Full Sail Partners Blog | Professional Services (20)

The other day I was having a discussion with a client about the challenges of owning a consulting firm. It’s funny how these types of conversations force you to reflect on your own experiences. I quickly realized I made some mistakes along the way as all business owners do when they first start out. I’ve also been witness to mistakes by other consulting firms that have reached out to us for help. From these past experiences, I have identified 9 deadly sins owners of consulting firms should avoid.

1. Not Staying True to the Purpose – When you started the firm you had a purpose, your mission, vision and principles. Don’t lose sight of how you became a successful consulting firm, even through the tough times. It’s important to diversify and be innovative, but it must always fit what you stand for. When you leave your core business, you also lose your core loyal clients.
2. Failing to Innovate – When firms fail to see the changing tealeaves and adapt to their client demands and the competitive landscape, the business can become stagnant and may even die out. Innovation opens your firm up to the next big success. Ideas may fail, but continually innovating and adapting will keep a consulting firm growing.
3. Not Planning for Growth – Alan Lakein said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” This couldn’t be more true when it comes to thinking about how you will grow your firm. The demise of any consulting firm is hoping to stay where it is and not planning for future growth. Change is constant and you can rest assure that your competitors are looking at ways to grow their staff, revenue and client base.
4. Misunderstanding Profitability – You would think this would be a no brainer for consulting firms, but you would be surprised at the excuses made by Project Managers and Owners about why the profit number is declining. Most consulting firms watch profitability for the company, but are you watching the profit on each project? Even worse is when you make the same mistake with the next project. It’s important to take those lessons learned and circle them back to the proposal process.
5. Not Tracking Cash Flow – Firms that do understand profit often forget that it is only half the problem. Clients that do not pay can derail the best profit and growth program and impact cash flow. Having a consistent feedback program with clients can decrease payment issues. By constantly collecting client perceptions about the service delivery, firms can quickly resolve issues and reduce the firm’s payment issues.
6. Misguided or Lacking Process Improvement – Processes deteriorate over time for all kinds of reasons, including addition of new technology, employee turnover, and cutting expenses or resources. Periodically reviewing your processes - whether technological or how staff approach clients or issues - keep staff trained and technology up-to-date. Technology that allows for automatic workflows is an easy way to improve efficiency, decrease redundancy and create consistency. Keep in mind that pursuing too many process improvements at one-time can also be detrimental to the goal. Process improvement must be clearly defined, have an internal champion and sometimes done in stages.
7. Treating BD as a Part-Time Lover – For smaller firms especially, business development can be a challenge to juggle getting the business and doing the work. However, if your firm isn’t constantly selling to existing and new clients, your sales pipeline will eventually run dry. Setting goals and monitoring those goals through a CRM system, for example, can provide visibility to ensure business development is consistent.
8. Ineffective Risk Assessment – The moment we start a business we run into unpredictability and risks every day. Sometimes leaders don’t even know there is a risk issue. Understanding the risks facing your company – from professional liability issues to growing into a new market – allows you to minimize the risk while still being able to “take a chance”.
9. Improper Planning of Disasters - Failure Happens! However, many firms don’t realize until it’s too late that they don’t have an effective backup and recovery solution for their database, email, and network. Even if your firm has a back-up method in place, many times it can’t be deployed quickly. The scary stat is that 60% of all firms that lose their data will close in 6 months. Instituting a Disaster Recovery System that allows for redundant offsite storage and system restoration within a 36-hour period can greatly reduce the chances of complete loss.

Ask yourself, if your consulting firm is committing any of these deadly sins? If so, what can you do about it? Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  It would be insane to keep repeating any of these deadly sins.  

 

Deltek Vision CRM is uniquely designed for scalability within your organization. Whether you are a novice user, or a tenured pro, Deltek Vision CRM is designed to allow you quick and easy access to the relationship data that will separate your firm from the rest of the pack! However, regardless of the capabilities of the software, the success of your firm’s rollout is affected heavily by your past experiences with services management platforms, the firm’s overall culture and philosophies of client management, and your users’ level of buy-in. Maximizing the value that the system brings to your firm requires careful planning and strong commitments to the implementation. 

Initially, you really need to have your act together regarding the overall objectives for improving the firm’s information management. It requires a core group of people to roll up their sleeves and connect the dots between business process and software tools. Once you have these important objectives defined, you can move forward with tailoring the system to support them.

In this discussion, we’ll focus on the following basic elements of handling critical information: collection, accessibility, management and lifecycle.

Collection

One of the most important, and obvious, things we must do with any successful information system is, oddly enough, collect information. When you consider all the data in your miscellaneous spreadsheets, business card piles, Outlook shared folders and “head knowledge” that you DON’T currently have in Vision, the task can be a little overwhelming. Develop capture processes that are efficient, consistent, and make the best use of the people resources you have available. Find any way possible to help unify your team around the belief that Vision is the firm’s single source of truth for the information it’s designed to collect.

Accessibility

It regularly boggles my mind that some users of an information tool as powerful as Deltek Vision take ten minutes or more to get logged in. There are plenty of reasons – I forgot my ID/password, lost the shortcut, can’t remember the URL, have to be at the office for it to work, and so on. Make Vision more accessible by:

• Creating Start Menu or Desktop shortcuts with Vision’s URL
• Using the Microsoft Office Desktop Integration utility (included with Deltek Vision CRM license
• Getting mobile with Touch CRM – Vision contact information literally at your fingertips!

As you gather tips and tricks from your power users, build internal training content and SHARE them. Do whatever you can to make “hard to get in” an unacceptable excuse for staying OUT of Vision. 

Management

Once you’ve paved the path into Vision, teach users how to quickly navigate, find what they’re looking for, and simplify the presentation of information that’s most critical. Mastering the art of searching in Vision is VERY important. The good news is that once you’ve figured it out, you can leverage the skill in any area. Remember that Standard Searches lookup records based on Vision’s basic individual fields. Advanced Searches allow you to construct multi-layered “AND/OR” parameters, search based on custom fields AND (Boolean pun intended) search across info centers! Help your users practice stating their searches out loud before building them in Vision. For those searches you seem to do over again every other week, set them up as Global Favorites. This will make your efforts to find all projects in the states of Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota, for which William Apple was Principal-in-Charge, the fee was greater than $100,000, and whose Long Name started with the letter Z, much more efficient. 

After creating a team of Search Gurus around your office, you can then help each become “Master of His/Her Dashboard.” Again, state out loud what lists, reports, or resources would be awesome to have available each time you log-in to Vision. Figure out which of these items can be displayed on Vision’s dashboard (unique to each Vision user account), choose some cool border colors, and off you go! 

Lifecycle

Typing information over again that already exists in a database is for people who have too much time on their hands. Once you have created a Lead named Bob Smith, who works for XYZ Company, which will soon build a New Headquarters Expansion, located in Nashville, Tennessee, wouldn’t you like Vision to simply pass this information forward through your phases of identifying, pursuing, winning and delivering the project? If so, your next “back to basics” move is to help your firm use Vision’s “Create From…” functionality. Vision can take data you already have and use it in new records in the following ways:

• Lead > “Convert” to Contact/Client/Opportunity
• Promotional and Regular Projects “Created from” < Opportunities
• Project Plans “Created from” < OpportunProject Plans “Created from” < Existing Promotional and Regular Projects
• Promotional and Regular Projects “Created from” < Project Plans

Before you go cross-eyed figuring out all this movement, understand that you need to first identify and sketch out your firm’s project lifecycle before effectively using Vision’s “Create From…” functionality. Think about the following questions:

• When do we want a prospective project to be "on the list" or counted in the sales forecast?
• When do we want to start tracking time and expense directly associated with a pursuit?
• When do we need to start planning and allocating staff resources to a likely project win?

Your answers will help determine points in your cycle where Vision can take much of the information already collected and continue using it in subsequent stages. This feature can be an incredible bridge-builder for interdepartmental relationships amongst the marketing, business development, accounting, and operations areas of your firm. 

It’s never too late to get Back to the Basics in your Deltek Vision CRM system. Remember that the system should support the successful business processes you’ve determined work best for your firm, not vice versa. Whether you’ve just been asked to join an internal discussion that started with “I think we need to get one of those CRM things,” or you’re a Deltek Vision CRM veteran looking to step it up a notch, revisit some of these concepts and help your firm ride into the sunset toward a more informed future.
 

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Deltek Vision CRM is uniquely designed for scalability within your organization. Whether you are a novice user, or a tenured pro, Deltek Vision CRM is designed to allow you quick and easy access to the relationship data that will separate your firm from the rest of the pack! However, regardless of the capabilities of the software, the success of your firm’s rollout is affected heavily by your past experiences with services management platforms, the firm’s overall culture and philosophies of client management, and your users’ level of buy-in. Maximizing the value that the system brings to your firm requires careful planning and strong commitments to the implementation.

I don’t know of a single Professional Service firm without a formal contract management process. Firms spend significant dollars purchasing contract templates and some even retain legal counsel for review. Everyone knows that the contract is an important document in any project undertaking.

Nevertheless, those same firms often begin work without getting the document signed!

Does the importance of the document cease once work has begun? Of course not. But what happens is that the production machine must and does begin before the administration machine can catch up. The contract seems to be subjugated to more pressing needs and the team begins operating on ‘Good Faith’.

External stakeholders have a vested interest in the firm’s contract habits. Professional Liability Insurance applications have at least a few questions relating to whether or not a contract is required, how much work is performed without a contract, and so on. Even the bank wants to know about the status of firm’s contracts and the processes employed. Banks analyze aging or large Accounts Receivable (AR) and next ask about the project’s contracts status. Both want to assess the risk inherent in providing their products to the firm.

It’s All About the Risk

Business is risky. There is no way to eliminate it, only to reduce. Written contracts certainly mitigate risks. Signed ones reduce it further.

Having a signed contract doesn’t guarantee against litigation. There are always competing interpretations of the language after the fact. Better contracts decrease collection time and reduce disputes.

Not having a signed contract does not mean that the firm will not be paid. As long as it is clear that money was to be exchanged for services, there will be some value exchanged. However, the firm might have to perform more work than intended for the stated amount. Additionally, it might mean considerable expense or time attempting to get those dollars.

The truth is, all Professional Services firms have a tendency to do some work without a contract. How much, how often, and with whom is important information that should be assembled and available for review by stakeholders to stay informed about the risks of the firm.

Leveraging the Deltek Vision Contract Management Feature

The Contract Management feature included in Deltek Vision’s Finance Core is one such tool that can be used to assist in accumulating information on this risk factor in the firm. The tool and system are designed specifically with project-based firms in mind. Let’s take a look at how this feature can help:

Track It

Deltek Vision Contract Management allows users to track multiple contract documents, their origination and approval dates, status, and fees requested per document. Because the information is entered on each project, it makes a variety of reports and workflows available allowing for efficient and integrated contract tracking. Optionally, information can be extended neatly into the Project’s Work Breakdown Structure which will allow users to easily see which documents created and amended the fee on each level.

Identify It

By using the Contract Management area of the Project Info Center, users can add the information to reports already in use. Both the Project Summary and Office Earnings allow the Contract Management fields to be selected as columns to appear along-side the existing data on firm reports. Contract statistical data can also be used as a filter on other reports.

Manage It

Integrating project contract information into Deltek Vision allows users to employ the powerful workflow engine in the software. Vision Workflows enables Contract Management users to automate the reporting and informing process around Contracts.

Consider these workflows:

• Notify Project Manager and/or Principal when a contract has been marked as Approved
• Remind a user of special handling when a contract exceeding $XXX,XXX has been created
• Update a column on the Project record when a contract record has been inserted

Use It

Deltek Vision Contract Management users can leverage the information about contract status in other organizational processes. The Contract Management fields are available as filters on any project-based report. This allows the contract status to become a part of the firm’s management process.

Consider using Contract Management data and filters in these activities:

• Client Management – Create a Project List report for active projects and sorted by Client. Include Contract creation date and status as columns to get the most from the client check-in call.
• Collections Management – Create a scheduled report for outstanding AR where contract documents are in ‘Pending’ status. Create an AR alert for projects with certain contract status’.
• Employee Management – Use the Optional Sales Credit feature to measure employees’ participation on specific contract documents. Use in reviews or statistical reporting.

Know the Risk and Accept It

None of us live in a perfect world where a single project meeting hasn’t been had until the contract is signed. However, our focus should turn to understanding and measuring the risk that will be taken on. Firm management should be well informed of the status of the firm’s contracts and have the necessary information on hand should they need to intervene. To support this, contract tracking and management should be integrated with the projects to which they relate. Your Vision software is already well equipped to assist you in the mechanics.

To get started today you can:

• Review our technical webinar on the Contract Management feature
• Enter a test contract or two to understand how the feature works

Later you can:

• Identify how your current process can improve with automation, integration and reporting
• Backfill existing contract data
• Contact a Full Sail Partners consultant for more advanced training to customize menus, write workflows and complex reports.

Marketing is tough. Marketers are expected to be jacks of all trades:  Brand manager, technology expert,social butterfly and head collaborator. Yet at the end of the day marketing is often a thankless job. However, the fruits of our labors are often six degrees of separation removed from our actual efforts. We do not directly sell and there is no physical doo-dad at the end of the day that we can point to in order to justify our existence. Enter the world of ‘marketing analytics.’

What the heck are marketing analytics? Marketing analytics are the lifeblood of your efforts. You spend countless hours working on integrated marketing content – blogs, newsletters, infographics, proposals and much more! Yet at the end of the day can you honestly claim to understand the impact of these efforts? Marketing analytics are not only the indicators of our successes but the learning blocks of our mistakes.

Don’t fool yourself! Know what marketing analytics are worth tracking.

Like many things in life, we can often get caught focusing too much on the nice-pretty red herring rather than digging deep and identifying what truly matters. Metrics are no different! Marketers often get caught looking at superficial statistics rather than focusing in on metrics strengthen our business case. To better understand what kind of metrics you should focus on let’s identify the two main data types:

Vanity Metrics | these metrics often look good – and make you feel good – at first glance. Unfortunately, vanity metrics focus on pumping up our ego – not our business. I often equate these metrics to a high school popularity contest: All that matters is how many people sign my yearbook. But don’t be fooled, these metrics are not your friends. So what are some examples of these metrics?

• Total website visits
• Page views
• Number of subscribers or followers

As you can see, these metrics look good at first. But do they actually provide actionable data that allows you to drive your business case forward? The ambiguity of these analytics leaves your marketing efforts reactive rather than proactive.

Action Metrics | meaningful metrics are the bread and butter of your efforts. To be able to leverage marketing analytics to improve your marketing campaigns you must be able to understand the customer behavior represented by these metrics. Using the above high school analogy, these action metrics are representative of the number of people that invite you to their party. These metrics do not only want to know you – they want to hang out with you! Examples include:

• Site behaviors – what are people actually viewing and consuming on your website
• Who is converting; is there a common buyer persona?
• Customer acquisition costs

These metrics actually mean something to your business. They are not only indicative of your efforts, but reflective of your results.

How do we track marketing analytics?

So now that we understand what we want to track we must figure out how to track our desired marketing analytics. Luckily for you, there are hundreds of tools out there. Highlighted below are examples of each type of tool you will want to add to your marketing arsenal.

Content Management System (CMS) | a content management system will allow you to seamlessly optimize all of your integrated marketing efforts within your website. Gone are the days of fumbling with html and css codes. While in the day-to-day trenches of marketing you need the ability to quickly and easily access the living data regarding your marketing campaigns – and this is precisely what a CMS allows you to do.

Examples of CMS include:

• Act-On
• Hubspot
• Marketo

Whatever CMS you decide is right for you, make sure that it integrated with all of your other business systems and processes to provide you with maximum visibility.

Web Analytics Platform | integrating your website with a Web analytics platform is essential for taking the step from analytics-shmoe to analytics-pro. Yes, you already get analytics from your CMS. However, think of a CMS as fast food and a full Web analytics platform as a five-course meal. Your Web analytics platform is your go-to asset when you need the full meat and potatoes of reporting.

Examples of Web analytics platforms include:

• Google analytics
• Mixpanel
• Webtrends

Understanding a full Web analytics platform can be intimidating. Luckily you can often find free training. For example, Google offers a free analytics certification course that you can complete at your own leisure!

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System | what good are all of these marketing analytics if you can’t actually do anything with them? A CRM system will allow you to better understand your leads, holistically track your marketing campaigns and most importantly provide you with the tools needed to build meaningful relationships. Our CRM recommendation for professional services firms is Deltek Vision.

Go forth and spread your analytical marketing wings!

Gone are the days where you fear that your marketing efforts will be glossed over. You now have the tools and knowledge needed to go out and make something of your marketing campaigns! We hope that you take this new found knowledge and prove your resolve by becoming an analytical marketing guru!
 

 

Have you ever thought about all the information a firm collects on a daily basis? Think about it, every department is collecting information all the time. More importantly, information collected impacts your firm’s strategy and directly correlates to how successful you are at winning and retaining business. So what should your firm be doing with all of this information? The following five concepts answer this question and are the future of marketing for professional services firms. 

1.    Multiple Marketer Personality (MMP) – I disagree with the philosophy that being a jack of all trades is a bad thing. In today's world of marketing, your career depends on the fact that you must juggle multiple tasks at one time and that you can quickly grasp concepts that you may know nothing about. This complex role of the marketer requires us to have a disease called Multiple Marketer Personality (MMP).

How can you tell if you have MMP? One way to tell is your role requires you to understand, decipher and extract data. One of our past articles talks more about this specific requirement that identifies someone who is equally passionate about marketing and savvy with technology to become the Marketing Technologist. Other key symptoms indicative of MMP are understanding how HR, finance and operations impact marketing. Understanding strength and weakness of employee talents, how communication occurs between client and employee, and the ROI of marketing are critical to establishing a firm’s growth plan. A marketing strategy becomes a pipe dream, instead of a realistic strategy, without a good grasp of these areas.

2.    ‘Necessity is the Mother of Invention’ Says Your iPhone – Mobile is no longer what will happen, it is happening. Having mobile access will no longer be a nice to have, but a necessity. We actually collect and share an infinite amount of information on mobile devices and the cloud is changing the way we conduct business. Can you submit expense receipts or document a new opportunity with a client in real-time on your phone? More and more of our life is on a mobile device and computers are not always available. If your firm is not able to access information on-the-go, you will fall behind your competition. To learn more about mobile CRM, read “Mobile CRM: A Day in the Life of a Business Developer.”

3.    Fusion of Data Tools – What do you get when you have visibility into your entire organization? Inquiring professional service minds would wish to know. Marketing data is so spread out between Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems, website forms, email systems, accounting systems, project management system, etc. that having one place to report is nearly impossible. Moving into the future, firms need to make a conscious effort to connect these autonomous information systems. Marketing automation + ERP integration is the future. Marketing automation tools connect inbound marketing, outbound marketing emails, social scheduling, SEO and lead nurturing. Where ERP connects all business functions, from your Finance, Management Accounting, Project Management, Client Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resources, Inventory and Purchasing. Each can be very powerful alone, but together they become a powerhouse.

4.    Gathering Feedback that Impact Your Client – 65% of a company's business is from existing customers. This means that a happy client equals future revenue, but do you really know what your clients think of your firm? You should and you can. Client feedback tools are changing the way professional services firms manage their clients. Other industries have called them, Voice of the Customer (VOC), Client Experience Management (CEM), and Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM). But professional services firms have different needs and research has found that only 5% of them utilize a customer/client feedback system. Firms no longer have to wait until the end of a project to know that their client is unsatisfied. With client feedback tools, quick two-minute surveys are sent to clients during the life-cycle of the project. This allows your firm to proactively manage your client's expectations by knowing what makes the client happy and also identify things they would like to see changed. As addressed in this blog, “Using Project Feedback to Increase Profitability,” feedback is the key to stopping profitability loss during a project. 

5.    Sharing Firm Knowledge with Social Collaboration Tools – Are you working with a team and still sending out group emails? Stop! Social media changed how we communicate in our private life and it has changed how we communicate in business. Business collaboration tools are designed to ensure that teams work more effectively. No longer do you need to send a group email and worry that you left someone off. Business collaboration tools allow team members to share project related information on one site. They can also be integrated with other business tools, such as ERP and CRM systems, and Outlook. Since business collaboration tools are designed to be user-friendly, they are easy to implement and people are more likely use them. Additionally, business collaboration tools are not just for internal communication, but can also be shared with the client. Interested in how your firm can start utilizing social collaboration, this blog further highlighting the “5 Key Reasons Why Business Collaboration Tools are the Future.”
 
The future of marketing for professional services firms is based on the way we collect, share and use information. Is your firm taking the right steps to get ahead of the competition? Connect with us to discuss more about the future of your firm. 
 
*photo credit: http://www.business2community.com/  

 

My momma was always full of advice. Some I took with great results, but others … well let’s just say I had to learn the lesson the hard way. At this stage in our lives, we’ve all moved on from those tender years where momma was our greatest guide, but we are all still attuned to receiving advice from those more experienced. Or at least we should be. Take for example, the ERP Implementation process:

Most savvy business professionals know the ERP acronym, but not all have taken the advice.  But why?  What’s keeping some companies from “pulling the trigger” and bringing this all important piece to their success puzzle – especially when their competitors are?  In my years talking and working with a variety of firms, I have gathered the top five fears why companies, like yours, haven’t completed an ERP Implementation. 

1)      You say: “It’s going to cost too much.”

We hear:  Fear of Being Out of Control

We solve: An ERP system will address this fear by managing costs and stopping       financial leaks.

Problem:  The industry says that ERP implementation can be expensive and many companies wonder where the money is coming from. Many function under the notion that it’s easier to just do the quick fix and move on.

Solution:  The right ERP system, implemented correctly with the aid of the right consultants, will fix those expensive leaks in processes. Furthermore, with a detailed IT growth plan and the information from the new ERP, the initial costs will be recouped and you’ll be well on your way to a better financial and technologically focused picture.

2)      You say: “I don’t have the time to research an ERP.”

We hear:  Fear of Where to Start

We solve:  Taking the first step with an ERP and controlling your future will eliminate this fear.

Problem:  It can be daunting to think about the work it will require to research and discover the right consulting firm who will help find and implement the right ERP. But, in this scenario, consumers are being reactive rather than proactive - spending days living those old clichés “with your head in the sand putting out fires.” 

Solution:  It’s time to take action - focus on goals and the future. An ERP is a planning, forward-looking mechanism designed to give control over an organization’s future. If the research and work is done at the beginning of the ERP implementation, energy will be focused on the future. 

3)      You say:  “It’s going to take too long to implement.”

We hear:  Fear of Failure

We solve:  An ERP system helps you succeed by pulling together all your information for a clear picture of your newly improved organization.

Problem:  When you run a lean organization, all internal resources are at full capacity unable to see the big picture which makes for silo’d company data inhibiting the ability to see the big picture. Not having a clear picture serves only to stunt a firm’s growth:  it’s this lack of encompassing visibility which keeps a firm from being able to make intelligent decisions or to understand trends, because they are lacking departments and systems that are connected to each other.

Solution:  A good ERP system will pull together all this disparate data giving users the clear picture they need to move forward and giving everyone the gift of time. Yes, ERP implementations require some work and time to evaluate and establish new processes, establish goals, and get everything running smoothly, but the more attention is focused on the consultants and the implementation, the faster you will reap the benefits and feel the relief.

4)      You say:  “It’s going to require too much change in my current processes.”

We hear:  Fear of Change

We solve:  An ERP consultant will guide you through change.

Problem:  Even a bad process can feel comfortable, familiar. And in the fast-paced business world, we all have to find comfort where we can. It’s understandable to want to avoid the work, unfamiliarity, and making changes to numerous business processes. But what’s more important is that your competitors are already using their ERP systems. They will be on “the latest and greatest” while you are still floundering with “this is the way we’ve always done it.”

Solution:  Here’s where the right consultant can really help. Someone who knows their way through the maze of settings; who knows the latest and most relevant business processes; and who, most of all, knows YOUR business and YOUR industry. Once the consultant tailors the ERP implementation to what are now highly efficient business processes, you’ll be able to appreciate the value of the phrase, “change is good.”

5)      You say:  “No one will use the system, anyway.”

We hear:  Fear of Unknown

We solve:  An ERP is such a supportive tool, it will quickly become a familiar part of your world.

Problem:  So after all the trouble of researching and implementing and ERP; the real fear is, “Will I really use it or just revert back to our old ways?”  Once the shine wears off of a new ERP system, there will be some effort every person will have to make to make the changes permanent. HuffPost Healthy article, “How Long Does It Actually Take to Form a New Habit? (Backed by Science)” tells us that, “On average, it takes more than two months before a new behavior becomes automatic -- 66 days to be exact.” 

Solution:  That’s great news, because in a little over two months, with a focused effort, everyone, including you, will have turned these new processes into automatic actions. What’s more, the new processes will have included regular reviews of data giving a clear picture of the entire organization allowing responsible action for your future. We also recommend understanding more about the 8 key ways to make your implementation a success. 

ERP Implementation Fears Laid To Rest!

Some (or all) of these fears may have indeed been on your mind as you contemplated your company’s future success. To learn more about ERP implementation, the benefits and the return on the financial and time investment, check out Full Sail Partners’ whitepaper, “Could Your Firm Benefit from an Enterprise Resource Planning System?”

In the end, while momma’s advice may not have included an ERP implementation, her wise words still resonate and are perfectly applicable to this journey “Nothing tried, nothing gained!” Obstacles are just opportunities waiting to be discovered!

 

It’s that time again: year end.  No, not year-end resolutions, but the time of the year finance is stressing about year-end close and emphasizing that a 2015 marketing budget is needed.

So how many of you look at last year’s numbers and slap on an increase and submit? Be honest! However, how many things have changed since your last budget? The competitive landscape has completely changed for us and many of our clients. So we thought we might do a review to remind firms to get back to the basics when planning your marketing budget. 

Marketing Budget Methods

There are several budgeting methods when putting together your marketing budget. The Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Marketing Handbook for the Construction and Design Professional, 3^rd Edition by BNi Building News, 2014 highlights 4 different methods: 

1. Projection Method – is for steady businesses with well-established marketing approaches and which relies on costs from prior years separated into soft or hard costs.
2. Percentage Method – allocates a fixed amount of resources dedicated to acquisition and total net service revenue to fund activities that support getting work
3. Goal-based Method – bases “bottom up” budget based on revenue goals and the implementation tasks that need to be accomplished to meet them. 
4. Ratio Method – is a more complex method incorporating ROI mentality with a strong ability to meet revenue goals and with every dollar spent being tied to a return.  This is for more mature market segments and fairly large projects.

5 Practical Tips

Developing a marketing plan is more than what conferences will you attend and what cool promotional items can we buy this year. When planning your marketing budget for the year it’s important to think about the long-term financial success of the firm.  Below are 5 practical tips for professional services firms to help guide you as you develop this year’s marketing budget: 

1. Analyze the current state of affairs – Internal and external research should be conducted. This includes doing a SWOT analysis. The SWOT should be conducted with all leaders within your firm and is a great starting place to start your strategic marketing plan.
2. Tie your marketing budget to you marketing plan – The most basic mistake is not understanding what your goals are. Your budget will come from the tactics you plan to take to accomplish your goals. Be sure to translate goals into day-to-day actions. Here is more on how to establish goals or Key Performance Indicators and establish goals based on the SMART guidelines.
3. Budget for nurturing existing clients – Firms are always thinking about how to catch the next big fish and commonly overlook where most of their revenue comes from. At the end of the year evaluate where most of your business came from. What would happen if you lost that business? Firm should budget for client nurturing not only throughout the year, but on a daily basis as they execute their projects. It costs a firm 5-7 times more to gain a new client then to keep an existing one. One way of nurturing clients is to be proactive and institute a client feedback process.  
4. Execution is key – Communicating what is expected and following up monthly and quarterly helps you change course when something isn’t working. It takes everyone understanding what is expected and then executing on their part. This includes billing your time to the right code and evaluating your goals versus actuals. If it doesn’t line up then what needs to change? A budget isn’t set in stone, you can make modifications throughout the year when something isn’t working. Knowing it isn’t working is what is critical.
5. More is not necessarily better – Spending more does not equate to achieving more success. To prove this, Deltek conducted their annual clarity report among its clients and found that high achieving firms did not spend more on their marketing budget then those of their counterparts contrary to belief.  They found that high achieving firms however are able to differentiate themselves by focusing on executing more efficiently.

In planning for the upcoming year, we hope these five tips help you develop your marketing budget. Be sure to check out our past webinar crafting a marketing plan and be sure to add a comment to share your tips! 

 

Project based ERP.  You’re probably wondering to yourself, “what is this anyway?”  We’ve all heard of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, but now the industry added the words “project based.”  It probably feels like they are just layering more words … and difficulty.  So let me make some sense out of this for you. 

Project Based ERP Straight Talk

Traditionally, ERP’s have primarily been associated with companies manufacturing products: a key factor in ERP is the merging of IT, HR, Finance, and Marketing data with product operations and inventory management. 

In services firms and consulting businesses like yours, however, some alterations must be made for the ERP system to show the data they need to achieve their goal – high profit and high revenue in a skills based environment – hence the addition of “project based” to our discussion about ERP systems.  Your services business deals with a model where intellectual property is what you produce.  You don’t have the evils of shelf life, production lines, or parts departments.  Instead, your lives are geared toward a consistent evaluation of process, of skill, and of running the perfect project.   

Get Down to Business

Project based firms are exceedingly good at running projects.  They can create a GANNT chart that’s a thing of beauty, they can set achievable deliverables, and they meet or exceed every deadline.  But finding an ERP system that’s attuned especially to services and not manufacturing – now that’s tougher.  It takes dedication, knowledge and the focused energy of the right team to get it all together.  

• An ERP Consultant whose job is to master-mind all the necessary pieces to banish redundant, useless old processes and make your project’s business goals a realty.

• A Project Manager focused solely on gathering and maneuvering all the professionals to make achieving your project goals a success.

• Your IT, HR, Marketing/Sales, Finance as the true heroes to making things happen.

So What Are You Going To Get Out Of It?

I know, I know.  “It’s expensive to add new software.”  “It’s a lot of work and we’re already pretty busy.”  I’ve heard this and more.  But let me tell you – you can’t afford NOT to add a project based ERP system!  The table below details those differences:

Brass Tacks

Still need more?  Here’s the slam-dunk.  According to “Managing Your Consulting Firm for Growth,” an IDC Info-doc, ERP systems built from the ground up with projects as a core process give firms the tools to make the most effective decisions in these critical areas:

• Lifecycle process across customers, projects and employees.

• Details on projects that help optimize profitability and lower risks.

• Manage and optimize an integrated portfolio of services – using data to learn how to do more of what “works” and eliminate what isn’t “working” (i.e. what’s not profitable).

• Find the “right” customers and have the data to eliminate unprofitable customers.

• Manage the future by understanding the past and using data to make fast, accurate course corrections.

A project based ERP system will combine the
strengths of Marketing/Sales, IT, HR, Finance together with
project management software to help eliminate project waste.

Bottom Line

Your dedicated employees joined with the support of organizations like Full Sail Partners, Inc.  will make your project based firm as successful as possible by using your greatest resource – a specifically designed project based ERP system.  And while it’s rad here in California to just “ride the waves,” when it comes to running your project based firm, using a project based ERP is your best choice.  Dude. 

 

 

 

 

Adding client feedback results to your project evaluation plan provides an incredible return on investment. Conversely, by failing to identify key satisfaction metrics, your projects are less efficient, and you have less insight in to the mindset of your clients. Ask yourself, in the modern competitive business environment, can your firm afford to overlook anything -- let alone the satisfaction of your clients?

Our easy to use client satisfaction solution, The Client Feedback Tool, allows clients to quickly and easily provide insightful data that will ensure that projects stay on course, and meet or exceed expectations. Utilizing our tool, asking your clients how your processes work takes them only two minutes to complete - but the information provided gives both parties valuable data to assure effective, successful projects.

Based on our research, including 100K pieces of data from our clients, we've listed 4 ways that feedback will add to your bottom line.

• Identify your top 10% most loyal clients. Do you have a way to identify which clients value you most?  Using the information provided using the Client Feedback Tool, our clients have identified their top 10% most loyal clients and converted this knowledge into increased billings, increasing fees by 3% to their top-rating clients.  For a $10 million firm, this translates into roughly $30k in additional profit each year.
   
• Retain one client on the "bubble." One-third of our subscribers came to us after losing a major client.  In every case, these firms were surprised by the defection and realized they were blind to a pattern of problems the client never brought to light.  Frequent feedback greatly reduces the chances of this happening.
  
  According to PSMJ Resources: 
  
  
  • AEC firms spend four times more money replacing a client than the costs of retaining one.  
  • Even if you replace the lost revenue of a departed client, the added cost of winning a new client typically exceeds $22k.
   
• Increase marketing efficiency by 3%. The average AEC firm spends 11% of their revenue marketing, while seeing only 25% of pursued work turns into billable work.  Adding client feedback informs you of your market successes and identifies where your firm’s strengths are.  By marketing your strengths to your best market sectors, you’ll not only target the markets that are most satisfying (and profitable), you will also reduce wasted effort pursuing work that doesn't match your firm's core services.  Even a 3% increase in efficiency will save a $10 million firm over $33k a year.
• Reduce key staff departure by 5%. PSMJ Resources again reports that replacing your best staff costs in excess of $100k per departure.  Most key staff don’t leave for better salary. They leave because they feel unappreciated, unvalued, and because they feel their growth is not supported.  Quantitative feedback gives you the tools and information to recognize performance.  In fact, your clients will be directly recognizing your staff’s efforts as they provide feedback.  Research based on nearly 10 years of helping our clients collect feedback indicates that their clients rate staff performance as "Exceptional" 22% of the time.  This satisfying work environment will help retain (and identify) your best people, saving an average of $67k each year.

It’s simple, regardless of firm size, incorporating feedback in to your project evaluation plan can increase profits 13% or more just by applying these tools and strategies.

Garnering the client feedback metrics needed for your project evaluation plan is easy with a simple and powerful system like The Client Feedback Tool.  

What are the major productivity killers for firms in the Professional Services? For most firms, some of the biggest ones revolve around information overload, duplicated effort and other inefficiencies. 

Fortunately, team collaboration tools can address each of these areas — and thus have a positive impact on the productivity of individuals and teams throughout an organization. 

First, let’s consider the element of information overload — which for many people is exemplified in the form of an overflowing email inbox. We all know the frustration of seeing fifteen different emails with the same subject line, where people are actually commenting each other’s earlier messages — and then trying to untangle the sequence of the discussion to make some sense of it. Not only does this type of information overload take time to sort through, but the reality is that with so many emails piling up, important messages can get lost or go unread. 

Another major factor that negatively affects productivity is duplication of effort. It’s common for multiple people in a firm to be working on the same problem — but is some cases, rather than working as a team, they’re operating in unconnected silos. Even if the whole team was in the same meeting, subsets of the group may have informal follow-up meetings, or even chance encounters in a hallway. Any one of these can result in parallel (and duplicated) efforts. 

Inefficiencies come in a variety of flavors, ranging from the annoying to the scary. One of my favorites is the issue of document versioning. This is especially likely when multiple people are working separately on the same document. Unless a firm has a solid solution in place, it’s all too likely for multiple versions of a document to spring to life, each with its own edits and authors. Sorting through the different versions to create one final document can be a time-consuming source of frustration. 

Real team collaboration is a beautiful thing

Now let’s switch gears and talk about some of the productivity gains a firm can realize by implementing effective team collaboration tools. 

One of the most essential functions that collaboration tools perform is organizing team members’ communications into a centralized repository of conversations around specific tasks and issues within the project. In the Kona tool, for example, individuals can have conversations with one colleague, a small group within the team, or the entire team. They can also see the various subtasks, view a centralized project calendar and share information with the entire team. 

Team collaboration tools can enable project managers to set up their groups so that certain members are able to see all conversations, while others have a more limited view. This capability can be especially critical when collaborating with clients. 

Kona in particular has found an effective way to address the problem of sharing documents among members of a team – one that ensures that everyone is working off the latest version. Instead of sending colleagues the actual document as an email attachment, users can send links to where the master files are stored (including such online services as Dropbox, Box or Google Drive). 

Last but not least, when collaboration tools are web-enabled, like Kona, they’re ideal for optimizing the way people work in the real world. After all, not all of our productive time is spent at work; we can also be productive when we’re in between doing other tasks, whether at home, on business trips or elsewhere. Team collaboration tools allow individuals to continue being productive, wherever and whenever inspiration hits. 

Summing up

Until a firm finds an effective way to address factors like information overload, duplication of effort, and inefficiencies, its productivity will probably suffer. Team collaboration solutions may hold the key to making the most of your team’s collective abilities — and at the same time, minimizing the overlaps, dropped balls and other issues that may be limiting your productivity.