PSA Software: Consolidate & Streamline your Processes (2023)
In this blog, we discuss how consolidating processes using PSA Software helps service business streamline operations and scale!
PSA software is becoming increasingly popular amongst service firms as they begin to scale and become in tune with how technology is the key to streamlining. In a nutshell, PSA software puts a service firm's data into perspective and provides you with real-time insight into your entire business, so you can scale and reach a higher level of sustainability at all levels. PSA allows you to create and report on a variety of significant metrics across your entire business to help evaluate and enhance business workflows.
PSA software keeps all data, modules, and business departments available and connected in one place, allowing for prompt and intelligent workflows. PSA Software can go even one step further by integrating with third-party accounting systems, like QuickBooks and others giving you the ability to integrate all disparate systems together for one singular data center for everything. PSA software becomes the heart and the engine of your business. It becomes a single resource for all your key operational items. Not only does it organize, but it will consolidate processes streamlining your business from top to bottom.
How Consolidating Operations With PSA Software Helps
Better project planning and execution
PSA software gives you a 360-degree view of your projects on-demand and as they progress. You can see at a glance what projects are in the pipeline and forecast resource requirements to get a solid understanding of the supply and demand of resources. You can build detailed project plans, match the right people within your business up with the right projects, allowing them access to all of the project data they need in one solution. PSA software offers your business a closed-loop communication solution between resources, managers, and your entire project team. Your resources can quickly communicate to management on the status of their assigned tasks, and your management can assess the impact on overall project schedules, budgets, and resource requirements to proactively resolve issues as they come in.
Speed up the project life-cycle of your clients
PSA software has the ability to manage projects throughout every step of the project life-cycle. This gives your service business the tools to focus on delivering great services to your clients, instead of wasting time on tedious admin tasks. This focus on efficiency means your team has more time to spend on productive tasks and can have a direct effect on your business's revenue earnings. Additionally, some PSA solutions even have there very own CRM feature built into the software, which can eliminate the need for any manual project setup or configuration.
Get a tight grip on costs associated with your projects
PSA software has the ability to track your project costs at a very granular level. Every hour on every project can be easily tracked, and any additional costs on a project, like fuel cost or subcontractor expenses, can be accounted for. This benefit plays a major role when planning and executing your projects within a strict budget. You can plan your projects out at cost and know exactly where they stand at any point throughout the project life-cycle due to all of the project data being managed within one centralized solution.
Optimize your resource utilization
PSA Software gives you insights on what your team is working on throughout each day. You can use this feature to quickly identify who is working on what, is it billable or non-billable, allowing you to close the gap in revenue leakage. Normally you may wait until meetings or a weekly/monthly analysis before you know what's going on, with PSA your resources tasks can be updated daily for review by management. Think about the amount of time you could save with this ability!
What's Involved In Changing?
Many service businesses are not clear about how painless and clean the whole process can be with the right industry experts and team-work. Whether you’re unhappy with your current PSA software, or if you’re considering moving to new PSA software from an existing legacy solution, here are some specific questions you need to ask before you consider making a switch:
How much disruption will you face?
This is entirely dependent on how well the implementation process is planned and the experience of the PSA vendor's implementation team. Many businesses make the mistake of viewing their new business software implementation as something that will be done along with their current workload. This is really not the case, doing this would actually cause more disruption to the business. Look at it this way, if your team was already fully resourced to working on other client projects, you couldn't just book another new customer project and expect your team to complete it outside of their work hours and the project to be successful? Of course not! The practical approach is to treat the new PSA software implementation just like any other new customer project. Start with a defined scope, resource allocation, budget and time frame, balanced against other customer projects.
How much of your time & resources will this take?
When making the switch it's important that you have the resources readily available to work on the implementation. This will ensure the process moves as quickly as possible enabling both you and your PSA vendor to stick to agreed timelines. You should always have a clear conversation with your PSA vendor in advance to define the exact resources and time needed on both ends to make the implementation successful. Before you get scared away, It's also important to remember that your PSA vendor will complete the majority of the work involved from gathering requirements, configuring the software to your specific needs, and even training your end-users.
We already have a process in place?
When it comes to process, many businesses take on the daunting task of figuring out their own way that "kind-off" works. A much cleaner approach is for you to work with the PSA vendor's consultation team from day 1 to help them learn and document current business processes. Before you implement your new PSA solution the vendor can instead have a discussion with your team on the ‘best practices’ about how to map your business processes to the take full advantage of the new software’s capabilities. Sometimes this will be handled by configuration options in the software, and sometimes you may want to consider altering your business processes slightly to take better advantage of your new PSA software’s full capabilities.
In conclusion, there will never be an ideal time to switch your businesses PSA software. But remember, the more your business grows, the more you're going to need a scalable PSA solution to help your team become more effective and efficient.
To learn more about the benefits of PSA software & what to look for when purchasing, check out our buyer's guide - PSA Software: 2023 Buyers Guide
Learn More About the PSA Software Built by Service Professionals for Service Professionals!
CrossConcept Continuum goes beyond traditional PSA solutions available today by incorporating cutting-edge UI technology making the solution more user-friendly, resulting in fewer clicks within the solution and time spent logging data. CrossConcept Continuum has been built from the ground up to integrate with all major accounting systems to seamlessly synchronize projects and accounting within one unified system.
Our innovative PSA solution allows organizations to maximize profitability by integrating connecting projects and financial accounting, enabling you to manage all stages of your project from conception to completion and deliver on your promises.
CrossConcept has decades of experience helping service organizations automate their processes. Clients have ranged in size from a handful of people to over thirty thousand. The founder's and team’s real-world experience is what drove and shaped the creation of CrossConcept Continuum.
Our solution is a simple, yet powerful PSA solution built with the end-user in mind - fast, flexible, powerful, and user-friendly! We are offering all new clients a free trial with no contract obligations. This is a great opportunity for any business to try out the solution and decide if PSA software is for you!
Comments