The professional services industry is booming thanks to the proliferation of business software applications. According to the SPI 2022 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark report, firms are averaging 15 percent net profit. We are here to help firms improve their results by leveraging technology.
One of the ways we help is through educational events, so we've put together a three-part webinar series on the strategies professional services firms can employ to drive better results for clients, staff, and the bottom line. Patrick Connally, National Industry Director – U.S. Professional Services at Microsoft, Andy Yeomans, HSO ProServ’s Executive Vice President of Sales, will share their knowledge during three sessions:
Part 1: Find and Win More Work
With the highly competitive professional services landscape, it’s not easy to identify potential projects and then win them. And with lengthy, complicated sales cycles, it's challenging to develop a strong project pipeline.
But there are solid strategies to help find new opportunities and improve win rates. Supported by the right technology, those strategies can help you leverage your firm's current relationships to uncover new work, use pursuit intelligence to bump up bid-to-win rates, and capitalize on opportunity strength indicators to build better pursuit strategies.
In the first session, Patrick and Andy will look at finding and winning more business, including how to:
- Put the firm’s relationships to work to unearth new opportunities and increase win rates
- Leverage experience and qualifications across the firm to create winning proposals
- Put pursuit intelligence tools to work to make more effective pursuit decisions and increase the bid-to-win ratio
- Get a 360-degree view of clients, relationships, pursuits, and experience
Thursday, March 17, 2022 2:00 – 2:30 PM EST
Part 2: Deliver Profitable Projects
After you’ve won a project, the next tasks are to deliver the best possible outcome for the client and maximize revenue from the project. To do so requires optimizing project plans and resource allocations and monitoring project profitability in real time through the delivery cycle.
SPI’s 2022 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark Report says firms that adopted professional services automation solutions experienced an 11 percent increase in billable utilization. In the second session, Patrick and Andy will discuss optimizing project profitability:
- Build more accurate project estimates that ensure projects are started off right
- Plan and manage resources to drive on-time delivery
- Put project controls back into the hands of project managers
- Leverage real-time insights to drive utilization and project margins
Thursday, May 19, 2022 2:00 – 2:30 PM EDT
Part 3: Streamline Time Tracking and Billing
Accurate time tracking and billing are critical to running a successful professional services business. However, these tasks are time consuming, with manual steps that often lead to errors. It’s common for project managers or finance staff to have to find employees to gain insight into their hours, which delays billing and takes staff away from more important pursuits.
By automating these processes, firms can significantly improve accuracy and timeliness while reducing frustration. By optimizing time tracking and billing, you charge the right amount, and your firm gets paid faster, which supports revenue growth. According to that SPI benchmark study, productivity improvements have impacted a firm’s bottom line, with project margins climbing 12 percent in 2021.
In the third session, Patrick and Andy will discuss topics around time tracking and billing:
- Streamlining time & expense capture and approval processes
- Improving time sheet accuracy and easing the task of dealing with missing time sheets
- Automating review/approval of client invoices prior to sending
- Improving AR and collection processes
Thursday, August 4, 2022 2:00 – 2:30 PM EDT
Join HSO ProServ and Microsoft to learn how to drive better results for your professional services firm
For professional services firms, the effort to drive better results is ongoing. HSO can help; with our industry experience and longstanding partnership with Microsoft, we help professional services firms tackle any challenge, regardless of size.
today!