Preface |
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This new class of business software goes by many confusing acronyms: PSA (Professional Services Automation), SPO (Service Process Optimization), SRM (Service Relationship Management) and many other variations.
They all essentially refer to the same thing, a solution that provides an Enterprise Resource Planning system for primarily white collar project/service organizations. The principle aim of this class of software is to make these organizations more efficient, and use mechanization to streamline their increasingly complicated processes. They are primarily focused on the creating bottom line benefits by putting powerful software tools into the hands of the people generating project and service revenue for the enterprise.
The primary focus of traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is the blue collar world of factory automation, and the world of accounting systems, where the raw data tends to be rolled up and summarized into the organizational structures that were built to conform to the accounting view of the enterprise. These accounting views are useful to produce General Ledgers and other high level accounting snapshots of the enterprise, but they usually bear little relationship to the dynamic way project focused organizations are structured, and continually restructured around new projects.
This new breed of software solutions, called PSA, focuses on servicing the needs of Project and Service Oriented Organizations (PSORGs), and is evolving to become the optimized and specialized ERP for these types of enterprises. (Project/Service-oriented organizations are the main focus of this book, and we will often use the terms PSORGs, or simply organizations, or enterprises, interchangeably as we will always be referring to the same type of organization).
The ultimate goal of these systems is to maximize the performance of these organizations. These solutions automate and integrate core business processes with the intent of increasing the efficiency of how projects are planned, budgeted, created, staffed, scheduled, implemented and billed in the real world.
The challenges for these organizations include evaluating their own processes and determining what has to be optimized, as well as selecting among the numerous PSA vendor offerings. The objective of this book is to assist the reader in identifying the key concepts of PSA solutions, their principle features, how to select them, and their implementation requirements.
Many medium to large sized enterprises use traditional single vendor ERPs to help centralize and mechanize their traditional core business processes. ERP software
automates many of the basic business processes that most enterprises need to implement, for example, accounting, HR, inventory control, procurement and order processing. Most of these processes are provided in modules created by the ERP manufacturer, or from their strategic partners. In many ways, ERPs eliminate the burden of the enterprise selecting their own best of breed solutions, and substitutes the expertise of the ERP manufacturer. The major benefits provided by ERP solutions is the Best Practices expertise of the ERP manufacturer and the integrated nature of the application modules.
ERPs have focused on traditional business processes within traditional industries . Project and service oriented organizations have had to rely on solutions that do not meet their particular needs, and more often than not, are crude combinations of nonintegrated systems such as standalone project management tools, simple spreadsheets, in-house custom built systems and paper-based methods to manage their core business processes. The result: a state of less than impressive efficiency.
Like more traditional businesses, Project and Service Oriented Organizations are under constant pressure to maximize revenues, minimize project costs, produce more measurable results, improve efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction. Continued reliance on productivity solutions that have not been tailored to their needs, such as general purpose ERP systems, standalone project management tools, in-house created applications, spreadsheets, and paper, is not an effective method of increasing productivity and profitability for such companies. These project-focused organizations have their own unique business processes that require optimization. Mechanized solutions intended to streamline them must naturally focus on the life cycle of their own products, namely: service and project engagements.
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