Over the last few decades, technology has improved business efficiency, effectiveness, and user experience across many different products and services. Similarly, today’s modern cars have greater fuel efficiency, are more intelligent, and offer a better user experience than cars of the past did. Innovations include satellite navigation, telemetry, and automatic braking systems, which are part of the evolution of self-driving cars. At the same time, emerging technology is offering new and similar benefits to professional services firms. Examples include analytics to deliver better forecasting, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to drive automation and a better user experience.
The comparisons don’t end there, and understanding the parallels between modern cars and professional services technology can help you make the right investment when purchasing your next software solution.
The Evolution of the Modern Car
When you buy your first car, you’re likely focused on finding something affordable that meets your basic driving needs. However, as time passes, you realize there is more to a car than just driving from A to B. Three areas of synergy stand out.
- The journey. Satellite navigation not only helps forecast the path of a journey. Today, it can help correct the route in real time to ensure the best-fit route based on a number of ever-changing variables.
- Telemetry. The amount of data collected within a modern car is immense — with sensors generating vast amounts of data constantly. That data is used by owners, service centers, insurers, and manufacturers. In-car instrumentation and technology enable the driver to understand far more about how efficiently they are driving and any faults with the car before they cause a breakdown.
- Experience. The driving experience has improved enormously to improve customer satisfaction for drivers and passengers. Automation, such as electric windows, has helped make journeys more enjoyable.
The Evolution of Professional Services Tools
Professional services organizations often start with spreadsheets to meet their initial business requirements. They are used to create pricing schedules, manage project plans, track budgets, and support resource management activities. However, growing professional services firms get to a point where spreadsheets are not the most sensible way to manage a business.
The Journey
Professional services engagements are similar to car journeys. The process through the organization is often disjointed. At the start, an understanding of a destination is baked into the proposal. The delivery team then completes what they think is needed, with finance eventually raising an invoice based on the original proposal. Today, that sequence of events should be seamlessly integrated. Data should flow from the proposal to the project plan and into an invoice. Business leaders should have visibility of the past, present, and can forecast future challenges and make timely course corrections, as the driver does in a car with the help of their navigation.
Future engagements should also be influenced by learnings from past experiences, with salespeople improving the accuracy of their proposals based on resource availability and historic engagements. This maximizes profitability and customer satisfaction as the salesperson can predict quality, cost, and time to improve delivery.
Since the advent of the mobile phone and in-car communications systems, people can talk to anyone during their journey. Modern professional services tools are collaborative, allowing every stakeholder to engage and enhance the delivery of the project, whether they are internal consultants, external consultants, or clients. Integration into enterprise collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, will offer a new level of instant collaboration throughout the engagement.
Working together from the same source of truth, a professional services application should link the people who created the proposal, those managing the delivery, those in resource management, and finance. If sales, operations, and finance teams collaborate and course correct as issues arise, they can better coordinate their efforts and maintain forecasted margin and revenues, in the same way your satellite navigation system can suggest an alternate route when a traffic jam emerges on your current route. Finance can’t close revenue and margin gaps alone; all they can do is highlight the fact that there’s a variance from the forecast. The modern professional services organization needs transparency across the whole business at every level. This is something purpose-built solutions like professional services automation tools can deliver.
Data: Telemetry Applies to Professional Services, Too
The modern car collects telemetry from every component to improve the design, efficiency, and effectiveness of the car. Professional services organizations can generate a similar volume of information, but it is rarely collected and used. A modern professional services application will collect and analyze data, draw insights, and propose actions for improvements.
Here are some examples:
- Resource management tools don’t just track resource availability, they track and surface important information such as resources’ skill sets, preferred engagements, and vacations.
- Time tracking at a task level can deliver more accurate and faster invoicing as well as the ability to analyze where tasks are completed inefficiently.
The valuable information generated during a professional services engagement can help increase quality, efficiency, and profit margins, if collected and used appropriately.
The Experience
Finally, consider the passenger experience. Most people aren’t just looking for speed and efficiency from their vehicles – they want driving to be comfortable and enjoyable. If your air conditioner doesn’t work or your suspension is shot, don’t expect people to come back for return journeys after a hot or bumpy ride. The same principle applies to professional services technology and its potential for adoption across the organization.
For leadership, forecasting that is enabled by data and modern analytics technology has improved decision-making around resourcing, pipeline, and other key areas. Business leaders now have visibility of performance across their business in interactive, easy-to-use dashboards. The modern professional services application aims to deliver a near frictionless experience to decision-makers.
A modern tool can also assist consultants with tracking time, reducing the hours they once spent logging work to minutes or seconds confirming details on a mobile device. This is time they can spend with clients instead. Customers should access portals to see project progress and collaborate on the same project data as the consultants. This level of transparency is not “a nice to have;” it is expected by customers today and is essential.
Don’t Buy a Rattletrap
Just as there are better options that have surfaced since you bought your first car, better tools are available for your organization. The right professional services application can help your companies understand engagements better, even before they begin. During engagements, data focusing on time, tasks, and processes is collected and analyzed, which provides insights that enable project managers to course correct. Finally, these modern software solutions deliver a good user experience for the leaders, project managers, and clients as they complete the journey and reach their destination.
While people can purchase a cheap, generic car, it will likely cost more in the long run, let you down, and upset your passengers. Investment in a modern professional services tool is the better long-term decision because it has the potential to deliver a significant return on investment for companies of all sizes. That is not to say that businesses need to spend a huge amount. Find the right solution and, more specifically, the right vendor you can partner with – one that understands the professional services sector and is dedicated to it.
For more insights into professional services organizations and the software they depend on to thrive, read Kantata’s new whitepaper “How To Tell If Your Professional Services
Kantata takes professional services technology to a new level, giving people-powered businesses the clarity, control, and confidence they need to optimize resource planning and elevate operational performance. Kantata’s purpose-built software is helping over 2,500 professional services organizations of all shapes and sizes in more than 100 countries to focus and optimize their most important asset: their people. By leveraging the Kantata Cloud for Professional Services™, professionals gain access to the information and tools they need to win more business, ensure the right people are always available at the right time, and delight clients with project delivery and outcomes.
