The 4 keys of an agile and performing Professional Services Organization

We live in a rapidly changing and accelerating world. To give just one example: according to the American author and futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller, knowledge doubled approximately every 25 years after World War II. According to IBM, knowledge doubles on average every 12 hours today. In other words, the pace of technological advancement is getting faster and faster and is causing skills to evolve at an unprecedented rate. In this dynamic environment, there are at least four essential qualities that Professional Services Organization must cultivate to gain agility and performance.

It continuously aligns strategy with operations

Every organization has strategic objectives. How do you ensure that operations and strategy are effectively aligned across business units? Managers need constant visibility on strategic objectives in order to understand how their work and that of their teams contribute to them. For example, the company can set up regular exchanges between the management and the managers in order to share the strategic objectives. If this transparency is essential in the long term, the company must also have the right tools to allow managers to follow the operational impact of their team in real time.

To strengthen the alignment between strategy and operations, the company must have a solution that allows it to continuously monitor the different actions of the company. At Whoz, for example, we offer digital services companies a SaaS solution that allows them to track in real time indicators related to their core business, staffing (TACE, billable and non-billable FTEs, etc.). This real-time visibility allows them to quickly analyze key data and reflect on actions to be taken to realign operations with strategic issues.

It plans and prioritizes in an iterative way

In the current context, the most successful Professional Services Organizations are those that are able to adapt their organization to the rapid changes in the market. The need to agile their business processes is no longer a simple competitive advantage. It is becoming a necessity in a context where things are changing at an unprecedented rate, from technological advances to rapidly evolving skills to unpredictable events such as the health and economic crisis related to covid19.

Professional Services Organizations must operate in an iterative fashion. In other words, these companies must be able to react as they go along and continuously readjust their actions until they achieve the desired result. This ability to react quickly to events is possible when teams have instant access to information. Having real-time data on their activity will allow them to quickly identify the actions to take to maximize their activity rate and remain competitive. The Whoz solution allows for example to have visibility on the availability of consultants over the coming weeks, which allows managers and staffing managers to anticipate the return of mission, to facilitate the restaffing and to reduce the inter-contract.

It boosts the productivity of its teams thanks to new technologies

Projects must be delivered quickly, as customer requirements are increasingly high. In this respect, new technologies have a huge potential that NSEs must exploit: they allow to automate a large number of low value-added tasks, and thus free up time for teams to focus on strategic missions (analyzing data related to the business, making recommendations, responding to customer needs…).

By automating profile searches and data consolidation, managers and executives of digital services companies can spend more time meeting customer needs or improving the profitability of their projects. Here are some examples of features that speed up some daily tasks: Whoz’ casting engine allows to find the best consultants in a few clicks; as for its skills file generator, it allows to quickly refine and upload attractive and reliable files. Finally, the staffing and profitability dashboards save considerable time for managers who have real-time data on the same platform.

It exploits the full potential of its network

Professional Services Organizations support their clients in digital transformation projects that are often complex and require a range of technical and behavioral skills. Beyond their ability to quickly identify the right profiles internally, these companies must capitalize on the potential of their ecosystem. In other words, IT services companies must be able to identify the right skills also among their freelancers and business partners. They benefit from an ecosystem of skills that is much wider than they imagine! Missing an expert simply because the company is not well equipped is more than a pity…

The Whoz solution allows to find the right consultants by analyzing both internal and external skills (freelancers, partners), and thus gives an undeniable competitive advantage to the ESNs that already use it.