As a professional services firm or project-based business, you’re continuously striving to maximise utilisation, deliver projects on time and on budget, as well as optimise your project portfolio.
To increase performance in these areas, you should be looking at investing in professional services (PS) technology which can improve employee productivity, streamline operations, sales, marketing and customer engagement. While there might be many solutions on the market, Dynamics 365 Business Central for Professional Services stands out for its range of capabilities.
This blog takes a look at the benefits of implementing budget and planning software:
- Connect your project-centric business in one application
- Deliver a smooth project budgeting and planning process
- Boost internal productivity with familiar tools
1. Connect your project-centric business in one application
Eliminate the cost and complexity of deployment and integration with Dynamics 365 Business Central for Professional Services.
Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and native to the Microsoft Intelligent Cloud, it’s the most cost-effective platform for project-centric small and medium businesses. The solution is easy to deploy, configure and manage, helping you gain better insights into your business to drive continued improvements.
At Columbus, we believe a PS system must be integrated and provide the power to act as THE central business application for a project-based business.
In addition to project accounting and project management capabilities, it should offer productivity tools and process automation capabilities. Visibility and business insights are also necessary to improve the performance of staff, leaders and the organisation as a whole.
D365 Business Central for Professional Services is the only solution that combines PS, CRM, ERP, analytics, collaboration and productivity in one complete, cloud-based tool.
2. Deliver a smooth project budgeting and planning process
We often hear the following when speaking to businesses about how budgeting and planning for projects is managed within organisations:
“It’s difficult to get an accurate overview of workload with resource skills and qualifications needed.”
“Resource planning is time-consuming and hard to update with all the changes going on.”
These issues are happening because the budgeting and planning process is being handled through Excel spreadsheets and off-system solutions.
By not having a central link back into the ERP, departments end up working in silos and duplicating work. This causes unnecessary delays and losses in productivity which lead to staff becoming frustrated and will ultimately affect your ability to meet customer needs.
D365 Business Central for Professional Services is designed to remove these pains by delivering a smooth, predictable and streamlined process for budgeting and planning.
Key activities to help with this are:
- Templated approach to creating projects – quick, easy and consistent setup
- Resource planning – helping to visualise their needs
- Integration with Microsoft 365 – utilising Outlook for timesheets
- Project accounting – complete project accounting functionality
- Process automation – reduce time consuming activities
The solution helps your business to focus on adding value to your customers based on your projects rather than spending time on the creation and management of projects.
3. Boost internal productivity with familiar tools
D365 Business Central for Professional Service is built for the people who use it every day. Users can tailor the solution to fit individual or team needs (including creating automated workflows) and work from wherever they are, whenever and on any device.
Don’t make your employees learn new software – boost productivity by giving them tools they’ll already know (such as Microsoft Office 365).
In summary, D365 Business Central for Professional Services is:
- Designed for Microsoft Office 365, the world’s leading productivity software
- Accessible for work from anywhere on your choice of device
- Role-based access through Outlook, web browser or mobile apps
- Tailored to your work experience
- Personalised to allow you to create your own automated workflows
Upgrade to D365 Business Central for Professional Services today
To find out how D365 Business Central for Professional Services can help elevate your project-based business to new heights, download our whitepaper here.
Alternatively, click the button the below to speak to one of our specialist consultants.
