In the not too distant past, where you were located, heavily impacted who you did business with and what markets you could serve. In today’s global economy, talent beats location. Competitive forces require businesses to look outside their four walls and build their operations and workforce where the best talent lies. In addition, nearshore and offshore opportunities along with reduced overhead has piqued the interest of many organizations to head down this path. In fact, according to a new report from Global Workplace Analytics and FlexJobs “The number of telecommuting workers has increased 115% in a decade. That translates to 3.9 million workers, or almost 3% of the total U.S. workforce, working from home at least half the time in 2015, an increase from 1.8 million in 2005.” At the heart of this new reality lies the knowledge worker where cloud-connected devices are the only physical tools needed to get the job done. Although the death of the cubicle is not yet imminent, for many, long gone are the days of being chained to your office computer.
It is no secret that many professional services organizations have jumped on the telecommuting bandwagon and it makes total business sense. The success of a professional services business heavily relies on a highly talented workforce with a specific set of skills hard to come by. Relying on competitive local or regional talent is both difficult and economically challenging. With that in mind, widening the talent pool has become inevitable. That being said, a new set of challenges have risen in organizations finding the right set of technology and tools to ensure collaboration is maintained, information is consistent and that dispersed teams are effectively connected.
For some time now, leading professional services organizations have been gravitating towards a Cloud-Based infrastructure to address their evolving workforce, and Professional Services Automation (PSA) software is at the heart of this strategy. These organizations have recognized that Cloud-Based PSA solutions facilitate the forecasting, planning, delivery and billing of the services that drive the business in real time wherever their workforce or clients may be. More importantly, Enterprise-Grade PSA solutions deliver a cohesive experience across the entire workforce while maintaining the exchange of critical data among core front office (CRM) and back office (Financials and ERP) systems responsible for the organization’s success.
In the end, PSA solutions, like PSA, have become the hub linking remote workers to better collaborate and deliver real-time updates to internal and external stakeholders. Team members can leverage web-based time and expense reporting to facilitate project control billing, and updates; managers can get a more solid handle on their resources to improve customer service delivery via central resource planning capabilities; and executives can improve their decision making by increasing their visibility by ubiquitously accessing real-time dashboards and reports for better planning and forecasting.
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About the Author
Neil Stolovitsky has over 16 years of IT experience with end-user, consulting, and vendor organizations, along with extensive expertise in business development, software selection, and channel strategies. He has published numerous white papers and articles covering Professional Services Automation, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for service industries, Project Portfolio Management, IT Governance, and New Product Development to a global audience. Neil currently holds the position of Senior Solution Consultant with Upland Software.