SPI Research Benchmark Results—Secrets of the Best PS Organizations

View this white paper, that looks at the key trends, challenges and results that shaped the PS Industry in 2012. Dave Hofferberth, Founder and Managing Director of SPI Research, will share highlights from the upcoming 2013 PS MaturityTMBenchmark Report including what differentiated leading PS organizations from the rest.

Agency Over-servicing: Who pays?

This report highlights key trends and unique insights into the external and internal challenges facing advertising agencies and marketing services companies and recommends best practices for optimizing growth and profitability in 2012 and beyond. This independent market assessment canvassed opinion from senior decision makers from creative services firms in the US and UK. It reports on the parity between client size and over servicing, why clients fund agency new business development, and the top 3 threats faced by creative services agencies.

Benchmarks and Best Practices for Professional Services Success

As the professional services (PS) market moves into another growth phase, organizations of all sizes may require revolutionary, not evolutionary, improvements to continue to be successful.  To prepare, executives must evaluate all aspects of the business to ensure they have a differentiating strategy, compelling service offers, top talent and most importantly, best-in-class methods and tools to consistently deliver high-quality projects.  These prerequisites warrant investment in tailored professional service applications (PSAs) that provide both the financial underpinning and service execution foundation to achieve sustainable growth.

In this white paper, SPI Research focuses on service execution, one of five Professional Service Performance Pillars™ in the Professional Services Maturity™ benchmark. This paper outlines why service delivery is critical for growth and recommends best practices that professional service organizations (PSOs) can adopt to improve performance.  Based on data from a benchmark study of over 200 management consulting, IT consulting, accounting, media and advertising, and architecture and engineering firms, this paper also provides key benchmark metrics against which you can measure your organization’s performance and use to identify areas for potential improvement.

Is Your Agency a Practice or a Business?

Your future depends on the answer. Neither a practice or an enterprise business model is better or worse than the other, yet each requires its own strategic approach. Is your agency a practice, driven almost exclusively by its leaders? Or is it a business that could continue to operate if its leaders stepped aside? Download your copy of the white paper Is Your Agency a Practice or a Business? from Carlton Associates, a longtime agency advisory firm, to understand the distinctions—and why it’s critical to align your processes and staffing to your model.

Key Professional Services Metrics — Benchmark Yourself

In the 2012 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark Report, you’ll get key performance metrics so you can compare your services organization to an expansive benchmark of peers. Whether you’re an advertising agency, marketing agency, architecture or engineering firm, management consulting company, or a professional services organization within a hardware, software, or SaaS company, you’ll find useful data. The report provides visibility into critical business processes and enables you to compare, diagnose and improve performance.

A Primer for Global Resource Management

Effectively and efficiently sourcing and managing resources globally amidst growing competition is critical for most service providers’ success. This white paper from RTM Consulting discusses challenges and benefits of global resource management and provides recommendations for handling this well. Implementing a professional services automation (PSA) tool is one of several suggestions that will enable services execs to succeed at this significant task.

Managing Growth: A Review of the Global Software and IT Services Industry

This unique research investigates the opportunities for software and IT services companies in 2012 and beyond. Through analysis of how the UK, US, and Australia compare and contrast, it identifies important trends that highlight opportunities and threats to the sector over the next 12 months.

Forrester Research Market Overview: Project-Based ERP for Service Delivery Professionals

Project-based service organizations, in increasing numbers, are demanding applications more tailed to the specific needs of their businesses, including project costing, time capture, and billing. Many of the best also want to integrate project management functionality with the financials and human capital management capabilities of ERP. Download this white paper to get an overview of the market and to learn about several project-based ERP best practices. Anyone considering a move to Services Resource Planning (ERP + Professional Services Automation) should read this report to garner wisdom from those who have preceded them.

Consumption Economics and Technology Professional Services Defend and Protect as You Prepare to Adapt and Transform

In this TSIA white paper, based on the groundbreaking book, Consumption Economics: The New Rules of Tech, the significant shift that is occurring in the services industry in response to the growing worlds of cloud and managed services is described. Today’s service organizations must re-think how they build products, drive revenue, and the services they offer in order to succeed in this new age. Read this white paper for ideas on how this might impact your organization and how you can prepare for the shifting world.

RTM Consulting: PSA + PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

This paper will identify how improvements to Resource Management—both technical and process oriented—can have positive impacts on the bottom line. We have seen—at many companies—that by creating better visibility to the resource management information, you can improve: billable utilization, on-time delivery, and employee satisfaction and retention. This is achieved by defining a target state resource management process that to your unique business needs and enabling those processes with the requisite PSA technology. Employees (and clients) appreciate predictability and insight—and are willing to stick with those PS organizations that can deliver both.

Improving Engagement Planning, Staffing, and Performance

Download this white paper for a look at how consulting firms are gaining visibility and control over resource utilization with cloud-based professional services automation (PSA). Find out how firms like BearingPoint and Hayes Management Consulting are improving efficiency with NetSuite, the industry’s #1 PSA solution.

Aberdeen Group: ERP in Professional Services: Managing Costs When People are the Product

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has long been used in leading organizations to uncover untapped efficiencies, reduce costs, and provide visibility to managers to aid in informed decision making. Still, Aberdeen’s 2011 ERP survey of 73 professional services firms found that only 64% are currently using ERP. Those that are currently using ERP are able to more effectively cut costs, manage projects, and staff accordingly. ERP is quickly becoming a key differentiator for leading professional services firms.

Skills Tracking: An Essential Element for Efficient and Effective Resource and Talent Management

Download this white paper to learn how implementing true skills-based tracking and staffing processes will improve client satisfaction, utilization rates, employee retention and hiring processes, and therefore overall PSO profitability.


Six Steps for Effective Skills Tracking and Resource Management

For professional services executives, resource optimization is key to the success of their business. Placing the right consultant onto the right project at the right time is essential to the success of client engagements and client satisfaction, and leads to greater business benefits—from improving billable utilization to reducing the need for subcontractors. To help illustrate how each firm’s skills tracking requirements are unique, this paper references two fictional organizations, each with unique business offerings and resource requirements and profiles.

Nucleus Research: Independent Evaluation of NetSuite’s Customers in the Professional Services Industry

In its assessment of NetSuite’s customers in the professional services industry, Nucleus Research found NetSuite enabled customers to increase visibility and improve resource utilization. Professional services firms said NetSuite’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) application enabled them to automate processes and grow revenues without adding back-office staff. Nucleus identified a number of areas where NetSuite’s Professional Services customers experienced benefits: Reporting and Visibility, Resource Utilization, Accounting, Billing, Financial close and Audit time, IT Cost Savings, and Client Satisfaction.

The Power of PSA

In this white paper from Service Performance Insight (SPI) Research, you’ll get an introduction to Professional Services Automation (PSA) and learn how it can have dramatic impacts on billable resource utilization, revenues per employee and per consultant, project profitability and more.

Services Automation

In this white paper, written by Service Performance Insight (SPI) Research—a research and analyst firm specializing in the professional services sector—you’ll get an introduction to Services Automation, and learn how choosing the right path for automation can improve profitability, utilization and the strength of your services business.

Business Process Alignment: Accelerating the Quote-to-Cash Cycle

In this white paper, written by Service Performance Insight (SPI) Research—a research and analyst firm specializing in the professional services sector—you’ll learn how optimizing and integrating core business functions can revolutionize the way you run your services organization. This white paper uses benchmark data and metrics to illustrate how integrating your CRM, PSA and ERP/financial systems allows you to reap the benefits of Services Resource Planning (SRP) in every phase of your business.

Beyond Utilization: Why Profitability Matters

Download this white paper, written by Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) and get a look at how tracking profitability metrics can help your PS business gain a more complete view of performance. Offering practical guidance and industry-level benchmark data, this white paper illustrates why utilization metrics alone can be misleading and mask critical business problems, how focusing on profitability can help build the overall health, agility and growth of your PS business, and how the right technology can dramatically improve project margins, billable rates, rate realization, revenue growth and annual revenue by consultant.

Professional Services Company Success Kit: Moving Beyond QuickBooks

Find out the key reasons fast growing Professional Services companies move from QuickBooks and what solutions they need to help take their services business to the next level. You’ll read case studies from actual customers who have made the jump from QuickBooks—and the value that delivered at their businesses. And you’ll get access to an ROI study from independent research firm Nucleus Research listing the tangible benefits that Cloud ERP solutions can deliver to your company.

Service Performance Insight: Sell Locally, Deliver Globally

Analyst firm, Service Performance Insight, shated how cloud professional services solutions enable global services businesses to gain comprehensive real time visibility, integrated financials, resource optimization and services management, down to the individual project level across geographies, currencies, and tax jurisdictions.

Best Practices of the Leading Service Organizations
Charting the Course to Professional Service Excellence

This whitepaper, written by Service Performance Insight (SPI Research)—a research and analyst firm specializing in the professional services sector, reviews key findings from over two years of research of top performing service organizations. This whitepaper explores the best practices that enable the best of the best to outperform their rivals, including an in-depth case study of Accruent, (a pre-public software solution provider), a consistent top performer year after year, and identified the ways services businesses can improve their own performance to achieve best-of-class performance.

Maximizing Performance and Profitability in Professional Services Organizations

Companies that provide services account for over 55% of the US economy today—a percentage that is growing rapidly. This NetSuite White Paper explores the key business processes underpinning successful companies that derive their revenue from the provision of professional services—whether they are standalone service-providing businesses or parts of a larger organization.
Four critical business processes are discussed here:

  • Accelerating the time from lead through the contract
  • Managing the project from contract through completion
  • Improving profitability in the delivery-to-cash cycle
  • Managing professional services accounting