break factors for success in a professional services engagement is improving effective resource utilization—which means having the ability to schedule the right person, with the best skills on the right project for the most successful outcome. Unfortunately, most consulting organizations lack the proper resource utilization tools to help them understand how to increase utilization of their billable resources, while improving client satisfaction simultaneously.
It is incredibly powerful from an organizational standpoint to be able to easily track quantifiable values through the course of a client project. Having an updated, cloud-based PSA solution enables management to more easily stay updated on all projects and to add-or-subtract personnel as needed at any point during an engagement, all the while having a clear view into the real-time financials of each project.
Marshall: What are the additional benefits of a Services Resource Planning (SRP) solution, compared to stand-alone PSA, CRM, or ERP implementations?
Becker: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) gives you access to financial information on a customer. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems can tell you what they have purchased and the steps you have taken to sell them more. Professional Services Automation (PSA) solutions can tell you which milestones have been reached and how many hours are being spent on a particular client's project in the next month. But none of those pieces of information tells you everything you really need to know about that customer.
SRP solutions provide all of the above capabilities with a completely integrated approach. Account managers gain insight not only to what a customer has bought or is likely to buy in the future, but also to the health and status of the current project. Project managers understand the commitments and promises that have been made to the client over the entire lifespan of the relationship. The back office knows whether an outstanding customer complaint should take priority over a billing reminder. SRP is the next logical step for consulting firms who truly want to create that unified front to their clients.
Being aware of client profitability as well as the profitability of specific projects can enable a consulting firm to win more profitable business in the future. Armed with the knowledge of when a quote can be reduced while still maintaining an acceptable margin and when to walk away from a deal can impact the firm's long-term profitability. Having access to all the benefits of cloud-based SRP available from anytime anywhere makes the solution even more valuable to firms with a diverse and mobile consultant base.
Marshall: Are there any roles in a consulting organization which particularly benefit from SRP solutions?
Becker: Certainly, everyone in the organization will benefit, but the greatest improvement is probably enjoyed by project managers. Today, project managers sit uncomfortably at the nexus of promises, expectations, disjointed silos of information and rushed cross-departmental briefing calls. They should be in a position to make the client engagement smoother for everyone involved, but many spend most of their time chasing down answers and making apologies.
SRP gives them not only the information they need to know, but also the ability to finally take a more proactive role in addressing concerns before they become problems. That goes both for client complaints as well as service personnel concerns. When a client's needs aren't being met, nobody's happy. SRP gives project managers the tools they need to keep the peace.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.