For all professional services businesses, both time and money are key to survival. No matter the project, a variety of factors have to be considered, from assessing the affordability and return on investment (ROI) to the timeframe it will have to be carried out.
The below tips will help you further understand what you can do to improve your own time and expense management, ensuring you are running as cost-effective and as efficiently for now, and in the future:
Ensure employees complete all expense forms accurately for better forecasting
Understand where your team strengths lie for the right project, at the right time
One way to improve your time management is by organising your projects, whether this is by low to high priority or the time it takes to complete. You’ll not only have better control over what tasks need to be carried out first but it’ll also help you assign the right people to the right task at the right time. This ensures your resources are being properly allocated to their maximum.
Additionally, organising and streamlining your projects effectively will benefit your cost projections. Budgeting inaccurately will make it harder for you to plan towards future projects and identify where you’re earning/burning money. By not having full visibility of your budget, you may end up with unexpected expenses which could lead to cash flow issues. Take a look at how budgeting software can help you organise your projects here.
For any project to be a success, you need to know what activities your teams plan to carry out, so all expenses are accounted for from start to finish. By investing in Professional Service Automation (PSA) software , you’ll simplify time and expense data entry for your employees as timesheets and expense reports can be accessed from anywhere and filled out on-the-go.
Here are some other ways you can ensure employees expenses are completed accurately:
As mentioned above, better control over your time and expenses will allow you to find the right people for a project at the right time, increasing your efficiency and skillset for a particular task. Additionally, by understanding where your employees’ strengths lie, you can begin to save time looking for the appropriate individuals for the job, meaning you can focus on other aspects of your operations.
How can you do this? Many companies struggle with the visibility required for ongoing project demand, so by having access to real-time business intelligence, you can assign the best people where your demand is high to keep your projects on track.
Having the right technology is crucial to improving your time and expense management.. Consultants inputting their shifts and expenses manually is the last thing on their radar, and despite the importance of this on forecasting for the future, it’s usually pushed down the list of priorities.
Having a successful management software implementation eases this burden with a simple user interface. Whether employees are recording their tasks or filling in their timesheets, it can be streamlined for managers to easily access.
Using software such as Excel may be a great way of managing your resources effectively in the short term, however what happens when your business grows and projects become larger and more complex?
Relying on hard copies of data for projects can be a lengthy process for any consultant to sift through, and if any prints are lost, there’s no way of getting this information back. By implementing PSA software, you can compile information into a secure, centralised database resulting in less manual work to find out project resources, boosting your efficiency in turn.
Having a digital transformation partner will allow you to get the most out of your new technology, allowing you to minimise downtime so you can perform to your best standards. The right partner should offer:
Although professional services companies can get away with using Excel spreadsheets and standard bookkeeping for a period of time, as the business grows so will the amount of administrative work, making these methods unsustainable.
Dynamics 365 Business Central for Professional Services reduces unnecessary cost and time by:
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