Over the last three years project based businesses have seen a 9% decrease in new client penetration, a 6% increase in employee attrition, and a 5% decrease in billable employees. Do these numbers feel familiar? If so, you should be looking to automate your project based company.
What is causing these shifts in project based businesses?
- Customers are extremely educated before they enter the sales process.
- Younger employees are entering the workforce and generally do not stay with a company long-term in the way that the generations before them did.
- A lack of business agility and limited project visibility contributes to organization-wide underutilization.
These factors, together, mean that it is critical to use technology to engage customers, form profitable relationships, and have structured business processes. According to Service Performance Insight, the top 20% of organizations have implemented structured business processes and utilize integrated information system to assure there is “one view of the business.”
To procure and retain customers, an organization needs systems in place that promote deep customer engagement, efficient and accurate project planning and resource management, ease of use for employees, and ERP integration for billing and enhanced analytics. Currently, most organizations have several different applications, spreadsheets, and paper to manage these activities. This promotes employee error and a lack of corporate performance management.
Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation
Microsoft unveiled their Project Service Automation (PSA) App for D365 in 2016. This app fully connects with the Sales module and can easily connect to an ERP system for easy reporting and oversight. D365 PSA is an end-to-end project management tool that takes an organization from the initial sales opportunity all the way through billing and service analytics.
That comprehensiveness reaps benefits. According to Microsoft, the D365 PSA solution is:
- Purpose Built
PSA is role and function based. It simple for an organization to set up security roles and, also, to adopt functionality piece by piece. An organization could start with only using project planning and later add in resource management. Then, down the road, employees can start using the time and expense capabilities. This makes user adoption simple and an organization can get up and running without being overwhelmed by functionality they are not ready for.
- Productive
Having everything project-oriented and in one place makes for a more productive organization. Employees do not have to search through multiple file servers, spreadsheets, and filing cabinets to get what they need. Also, PSA’s integration with Office Collaboration Tools makes it easy to track project emails, notes, and other communications and relate them all to the project.
- Intelligent
At the end of a project, the ultimate question is, “Was this project profitable?” This is a question that should really be posed, and answered, at the beginning of and throughout the project. Automated Risk Assessment from the project estimate to completion plan can help project managers take corrective actions to get a project back on track and remain profitable, before things really go off the rails.
- Adaptable
In today’s fast-paced world, organizations often have to adapt their service offerings to stay competitive and on-trend. Legacy, on-premise systems can make this extremely difficult to do. PSA is a cloud-based system that offers business process driven functionality, making it an agile and adaptable solution that enables organizational growth. Organizations are no longer hindered by lengthy upgrades, extensive custom development, or the need to engage a highly technical resource every time they have a business change.
Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation gives SMB and Enterprise customers the functionality they need to increase new client penetration, decrease employee attrition, and increase billable employee time, all while in a secure cloud environment.
Ready to see the benefits for your company? Get in touch with us.
