Now available — a versatile solution that drives results for your professional services business
What are professional services companies? Simply put, professional services can involve any occupation that provides a service to other firms and businesses — from lawyers to advertising professionals, to business consultants. Professional services firms in the United States have generated more than $2 trillion in revenue in recent years, and that figure is on the rise. Opportunity within the industry is growing, but competition in the market is fierce.
As a manager of a professional services delivery team, you’re under pressure to deliver at a faster pace and increase margins. With more fixed-cost projects, working smarter instead of harder is the way you can meet billable targets, profit margins, and customer satisfaction KPIs. Services delivery managers face common challenges:
- Projects going over time and budget
- Lost time and efficiency during sales, project, delivery, and invoicing transitions
- Time wasted on repetitive, mundane, nonbillable work
- Balancing employee workload to avoid burnout or underutilization
- Visibility into project status and bottlenecks to make quick decisions
- Allocating the right resource to the right task
Services delivery teams and professional services organizations need to leverage tools that allow them to automate and standardize workflows while providing the versatility they need to react quickly. In fact, Hinge University’s research of professional services firms reveals that High-Growth firms were 2x more likely to prioritize marketing technology and automation.
Last year, we launched Wrike for Professional Services, which has been embraced by services delivery teams as the most powerful solution to optimize project delivery, automate workflows and manage team utilization — meeting client demands for transparency and on-time project delivery. This year, we’re taking it to the next level with Wrike for Professional Services Performance.
Now marketing agencies, IT consultants, consulting management organizations, and professional services teams can run their services delivery business in Wrike
According to Forbes, one thing will separate winners and losers in 2020: the capability to make bold and decisive course corrections that are executed effectively and with urgency. Streamline decision-making, optimize action planning, and speed up project execution with Wrike for Professional Services Performance, adding the power of advanced analytics and integrations to help you run your services delivery business.
Know when projects are going over time and budget
The truth is, projects don’t always run smoothly. The client isn’t providing feedback in a timely manner or assets are delayed. The more complex a project, the more opportunity for it to go off the rails. You’re not alone! In our professional services industry work management survey, 97% of respondents reported experiencing project delays to some degree.
Wrike for Professional Services Performance provides customizable, real-time analytics, portfolio management, and task reporting to give you a bird’s-eye view of all your projects and tasks. The dashboard lets you quickly see overdue projects and dive into the details to get them back on course.
Clear project workflow statuses in Wrike keep project members and clients aligned on progress automatically, helping you better forecast and improve on-time delivery. This visibility allows you to mitigate risks ahead of time, keeping projects on time and budget.
Save time and revenue by automating sales to project delivery and billing transitions
Sales won a new customer. Congratulations! But now the real work begins. You need to transfer all that information to the project team so they can kick off the project on the right foot. Wrike connects to your CRM to provide key client and project information.
Although every project is different, many involve similar steps. Leverage dynamic request forms to trigger project templates in Wrike. Follow templates with standardized best practices to smooth project launches and delight clients.
Once work is delivered, Wrike integrates with financial systems to kick-start invoicing. Your team can time their work, lock in their hours, and send them to your billing service all right within Wrike. Integration between these tools mitigates discrepancies in the billing process, making it easy for clients to understand their bills.
Help employees do their best work by reducing mundane, nonbillable work
In our Professional Services survey report, 22% of respondents said they could handle 50% more work if they could automate repetitive, administrative tasks. Our survey also revealed that about 60% of respondents spend 1-3 hours each week updating project statuses, sending update emails, generating status reports, or having update meetings.
Wrike centralizes staffing requests and automates administrative processes like time tracking and billing, freeing teams to focus on billable work that delights clients. Simplify time tracking so teams can focus on billable client projects and relationships. Teams can track billable and nonbillable hours any time, anywhere within a project or task. Centralized timesheets auto-populate work for easy time entry.
Automate routine tasks and standardize best practices to save time and allow team members to do more of the work they do best. When a delay does occur, Wrike makes it easy to reschedule workloads to prioritize billable activities by simply dragging and dropping.
“Wrike created efficiencies so that we were able to handle 25% more accounts … achieving 2x revenue growth”
Reduce employee burnout or underutilization
In Wrike’s employee productivity survey, 26% of respondents said that a way for their manager to see everything on their plate and better balance their workload would help them be more engaged and productive at work. For professional services teams, that balance is even more critical.
The art of services delivery hinges on staffing resources at the right level — balancing the team’s work to avoid capacity shortages and overbookings. Centralizing collaboration in Wrike keeps everyone in the loop with real-time, chronological communication. When projects change, Wrike’s workload view and resource management give managers the visibility to dynamically balance employee workloads, minimizing burnout and maximizing utilization.
Get the data you need to make decisions and grow your business
When you’re trying to grow your business, you don’t always have the time to manually pull data on your most recent projects. You need to hop into the next one right away! However, to truly grow, you need to constantly improve your process and make data-driven decisions on new work.
Wrike centralizes project information, reporting, and analytics so you have everything you need to manage project portfolios, grow margins, and track business KPIs. Compare expected and actual revenue, budget, and time spent to improve forecasting and easily take on more projects — the right projects that will help you maximize growth.
Allocating the right resource to the right task
Most projects require many different resources — a person, a team, a tool, finances, or time. Poor resource planning can result in delays, dissatisfied customers, and stressed-out employees.
Plan project work and assess headcount requirements with role-based resource scheduling so you can easily assign work to the right team members. Address new requests quickly — simply drag and drop to assign work in real time. Compare planned effort and actual time spent to improve forecasting accuracy, ensuring on-time delivery.
Wrike for Professional Services Performances helps you allocate the right resource to the right task. Wrike enables visibility into resource availability, helping eliminate endless resourcing meetings.
“The time management and workload overview help with resource management because the team has a clear overview of whether or not a project can be completed within the time parameters provided. This ultimately protects our employees from working beyond their capacity.” – Thomas Mix, Director of Strategy & Business Development
Try Wrike for Professional Services Performance
Wrike for Professional Services Performance adds the power of advanced analytics and integrations to help you run your services delivery business at every stage. Watch our demo to see how Wrike can help you improve decision-making, action planning, and project execution.
Interested in learning more about the Performance package for your team? Contact your account manager today and learn more here.
