Professional Services businesses have unique needs due to the way they are organized. Regardless of the industry, they must manage timesheets for billable and non-billable hours, they often have advanced expense management needs, and they may have multiple entities that need consolidation. With the right ERP, Professional Services organizations can gain total birds-eye visibility of all their business data, have access to project accounting and advanced revenue recognition. This all allows their business to flourish and provide the highest level of customer service.
As your Professional Services company expands, adding new services and growing into different areas, the complexities of multi-entity management and global consolidation can become extremely challenging. Countless spreadsheets are a pain and a waste of time to manage. With an ERP, you have the ability to automatically and instantly create multi-entity consolidations and give your employees valuable time that they can spend on other tasks to grow and support your business objectives.
Project Accounting
Managing large quantities of projects comes with an equal amount of manual work to manage project accounting. For an accounting team to make the most effective decisions, information needs to be accurate and organized; manual project accounting can hinder this. An ERP solution can help. Automate project accounting, letting your data move seamlessly across your business, making it easier to manage projects and profitability.
Flexible Project Billing & Revenue Recognition
One of the biggest challenges faced by Professional Services companies is dealing with the different billing terms in almost every project and contract. Contract clauses can often deal with things like rates for time and materials to fixed or flexible fees, and how/when customers want to be billed. ERPs can have advanced project billing features that automate the billing process by generating accurate project invoices that use the correct format, terms, and amounts for each of your customers.
Limited Information Away From the Office
During busy seasons for a Professional Services business, employees can be away from their home city for an average of two weeks to a month, meeting with clients and managing major projects. When employees are away from the office, they still require instant access to information; many software systems may not work on every device. A modern ERP solution can solve this by allowing users to work from anywhere that they can connect to the internet.
Data Security
For service companies, you have to be sure that your company and client files are stored safely. With increasing threats of hacked accounts and stolen data, Professional Services businesses need to be prepared. ERP software can help facilitate relationships with clients while keeping their data safe from intruders.
Modern ERP for the financial services industry delivers enhanced reporting capabilities for every function so that business transactions can be tracked and managed from a single system. By leveraging cloud accounting functionality, ERP solutions provide more accurate statements in real-time and allow you to ensure precise revenue and cost management across your business.
Visual Dashboards and Flexible Reporting
Identifying KPIs isn’t enough to drive success for your clients and your business. With an ERP you can get visual dashboards and comprehensive built-in reporting tools to help you drill down into your data and make informed decisions to drive success. Gain greater financial and operational control with a comprehensive, real-time picture of your business.
Achieve Automation
With an ERP system, you can reduce user error and the amount of time your team spends on manual processes by as much as 50%. Automate everything from tracking costs, time, and expenses to managing resources, billing, and revenue recognition so your team can spend their time on billable work and strategic tasks.
Open Integration to Best-in-Class Solutions
To get the most out of your accounting solutions, data must flow freely from one system to another. ERP solutions for financial services often offer an open API to facilitate tight integrations with a whole library of complementary solutions. This gives you the flexibility to build on the functionality of your accounting solution as your needs expand and develop.
Flexibility, Scalability, and Adaptability
The success of Professional Services businesses depends on their ability to address unique pain points. Cloud ERP solutions are more scalable, flexible, and intuitive for all types of businesses. They can enable access to data in real-time from anywhere and have the ability to scale your solution according to your growth.
Enhanced Communication & Collaboration
Modern ERP systems connect different departments and divisions in your organization into a centralized system, allowing for more collaboration. With processes merged more effectively, it allows employees to communicate easily. Your marketing team can get information from sales. The finance department can get expenses without having to ask each division or staff. An ERP provides connectivity between siloed units and ensures your business continues to deliver value to customers.
Are you ready to transform your professional services organization? See below for a starting point on the right solution for you.
Sage Intacct
In a professional services firm, you need cloud-based accounting software to help ensure profitable operations and improve your customer satisfaction, regardless of industry. Whether it’s digital marketing, IT services, professional employer organizations (PEOs), consulting, advertising, HR services, research, engineering, or another specialized sector, Sage Intacct has the professional services software that combines smooth operational workflows with greater financial visibility to bring your business to new heights. Consolidate your resource management into one efficient platform that scales with you.
