Can Technology Accelerate Your Services Business?

Can Technology Accelerate Your Services Business?Achieving Excellence Through an Operational System of Record

1 INTRODUCTION

Thriving in the Digital Age

2 CHAPTER 1

The Problem with Today’s Tech Stacks

6 CHAPTER 2

Realities of a Hairball Infrastructure

10 CHAPTER 3

Digital Strategy for Modern Services Organizations

16 CHAPTER 4

Benefits of the Operational System of Record

18 CHAPTER 5

Key Tech in the Stack

22 CHAPTER 6

Integration: Critical Layer in a Cloud Connected World

What makes this moment in time especially

unique is the speed with which change is occur-

ring. Today, business agility is more important

than ever. A startup can emerge tomorrow that

will transform an industry and take down compa-

nies that have led a market for decades. This pro-

found shift has the potential to transform every

business model and every industry.

Leaders looking to thrive in this digital era must

be flexible, prepared for change, and in a con-

stant state of innovation. It requires a look to the

future and an understanding of the existing, and

coming, impediments to growth.

A critical starting point is understanding the

technology underpinnings of a business. Digital

transformation is the quickest way for organiza-

tions to modernize operations. However, digitiz-

ing a business means more than just introducing

new technologies—it fundamentally changes the

way a firm thinks and does work. Most busi-

nesses have approached application architec-

ture haphazardly and don’t have an explicit digi-

tal perspective or strategy that drives technology

priorities. Without a central source of truth that

coordinates various critical systems and an

effective method of integration that prevents

siloing and redundancy, the result is a tangled

web of systems, which decreases productivity,

increases the cost of work, and ultimately makes

it very difficult for management to oversee the

day-to-day work at a services firm.

Changing how your business works and taking

full advantage of today’s technology can be chal-

lenging, but the result is a stronger organization

fully equipped for the future. In this ebook, we

will review trends driving the growth and trans-

formation of services industries, assess the lim-

itations of the current technology landscape, and

put forward the emerging model of an Operational

System of Record (OSR) that’s enabling today’s

progressive professional and marketing services

organizations to operate with greater agility, pre-

dictability, and precision.

In the digital age, technology is the central axis of

our world and applications allow us to do things that

were previously unimaginable. This era continues to

accelerate the pace of innovation at a blistering rate.

INTRODUCTION

TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 1

The Problem with Today’s Tech Stacks

CHAPTER 1

2 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK

The cloud has been incredibly

transformative in both our

personal lives and the way business

is conducted. It has allowed

organizations to be faster and more

flexible, leading to numerous new

models and practices. Businesses

in every industry are pursuing the

promise of digital transformation.

However, adoption of new technology alone does

not usher in necessary change. In the services

industry, it has actually hindered progress. A sea

of applications have been deployed in an attempt

to simplify, streamline, and propel business, and

in the process created many gaps in processes

and systems.

Therefore, to understand the opportunity for the

rapidly growing $15 trillion services sector in

adopting a modern technology environment, one

must first understand how technology has

underserved these industries to date.


The Promise of ERP

Even just a decade ago, Enterprise Resource

Management (ERP) solutions were acting as

the procedural backbone for most mid- to

large-sized enterprises. Names like Oracle and

SAP dominated the business software discus-

sion. Although known as complex, expensive,

and inflexible, ERP solutions were routinely

selected due to their broad capabilities.

ERP was initially designed for manufacturing

companies, which relied on producing and dis-

tributing products for revenue. As a result,

operational capabilities were designed to sup-

port a myriad of departments and functions

irrelevant to critical services operations; for

example, materials and inventory control, distri-

bution, order management, and production.

Services-centric organizations, on the other hand,

are often project-based and require complex

coordination of people. These businesses have

unique needs around facilitating collaboration,

project planning and execution, resource utiliza-

tion, and managing project costs—which ERP was

not designed to do.

The Emergence of PSA Solutions

To meet the needs of an increasingly ser-

vices-driven economy, some ERP vendors began

offering integrated services modules, also known

as Professional Services Automation (PSA) solu-

tions. Additionally, independent PSA solutions

began to emerge. These tools incorporate func-

tionality such as project and resource planning,

time tracking, expense management, and invoic-

ing. Service Performance Insight (SPI), a global

research, consulting and training organization

dedicated to helping professional service organi-

zations, found that using a PSA solution leads to

higher rates of on-time project delivery and more

accurate project estimates—illustrating that PSA

solutions have provided value beyond ERP.1

Yet, there have been significant limitations. PSA

solutions were designed primarily with top-down

planning and management in mind, and the reality

is that a majority of non-management workers in a

services organization access it only to enter time

and expenses on a weekly or infrequent basis. A

1 Urich, Jeanne. “2019 Best-of-the-Best Professional Services Organizations.” SPI Research. Service Performance Insight, 2019. February 2019.


Collaborative Work

Management (CWM) tools

bridge project management,

task management and

collaboration to enable

distributed teams and drive

business productivity.

“

majority of the actual work happening in a ser-

vices business—project management, task

management, communication, team collabo-

ration, and working with clients and subcon-

tractors—happens outside of the PSA solution.

The Introduction of

Collaborative Work

Management Tools

The most significant weakness with PSA solu-

tions is that they do not facilitate the collabora-

tion that is required today. Collaboration is key

across teams, and client collaboration is even

more important in services. To fill some of the

gaps and help with day-to-day operations,

workers have incorporated additional produc-

tivity tools, often referred to as Collaborative

Work Management software.

Collaborative Work Management (CWM) tools

bridge project management, task management

and collaboration to enable distributed teams

and drive business productivity. Now, compa-

nies are using both PSA as well as CWM solu-

tions, and continue to pile on more and more

applications to the technology infrastructure

one at a time. Today, the average worker uses

5-8 additional niche solutions that support the

major areas of communication and collabora-

tion needs across the business.2 Without the

adoption of these applications, services opera-

tions would come to a halt.

Collaborative Work Management (CWM) tools

bridge project management, task management

and collaboration to enable distributed teams

and drive business productivity.

2 “Cloud Adoption & Risk Report.” Skyhigh Networks. Gartner, 2016. Web. 20 June 2017.


CHAPTER 2

Realities of a Hairball Infrastructure


There is no doubt that

with the growth of

the services economy,

adoption of technology

to more effectively

run services-centric

businesses is on

the rise.3

Even with an abundance of innovative ERP, PSA, and other project

management, resource management, collaboration, and productivity

tools in place—or perhaps because of these—there are gaps that exist.

These gaps are often filled with manual procedures and spread-

sheets, creating significant operating challenges.

Running a business

with spreadsheets is limiting

Existing ERP solutions and PSA solutions do not have the breadth of

operational functionality required to effectively manage a services

business. As a result, services organizations have been forced to turn

to other systems to manage core parts of their business—namely

resource planning and management, collaboration, and project exe-

cution. Thus, the data that is actually driving the business lives in dis-

parate systems. In order to gain insights from this data, organizations

have the option to either: layer an intelligence system on top of multi-

ple, disparate systems (which gets tremendously complex and costly),

or to take the more common solution and resort to spreadsheets to

extract and tie data together.

Spreadsheet-based ‘solutions’ pose many critical problems. It takes

constant diligence and countless hours to cobble together the infor-

mation needed to grasp the levers and measures that are impacting

the business. They also only reveal what has occurred (e.g. historical

utilization), and by the time the information is consolidated and ana-

lyzed, it’s often too late to make a change that will improve the result

of an ongoing project. Therefore, the entire operation slows as it waits

for information to come together from the past in order to make

important decisions for the future.

Existing business systems

struggle with unique projects

Services businesses vary hugely in terms of what they deliver to their

customers and the scale on which they operate. The issue is that tra-

ditional business solutions have been specifically designed to create a

consistent, standard pace of production. In services industries, cli-

ents are constantly presenting new, unique, and challenging projects.

Existing tools are often not flexible enough to deliver on these custom

projects at the rate the business must move.

3 Leinwand, Allan. “What The Rise Of Cloud Computing Means For IT Pros.” Forbes. Forbes Media, 28 February 2017. 7 June 2017.


The plethora of stitched

together tools has created

chaos

By integrating resource planning with time and

expense tracking, PSA solutions were designed

to provide management visibility into resources

and financials. However, the reality is, these

applications offer shallow functionality and the

bulk of the organization is executing and man-

aging their work in other systems. Employees

have been forced to organically adopt cloud-

based tools to drive critical project manage-

ment, collaboration, and communication activ-

ities. When individual employees or

departments adopt their own tools out of

necessity without regard to a larger solution

strategy, they often remain unintegrated. This

leads to data silos, a lack of communication,

and more complications that arise out of what

should be solutions.

Each of these point solutions can serve a role.

However, too many of these systems in a stack

creates chaos. It’s now more challenging to

find and track critical correspondence, feed-

back, change orders, budgets, and more.

Furthermore, jumping in and out of all of these

systems is reducing productivity in the work-

4 Visitacion, Margo. “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Collaborative Work Management, Q4 2016.” Project Place. Forrester, 17 October 2016. 10 May 2017.

TIME TRACKING

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SOFTWARE

ACCOUNTING

PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

TEAM COLLABORATION

P S A

E R P

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Chat

Resource Planning

File Sharing Video Conferencing

Resource Scheduling

Email

Spreadsheets

Resource Allocation

Job Costing

Expense Tracking

Reports

Task Managment

Subcontractor Management

Client Portal

Challenges of a Hairball Infrastructure


With the speed and complexity of work

today, it is increasingly challenging to

operate within fragmented business

environments.

The emerging issue that services teams face is that not all project

delivery-related data is tracked in a single “system of record.” Getting

out of siloed systems is critical: services organizations must move

beyond spreadsheets if they are to thrive in the fast-paced, hyper-

connected, hyper specialized world of the Service Level Economy.

place. Citing research from the American

Psychological Association, the Forrester Enterprise

Collaborative Work Management Wave Report

points out that the mental block created by this

constant switching from app to app is reducing

worker productivity by 40 percent.4

Poor adoption of PSA and time

tracking tools is costing money

Another result of the work being conducted out-

side of PSA solutions, or time tracking tools, is the

impact on accuracy and timelines of submitted

timesheets. Both issues are costing services orga-

nizations a lot of money. Because the time tracking

system is not where the work is happening,

employees will often bulk enter time at the end of

the week, or the end of the month. It’s almost

impossible to remember the particulars of where

time was spent on activities that far in the past. As

a result, employees are in the habit of entering

what was assigned, even if in reality they spent 20

percent more (or less) time on a billable project

than was allocated. Harvard Business Review

reported that inaccurate timesheets are costing

businesses billions of dollars every day.5

Resources are not being fully

utilized

The typical PSA user relies on outside time track-

ing procedures to record resource allocation,

hours, and project assignments. The lack of inte-

gration between resource management and proj-

ect planning makes it difficult to truly know who is

on the bench and who is available to be assigned to

work at any given time. Even sophisticated ser-

vices businesses often manage resource alloca-

tion via spreadsheets and homegrown solutions.

This disconnectedness has had a significant nega-

tive impact on utilization in services firms, which

hampers margins.

Project financials handled

separately from project execution

results in margin leakage

Housing project financials in one system, and proj-

ect tasks and execution details in another, poses

significant risks to the performance of any services

organization. When project management and task

management are managed in apps or systems

separate from the tracking of time, costs, and bill

rates, visibility is difficult. Adjustments that could

impact project financials are delayed or never

made, and as a result, margins suffer. Every single

project in a services business has the potential to

leak profits. Minimizing this leakage begins with

the identification of the problem at the project

level. When project work is disconnected from

project financials, it is often too late to rectify a

problem by the time it is identified. As a result,

margins suffer.

5 Gavvet, Gretchen. “Workers Are Bad at Filling Out Timesheets, and It Costs Billions a Day.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Publishing, 12 January 2015. 14 May 2017.


CHAPTER 3

The Digital Strategy for Modern Services

Organizations


Forward-thinking services

leaders are actively seeking

operating models that allow

them to better connect,

orchestrate, and optimize

their businesses and

resources.

As more systems are required to compete in today’s envi-

ronment, more data is being spread across siloed systems,

causing major challenges for service operations. It is becom-

ing a requirement for business leaders to understand the

implications of a disparate technology architecture. The first

place to start is in identifying the key systems of record. A

system of record can be understood as the authoritative

data source for an organization.

There are four key systems of record that enable a success-

ful services ecosystem: Operational System of Record,

Customer System of Record, Financial System of Record and

People System of Record. The following will focus on the

components that make up the Operational System of Record

first, and then take a deeper dive into the other systems that

make up the modern services tech stack.

There are four key systems of record that enable a

successful services ecosystem:

1 Operational System of Record

2 Customer System of Record

3 Financial System of Record

4 People System of Record


ResourceManagement

Project Accounting

TeamCollaboration

Project Management

BusinessIntelligence

Introducing the

Operational System of Record

the delivery team, including contractors and clients. CWM

allows the key communication around projects to exist on

one platform, creating a strategic hub for services opera-

tions. Integrating these tools into your OSR facilitates rapid

communication with contractors and clients, and allows

workers to have a one stop shop for all their collaborative

needs.

The Operational System of Record

Enables the Following Functionality:

• Resource Management

• Project Management

• Contextualized Collaboration

• Project Accounting

• Real-Time Business Intelligence

Undoubtedly, the single biggest systems opportunity for

services organizations today is to build their technology

environment around an Operational System of Record.

By bridging core planning, executional, project accounting,

and analysis systems in a single operating environment,

organizations are able to experience dramatically better vis-

ibility, predictability, and agility. This digital infrastructure

also becomes the heart of the organization, and can improve

processes by packaging up best practices into frameworks,

guidelines, analytics, and insights required to successfully

operate a fast-moving services firm today.

Another key component of this Operational System of

Record is that it incorporates Collaborative Work

Management (CWM) functionality, in addition to having tra-

ditional PSA solution components like resource planning,

time and expense tracking and project accounting. It is the

introduction of these collaborative tools that contextualizes

all the actual work and communication being done across


Percentage of Capabilities: Operational System of Record Vs. Professional Services Automation & Collaborative Work Management Tools

RESOURCE PLANNING

PROJECTMANAGEMENT

TEAMCOLLABORATION

PROJECT ACCOUNTING

BUSINESSINTELLIGENCE

100%

60%

80%

40%

20%

Services Automation ToolsWork Automation Tools

100%

System of Record

100%

60%

80%

40%

20%


RESOURCE PLANNING

PROJECTMANAGEMENT

TEAMCOLLABORATION

PROJECT ACCOUNTING


100%

60%

80%

40%

20%


100%

System of Record

100%

60%

80%

40%

20%


RESOURCE PLANNING

PROJECTMANAGEMENT

TEAMCOLLABORATION

PROJECT ACCOUNTING


100%

60%

80%

40%

20%


100%

System of Record

100%

60%

80%

40%

20%


RESOURCE PLANNING

PROJECTMANAGEMENT

TEAMCOLLABORATION

PROJECT ACCOUNTING


100%

60%

80%

40%

20%


100%

System of Record

100%

60%

80%

40%

20%

Resource Management

In services, it’s the people who make

or break the business. Profitability,

project success, and client satisfac-

tion all rely on effective management

and staffing of resources. It may

sound easy, but it’s actually the most

complicated component of any ser-

vices business.


must provide real-time resource

availability to improve forecasting,

planning, and scheduling. The system

should include details about current

and future availability to better under-

stand who is available to take on proj-

ect work at the task level. It should

also track skills and proficiencies to

improve the matching of consultants

to projects and key financial data

related to resources (e.g. cost and bill

rates) that will impact the profitability

of projects. The primary benefit of

managing resources in the same sys-

tem that also tracks project tasks and

project accounting is that organiza-

tions can more nimbly react to the

challenges that surface during project

execution and swiftly address needs

to better execute and increase profit-

ability. This is the most critical factor

in creating more predictable project

outcomes.

Specific Functionality of the System Includes: Real-time information on resource availability, resource forecasting, skills management, scenario planning, role-based planning, and project- and task-level resource scheduling.

Limitations of Resource Management Systems Include: Inability to optimize resource utilization, as time tracking, tasks, and resource management may each be located in separate, unconnected solutions.

Incorrectly aligning available and appropriate resources with project schedules, which are often managed in separate solutions.

Difficulty in managing resource workload and sharing resources among departments, who may not have visibility into each other’s projects.

Project Management

Projects today are more complex than

ever. There are a lot of people involved

with specialized skills and a lot of

dependencies for getting work done.

An Operational System of Record

should enable project managers to

build detailed project plans within the

system. Critically, it must support a

multi-level work breakdown struc-

ture, so the project can be defined by

a series of granular tasks and sub-

tasks, with multiple levels between

Digital Strategy for Modern

Services Organizations

Current Capabilities: Professional Services Automation &

Collaborative Work Management Tools vs an ideal


Professional Services Automation

Collaborative Work Management



the top and the lowest level of the

project. Each task includes important

information such as burn rate, per-

cent complete, status, and other

information that rolls up to the parent

tasks, so it is quick and easy to see

where problems may be occurring. It

must also allow for dependencies

between tasks. Furthermore, one of

the benefits of the project manage-

ment system being a core part of the

OSR is that it serves as the central

hub for all critical resource and finan-

cial data at the project level. This

empowers and unifies the entire proj-

ect delivery team in a common execu-

tion environment.

Specific Functionality of the System Includes: Gantt chart-based project plan capabilities, schedule management, multi-level WBS, task assignment and scheduling, critical path and variance analysis.

Limitations of Project Management Systems Include: Lack of visibility into resource skills, preventing project managers from assigning the right team member to the task they are best equipped to execute.

The possibility that projects may go over budget when disconnected from project accounting, leading to slim margins impacting profitability for the business as a whole.

Team Collaboration

Today, employees are processing

more information than ever. They

need faster and more transparent

ways to see what other team mem-

bers are doing in order to keep pace

with the speed of business.

The core Operational System of

Record bridges project communica-

applied to make collaboration and communication channels effective across all departments.

Project Accounting

Best practice dictates that services

organizations run a margin-driven

business. Yet, many projects in a ser-

vices business are leaking profits. An

appropriate analogy is that project

work is like a leaky bucket. When a

project starts, the bucket is full of

water. As the project continues and

changes (for example, a task takes

longer than it should, or a client

changes the scope), water begins to

leak out. The goal is to plug as many of

the holes as early as possible to carry

the maximum amount of water over

the finish line.

To combat leaky margins, the core

Operational System of Record must

provide key project accounting

details, such as real-time utilization

and margins, at the project and even

task level. Now resources can plan,

track, and optimize work to produce

desired financial outcomes. In

essence, every project becomes its

own Profit and Loss (P&L) center. At a

glance, all stakeholders can see how

well the team is utilizing resources,

the burn down rate, project margins

at completion, etc. The team can also

immediately identify problems at the

project level, so they can in turn make

informed decisions and adjustments

on the fly that lead to predictable and

profitable project delivery. This is the

true foundation of business success

and growth.

tion and task management in a uni-

fied, cloud-based project workspace.

Also, it should enable contextualized

collaboration through project- and

task-specific activity feeds, around

project objects such as plans, time-

lines, budgets, files, proofs,

timesheets, expenses, change orders,

and more.

Furthermore, as service organizations

continue to expand their breadth of

services offerings and take on more

complex work, project teams increas-

ingly consist of internal talent, exter-

nal service providers, and specialists,

all who need access to a central col-

laboration and communication tool

around the work at hand. Services

organizations also require a collabo-

ration strategy to engage clients.

Sharing things including Gantt charts,

tasks, and milestones provides cli-

ents greater insight into how the bud-

get is being utilized, fostering trans-

parency and trust as both sides

collaborate. Therefore, the OSR must

enable subcontractor and client col-

laboration. This drives unprecedented

levels of connection and communica-

tion across business and geographic

boundaries.

Specific Functionality of the System Needs to Include: Cloud-based access, collaborative workspaces, project-specific activity feeds, project object collaboration, and public and private messages.

Limitations of Collaboration Systems Include: Communication between team members may take place outside of the project workspace, which can cause delays and misinformation.

Integration with project and resource management systems must be


It has become a requirement

for business leaders to

understand the implications of

their technology architecture.

“Specific Functionality of the System Includes: Time and expense tracking and approval, project costing, project and task budget management, real-time utilization and margin tracking, invoicing, rate cards, and robust integrations into back-end financial systems.

Limitations of Accounting Systems Include: Manual data import and analysis from other systems, creating excessive time spent in tracking project expenses.

Effective project accounting requires that all team members accurately track their time and expenses for a true assessment of all projects, ensuring accurate client billing and margin tracking, and helping businesses not leave money on the table.

Business Intelligence

Services organizations are incredibly

challenging to manage. There are

many dynamics to these businesses

that change daily. Projects are made

up of different shapes and sizes; and

with the coordination of people,

things rarely go exactly as planned.

Because the Operational System of

Record bridges key information about

resources, plans, projects, and proj-

ect financials in a single operating

environment, all the relevant data to

provide a complete view into the

health of projects and the business

also live in a single system. With a BI

layer in place, the OSR becomes the

central source of truth for the busi-

ness. It offers past, present, and

future intelligence on fees, margins,

utilization, time and expense,

resources, clients, projects, and

more. Now a services organization

can quickly answer critical questions

that are driving business perfor-

mance. For example: what are our

actual-to-date and estimate-at-com-

plete margins; what are our current

billable and nonbillable hours by role,

or by individual resource; what skills

are we using or in need of most; what

percentage of our work is billable;

what’s our unused capacity; who’s

available now; what are our current and

projected margins?

The extent to which a services business has

a strategy and tools to help them answer

these questions in real-time will impact the

success of the company.

Specific Functionality of the System Needs to Include: Built-in reports and dashboards on fees, margins, utilization, time and expense, resources and more, custom reporting, trend analysis, data visualization, data integration with other systems.

Limitations of Business Intelligence Systems Include: Business Intelligence inherently needs to be integrated with other systems to be effective, emphasizing the need for a successful integration strategy.

Effective use of a Business Intelligence solution requires that the data it is analyzing is accurate, and solutions must be trustworthy and consistently used by all team members to generate good data.


CHAP TER 4

Benefits of the Operational System

of Record


The quickest way to digitize a services business and increase

its strategic impact is to modernize day-to-day operations. The

emerging model enabling today’s professional and marketing

services organizations to operate with greater agility,

predictability, and precision, is to unify all critical functions of

services delivery into a core Operational System of Record.

Better Operational

Execution


provides a platform to execute the

entire project lifecycle, from

forecasting to invoicing. With all the

work in a single system, real-time

data is now available to empower

every person in the organization— not

just management—to make informed

decisions that will improve the

outcome of their work. For example, a

project manager can see if a project’s

budget is running over and has options

on how to course correct: they can

play out different resourcing scenarios

to see if that will improve project

margins, or put in a change order for

the client to approve for additional

scope that has crept in. This agility is

empowering and impossible to

achieve without a core Operational

System of Record that couples

detailed project planning, execution,

and project financials.

Improved

Responsiveness/

Connectivity

A cloud-based Operational System of

Record ensures that every person has

access to the same information

(dependent on permissions), from

anywhere in the world. This dramati-

cally improves alignment and collab-

oration with remote employees, sub-

contractors, and clients. Now the

organization can go anywhere.

Elevated Financial

Performance

With every project being managed as

a P&L (profit and loss statement) and

project financial information available

in real-time, an immediate result is

elevated financial performance:

higher margins, optimized utilization

rates, and sharpened forecasting.

There are numerous benefits to a strategy that employs an OSR:

Improved Client

Satisfaction and

Retention

An Operational System of Record

improves on-time, on-budget delivery

of projects, which is what clients want

most. Some clients will naturally

gravitate towards providers they see

adopting this new, more transparent,

more explicit approach, given the

trust it helps establish. Furthermore,

inviting clients to engage in this core

system also increases client engage-

ment, alignment, and accountability

in the overall success of a projects.


CHAP TER 5

Key Tech in the Stack


OperationalSystem of Record

ResourceManagement

Project Accounting

TeamCollaboration

Project Management


PeopleSystem of Record

CustomerSystem of Record

FinancialSystem of Record

Add to extendthe system

Add to extendthe system

A technology strategy

consists of more than using

specific applications to

support various business

needs— it must present

a logical plan to ensure

the right information is

seamlessly delivered through

every part of the business.

While different people in an organization may primarily live

in different systems, it is crucial that they are all viewing and

utilizing the same data.

Therefore, it’s critical to think about the tech stack of a mod-

ern services organization as a holistic platform that is facili-

tating a process. As any IT consultant will say, process first.

In addition to adopting a core Operational System of Record

that facilitates advanced project collaboration needs and

insights, services organizations will need to rely on other key

software applications to digitize all aspects of the business.

Integration of these essential business applications

provides the visibility, transparency, and control required to

effectively manage the business. A well-designed

integration will help businesses create more accurate data

that is pulled from multiple sources, which can be used

across an organization.




ResourceManagement

ProjectManagement

ProjectAccounting


TeamCollaboration

OperationalSystem of Record

FinacialSystem of Record

There are four key

systems of record that

enable a successful

services ecosystem:

1

2

Operational System

of Record


is at the core of the modern ser-

vices tech stack. Other systems

orbit and connect through this

core system. Functionally, it must

serve all critical day-to-day opera-

tions for the majority of work that

happens in a services business,

including robust project manage-

ment, contextualized collabora-

tion, project accounting, long-

and short-term resource manage-

ment capabilities, and real-time

Business Intelligence.

Customer System

of Record

This is often referred to

as the Customer Relationship

Management (CRM) system. It is

designed to help businesses man-

age and analyze customer interac-

tions and data throughout the cus-

tomer lifecycle. By integrating with

the OSR, organizations can better

align sales and delivery teams.

Now, the services team can plan

before a deal is won, accelerate

project kick off, and the organiza-

tion as a whole can more accu-

rately forecast revenue and

resource needs.20 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK

Financial System

of Record

The technology used in the Financial

System of Record manages back-end

accounting and finance processes. By

connecting the Operational System of

Record with the Financial System of

Record, the finance team gets

necessary visibility into project

details and status to accurately

manage business accounting. The

delivery team also benefits by getting

details at the project level about

invoice status to help with managing

every aspect of the client relationship.

People System

of Record

This technology is often referred to as

the Human Capital Management

(HCM) system. Core administrative

functions include benefits adminis-

tration, payroll, recruiting, a portal for

employees to request time off, etc.

Integrating with the Operational

System of Record shares key data

between the two systems. For exam-

ple, employees’ cost rates (which

impact pricing on projects), planned

time off for staffing purposes, and

things like skills and geographic

locations.

Other Applications in the Stack

Services firms vary widely in types of services they deliver. As such, there

are an infinite number of non-core systems and applications that may still

be integral to a specific firm’s delivery strategy. In essence, there are

different tiers of applications extending from the Operational System of

Record that form different strategic perimeters. Examples include agile

development tools such as Jira, communication tools such as Slack,

document sharing apps such as Google Drive or Dropbox, expense

management apps such as Concur or Expensify, and the list goes on. These

may be considered ancillary because there are fewer people in the

organization that need to live in these systems or because they serve a

more niche purpose. A technology strategy therefore includes analysis of

how to integrate the core systems with the Operational System of Record,

as well as these ancillary applications

3

4


CHAP TER 6

Integration: Critical Layer in a Cloud

Connected World




FinancialSystem of Record

The primary benefit of a well-designed

tech stack is that it allows businesses

to leverage specific applications to help

drive improved performance in every

functional area of an organization.

However, this also creates a prolifera-

tion of information silos, and data may

be coming from all directions.

Critical to the success of a best-in-

class solution model is that these

systems talk to each other. For that

reason, most cloud systems today are

designed for interoperability and

access.

To avoid a hairball tech stack, it's

crucial that there is a thoughtful

approach to system integrations.

There needs to be a core Operational

System of Record where the majority

of work and transactions for a

business reside. From there, it

requires a clear understanding of the

role of integration in facilitating

desired process and intelligence

throughout the organization.

As noted by Accenture, businesses

need to adopt this business-centric

approach to an integration strategy

and think about integrations from

more than merely a data perspective.

“If you only think about integrations

as a way to pass data, then you’ll

likely end up with multiple, redundant

point-to-point integrations. On the

other hand, if you think about the

business processes that your integra-

tions need to support, you can likely

simplify your requirements.”


Operational Platform for the Modern Services OrganizationIn a new world where connectedness, transparency,

and performance matter more than ever,

Mavenlink helps you deliver.


Mavenlink has increased visibility

across our global organization. The

connection between Salesforce and

Mavenlink has made a major impact

on how we run our business.

MIMI MOORE, VICE PRESIDENT OF RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT, HUGE, LLC

“

mavenlink.com • [email protected] • (800) 860-9544

http://mavenlink.com

mailto:info%40mavenlink.com?subject=

Can Technology Accelerate Your Services Business?

Documents

Transcript of Can Technology Accelerate Your Services Business?