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10 Things You Need to Know
1. The global PSA software market will hit a staggering $7.63 billion by the year 2017, according to new research from Global Industry Analysts, Inc. The news is surprising, considering the hit this market took during the recent global economic dip, as those companies purchasing such products opted to hold back their purse in infrastructure-enhancing purchases.
2. The tide is turning on this front in a significant way. Indeed, PSA software suites are increasingly emerging as bona-fide recession-proofers for corporate IT department principals inside professional services organizations anxious not to suffer the same shortfalls again.
3. Professional Service Automation is enterprise software that’s particularly designed for companies engaged in the delivery of accounting, management consulting, engineering, and agency and PR services, among others. With it, companies enjoy increased productivity and efficiencies across their operations, along with a much-enhanced view of what’s actually going on within them.
4. Up until fairly recently, PSA was regarded in terms of its individual components only. But its usefulness increases manifold with recent developments that link the software’s various disparate modules in a way that reveals the full breadth of available integrated solutions.
5. Not surprisingly, the omnipresent Cloud hovers above this aspect of operational efficiency, too. As more and more companies adopt the off-site approach to their data-management efforts, the opportunity to bundle all of their corporate activities—from sales to service to finance—under a single umbrella is too appealing to pass by. It’s why a muscular movement is afoot to blend the worlds of CRM and PSA.
6. A recent study conducted by consulting firm Service Performance Insight demonstrates that Salesforce CRM users who shift their interests to the Cloud are rewarded for the choice with higher bid-to-win ratios, greater average revenues per project and deal pipelines that are vastly superior to those of their less forward-thinking counterparts
7. The Service Performance Insight research also shows that PSOs simply cannot realize all the powers of their CRM systems unless they’re well integrated with their PSAs.
8. An integrated CRM-PSA application offers users the ability to track the gamut of their business activity—from fingers-crossed leads through in-the-bag deals—on a single platform, with a single interface, employing a single data repository.
9. By amalgamating their CRM and PSA platforms into one, goes the news, professional services firms benefit from larger project backlogs, improved executive visibility, better success with winning bids, higher billable utilization, an enhanced percentage of billable employees, more revenue from new clients and a greater proportion of projects that are completed on time.
10. Just the same, another burst of research from the same organization, this exploring the challenges of Salesforce CRM customers in the professional services industry, reveals that precious few of them have taken the steps to see through such a profitable integration. The news, still in the pipeline, is clearly yet to be fully put into profitable play.