With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Professional Services firms can access information in real time to deliver projects on time/ on budget, while driving productivity and profitability.
Imagine how many billable hours have been put into trying to figure out the holy grail of optimal utilization rates.
Utilization in the professional services sector is a crucial metric because management needs to understand how much time staff members are spending doing billable tasks versus non-billable tasks. Billable utilization along with profitability and productivity it’s long been argued are mission-critical for the financial health of a company. The higher the utilization rate, the more profitable the company.
Right now, the utilization rate for professional services organizations around the world is about 75 percent.
Forget the short-term sticking plaster
For professional services businesses to maximize utilization metrics, they must think beyond day-to-day project management and be able to plan for tomorrow, the next six months, and even the next five years.
Disparate systems or paper and spreadsheet-based forms of project tracking no longer pass muster in the modern workplace.
For professional services businesses to maximize utilization metrics, they must think beyond day-to-day project management and be able to plan for tomorrow, the next six months, and even the next five years.
Disparate systems or paper and spreadsheet-based forms of project tracking no longer pass muster in the modern workplace.
Unify to drive transparency and collaboration
By using a single platform such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, your entire team can access information in real time to deliver projects on time and on budget. It combines all project-related processes of a service company into one solution – from sales to project and resource management, project handling to accounting and reporting.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations combines all aspects of the project into one place – this is great for transparent collaboration which in turn, drives productivity. Plus, through the integration of Microsoft Teams into Dynamics 365 Project Operations, project team members have a place where they can communicate quickly at any time, from any location and on any device – both, with each other as well as people on the client’s side or with other stakeholders.
Get your sales and services team working with the same data, in the same system, from the same client record, so everyone involved has a view of current client projects, staff commitment, and pipeline. The sales team will know what service levels they can promise, while the services team can see what is in the pipeline and build the right staff to deliver.
Crinkle-free productivity leads to profitability
Introducing standardized and structured procedures across a project allows teams to spend less time on routine and more time on managing exceptions and importantly, building human relationships with clients.
The tools in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations have been designed to make your business more productive with complete access to data from all project stakeholders across each area of the project. The platform will connect everybody on the project team, from estimate right through to execution plus comes with useful built-in features such as project tracking, resource management and project accounting (with financials, multi-currency and revenue recognition).
Manage resources with efficiency
Fully utilizing your “bench” to solid capacity remains a bit of an enigma for even the most seasoned business. But it is a huge piece of what keeps projects on track, margins in line, and clients happy.
In Dynamics 365 Project Operations, resource managers have all the insights they need in one place. This is a powerful way to assemble and manage teams within a project. The scheduling tool (called Universal Resource Scheduler) eases this process. It allows resource managers to find the most suitable employee at any time (based on criteria such as skills, costs, and availability). Having the right people with the right skills to the right projects, increases project profitability and overall project success.
Look to the future and identify risk early
Real-time tracking and integrated AI insights make it possible to react early when a project takes an unexpected turn. As a result, project managers stay in control and can intervene in time to ensure that the project is completed on time and on budget.
It is one thing to know how well you are doing against utilization targets today, but the key to growing your business – and guarding against a downturn – is being able to plan for and hit future utilization targets.
Instead of manually cobbling together best guesses based on past events, professional services groups can use real-time analytics to deliver insights on what is happening in the exact moment and the future. This kind of decision making is especially important for managing resources, supporting profit margins, keeping projects on track, resolving issues and, ultimately, delighting customers. But it goes even deeper with powerful forecasting and predictability functionality.
Today’s analytics also empower you to accurately predict what will happen over the course of the year for utilization, backlog, and capacity using scenario-based formulas and delivery curves specific to your organization.
Measure what matters
Regardless of location or team, cloud-based platforms give you up to the minute insight across the board. In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, management have access to the data from all project stakeholders across all areas with real-time financial assessments as well as other KPIs on dashboards, for example, resource utilization, forecasting and budgeting.
Microsoft Power BI makes it easy to visualize this data and to share it with others. This provides decision makers with more data they can base informed business decisions on and reduces time-to-market for new services, lowers operating costs, and leads to a more coherent overall business strategy.
Bill with precision
Project accounting gives you a 360-degree view of the entire governance of a project to make the best decisions for cost and time. Project accounting helps you visualize and control the variables that directly influence your project.
For utilization to work its magic, you need to be able to account for all the variables from the micro to the macro level. And if you are using antiquated processes and technology, these variables are just getting lost in the equation. Dynamics 365 Project Operations allows project managers to track, update, streamline, budget, invoice, and approve all project-related costs in one place.
Time to change
Cutting through complexity and increasing visibility into project-based work is the key to enabling your teams to achieve the elevated levels of performance and productivity that they are truly capable of. Technology can help businesses to reimagine project management by delivering connected experiences that make it easy to plan work strategically, balance conflicting priorities, and elevate team performance.
At sa.global, we are helping professional services organizations become cloud-first businesses, accelerating their digital transformation to realize greater value at speed and scale. Get in touch to find out how we can support your business by cutting through the complexities with technology today.
Tags:
