Cloud App Integration .com

Todd Bursey, general manager, PSA at FinancialForce.com

In today’s professional services organizations (PSOs), customer acquisition and customer satisfaction are more important than ever. Yet, the disconnect between sales and services teams remains a major roadblock to delivering on this imperative. And as recent research has shown, it is a fundamental limitation to an organization’s growth and success.

In our experience, sales and services alignment can only be achieved through full transparency into the business by both parties. Each side needs to support everything from the goals of a single client engagement all the way up to the strategic initiatives of the firm.

But here’s where the missing link comes in. Integration between previously disparate systems – professional services automation (PSA) and CRM, backed by Financials – is a vital piece to aligning sales and services teams. In fact, PSOs that integrate these systems gain improved executive visibility, superior bid-to-win ratios and more projects delivered on-time.

Research and consulting firm Service Performance Insight (SPI) recently released findings from a survey of more than 200 PS organizations that quantifies the pitfalls of this disconnect.  The table below proves that the lack of alignment between sales and service teams, and the systems they use to manage projects and customer interactions, leads to lost opportunities, mis-set client expectations, under-scoped projects and poor resource utilization.

Conversely, the research shows that best-in-class organizations that have connected CRM and PSA applications have bridged the sales/service divide to reap significant rewards, including larger pipelines, higher win-to-bid ratios, higher levels of consultant utilization and more satisfied clients.

Interestingly, the research also shows that while Salesforce CRM is the most popular system among PSOs and its users outperform their counterparts in sales metrics, these users are lagging the industry in tapping the benefits of integrated CRM and PSA. This reveals a huge opportunity for Salesforce CRM users to make significant operational improvements, just by integrating CRM and PSA.

The value of integrated CRM and PSA can be stated in both subjective and objective terms. Improved visibility for both sales and consulting inevitably leads to better decisions and better customer service, hence improved client references. But one of the most important findings from the SPI report is that PSOs that have integrated CRM and PSA have seen a 4% increase in utilization of billable staff, a potential source of pure profit.

Just how big is a 4% increase? Let’s take a hypothetical 250 person services organization in the chart below. This PSO generates around $50 million in annual revenues; 200 of the 250 employees are billable staff; each consultant bills out at $170/hour; they bill an average of 8 hours a day; and they carry a fully loaded cost to the PS organization of $250,000/year. By increasing its billable team utilization by 4%, this PS team can generate an additional $1 – 2 million in profit without spending (or cutting!) one dime – simply by integrating CRM and PSA.

Companies can no longer afford to have sales and services out of sync. The benefits of integration are significant and are a prerequisite to best-in-class performance. These benefits multiply when you combine the benefits of integration with the power of cloud-based solutions. Especially with the emergence of apps built on the Force.com platform and the emergence of new enterprise collaboration tools like Chatter, it’s easier than ever to leverage the cloud to integrate disparate elements of the business. Completing this integration will not only help firms gain immediate financial and customer service returns, but it will align the organization in a way that is prime for growth.

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