Tackle the Business Management Challenges of your Professional Services Business
In a complex professional services business effective business management is paramount. Although a law firm and a marketing agency are completely different businesses, they both have similar challenges as professional service companies.
In a complex professional services business effective business management is paramount. Although a law firm and a marketing agency are completely different businesses, they both have similar challenges as professional service companies.
To succeed, professional services businesses need to maintain client satisfaction, optimize internal operations, manage resources, and ensure project profitability. There are two important roles that can help in these – if they are able to tackle their business management challenges first.
CFOs and their challenges in Professional Services Business
The Chief Financial Officer's role is nowadays more focused on being a strategic business partner. This entails a set of specific challenges in professional services. These are the common pains we see CFOs having:
How to engage stakeholders to monitor key business drivers? How to make the boring numbers appealing?
How to gain true visibility into project and customer profitability?
How to test different scenarios on project profitability?
How to automate revenue recognition forecasts?
How to gather forecast updates from all organization levels?
By effectively addressing these challenges, CFOs can contribute to the long-term success and sustainability of their companies.
Read also: Naviloq is in the heart of PHM Group’s complex reporting environment
Project Managers and their challenges in Professional Services Business
Project managers play a vital role in professional services businesses. They must master resource allocation perfectly, exceeding customer expectations while keeping projects profitable. These are the common pains we see project managers having:
How to optimize resource usage?
How to coordinate communication among team members and clients?
How to forecast future resource needs?
How to ensure project timeline adherence?
How to efficiently manage workload and resource allocation?
By solving these challenges, Project Managers have an easier job to deliver successful and profitable projects.
Read also: Data-based resourcing increases Castrén & Snellman’s client and employee satisfaction
Pick the correct pain killers to ease your Professional Services Business
Whether you are a CFO or a Project Manager working in the professional services industry, you can find remedy to your business pains with correct tools. Professional services companies can leverage data and a well-suited BI & Planning solution to tackle all the challenges mentioned above – whether it’s the complexities of business reporting and planning, resource management or project profitability.
BI & Planning tool Naviloq is designed for business users and finance experts. You can report, plan, analyze and collaborate with it across your entire business. You can also combine data from all business units into one place and secure it into built-in data warehouse. But how exactly does Naviloq help CFOs and Project Managers of professional services businesses?
Business Unit Dashboard in Naviloq.
1. Automated True Project & Customer Profitability Calculations:
As noted, project profitability is a key factor for professional services companies. With Naviloq, you can get real-time visibility on project and customer profitability through accurate automated calculations and allocations that consider both direct and indirect sales and costs.
2. Automated Revenue Recognition Planning:
In Naviloq you have the possibility to streamline your revenue recognition process for a clearer financial picture.
3. Project and capacity planning:
You can test, anticipate, and manage capacity constraints with precision. You can also create different scenarios and ensure projects are well-defined, budgeted, and executed.
4. Visually appealing dashboards tailored for different end-user needs:
Including dedicated workspaces, automatic drill down analyses and comprehensive user access controls.
5. Unlock United Intelligence:
Get data from all operational sources, message and share insights with co-workers and clients on the same cloud platform. It’s like your business WhatsApp.
6. Monitor resources:
With Naviloq you can efficiently allocate and manage human resources to ensure peak performance. Read a real-life experience from below.
Words from a professional services company
Castrén & Snellman Attorneys is one of Finland’s leading law firms. Law is a hectic business, where optimal resources and an up-to-date current picture are particularly important. Naviloq helps Castrén & Snellman to ensure both customer and employee satisfaction:
We have created reports with various timelines that include information about what each team and individual is working on. Reports show me their workloads and who can start new projects. Whenever I start making new resourcing decisions, I check these reports first. When work is divided evenly between experts, the client is always provided with the best quality of expertise.
Naviloq also makes complex data easier to understand and it can be used to develop knowledge-based management:
Naviloq makes my daily work much easier, and one of the biggest surprises has been the ease of reporting. Instead of collecting data from different sources and combining it manually in Excel, I can use predefined data models. I can focus more on analyzing data and finding relevant figures.
Join our monthly newsletter for valuable updates like blog posts, and upcoming events and webinars.