FinancialForce Professional Services Automation overview

Customer success story: Perceptive Software

Perceptive faced challenges that Sales and Services were poorly aligned - their existing systems couldn't cope with the growth or the complexity of customers' requirements
Since using FinancialForce PSA they can see the scheduled and unscheduled back log at any time, and have a consistent approach to reporting as the company continues its growth
The admin has been removed from the Professional Services Director's job, allowing him to spend valuable time with his resources on their projects
The implementation was successful because the FinancialForce.com people understood Perceptive Software's business and its requirements of the application

Isn’t it time technology served services businesses?

Services are a large and growing part of the global economy, but have not been well supported by enterprise applications and technologies. Unfortunately, most services teams operate on a collection of cobbled together niche applications, spreadsheets and home-grown systems. As a result, processes between departments become disjointed, information is dispersed and manual workarounds proliferate. This system fragmentation also breaks down communications between sales and services, fueling the need for more conference calls, emails and unbillable meetings to connect distributed and virtual team members. And maybe worst of all, management struggles to get visibility of how the business is doing today, and what the future will bring.

In short, enterprise applications have failed professional services organizations.

End-to-end services automation on Force.com

The advent of cloud computing, and more specifically Force.com and Salesforce CRM, have created the impetus and technology platform to finally meet the needs of services organizations.

FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA) is a cloud based services solution that leverages the power of Salesforce CRM and Force.com to the benefit of services companies. It enables you to manage your people, customers, projects and financials in one integrated services management application. You get the benefits of native integration with Salesforce CRM and the scalability and flexibility of the world's leading enterprise cloud platform. And just as the thousands of services companies have found by using Salesforce CRM, FinancialForce PSA focuses your IT spending on applications, not technology management.
The Force.com cloud computing platform is the perfect vehicle to meet the application and business model needs of services organizations for the following reasons:

Align sales, services and finance around the customer

First, FinancialForce.com begins with the customer in mind, by using Salesforce CRM as the basis and starting point for services sales and project delivery. It is a customer centric approach that starts with opportunities and seamlessly progresses through the hand-off to services, through project delivery, billing and cash collections. It is a closed loop system that knocks down the walls between sales and services in ways that never were possible before. This is because FinancialForce Professional Services Automation is literally embedded in Salesforce CRM, enabling sales teams to get real time visibility into project's status, resource availability and project history that can serve as templates for new opportunities. At the same time, consulting managers have forward visibility into the pipeline so the right resources can be assembled at the right time and expectations can be met. And management benefits from a complete view of the business from beginning to end and top to bottom.

Technologies for teamwork

Second, cloud computing delivers an array of accessible technologies that uniquely help services companies. For instance, the platform enables FinancialForce.com to leverage a variety of mobile devices, customer portals, workflow engines, and analytic tools that support a “people” oriented business 24x7. This includes Chatter, the social medial application that brings Facebook-like collaboration functionality to project delivery. It allows sales and project team members to create project chatter groups and discussion streams that can be more integral to a project’s success than the usual collection of timecard entries and project management activities. In summary, Salesforce cloud technology is ideal for services based business models.

One team, one solution, one view of the customer

What all this means for your team is better visibility into: the pipeline, demand on resources, target start dates, customer interactions, active projects, issues and risks, billing details, and best of all a single view of the customer. And as Services Performance Insight has recently documented, companies that have greater visibility achieve higher win rates, utilization and services margins. Even better, you get these top-line benefits while lowering IT costs, creating a saleable and flexible foundation for future growth, while keeping your customer at the center.

Based on our benchmarking of over 400 service organizations, we’ve found that those who closely align sales and service processes are able to drive significantly higher utilization (81% vs 74%) and project profitability (34% vs 25%). For us, there’s no doubt that sales and service alignment is the new revenue engine!