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Can Technology Accelerate Your Services Business?Achieving Excellence Through an Operational System of Record
1 INTRODUCTION
Thriving in the Digital Age
2 CHAPTER 1
The Problem with Today’s Tech Stacks
6 CHAPTER 2
Realities of a Hairball Infrastructure
10 CHAPTER 3
Digital Strategy for Modern Services Organizations
16 CHAPTER 4
Benefits of the Operational System of Record
18 CHAPTER 5
Key Tech in the Stack
22 CHAPTER 6
Integration: Critical Layer in a Cloud Connected World
What makes this moment in time especially
unique is the speed with which change is occur-
ring. Today, business agility is more important
than ever. A startup can emerge tomorrow that
will transform an industry and take down compa-
nies that have led a market for decades. This pro-
found shift has the potential to transform every
business model and every industry.
Leaders looking to thrive in this digital era must
be flexible, prepared for change, and in a con-
stant state of innovation. It requires a look to the
future and an understanding of the existing, and
coming, impediments to growth.
A critical starting point is understanding the
technology underpinnings of a business. Digital
transformation is the quickest way for organiza-
tions to modernize operations. However, digitiz-
ing a business means more than just introducing
new technologies—it fundamentally changes the
way a firm thinks and does work. Most busi-
nesses have approached application architec-
ture haphazardly and don’t have an explicit digi-
tal perspective or strategy that drives technology
priorities. Without a central source of truth that
coordinates various critical systems and an
effective method of integration that prevents
siloing and redundancy, the result is a tangled
web of systems, which decreases productivity,
increases the cost of work, and ultimately makes
it very difficult for management to oversee the
day-to-day work at a services firm.
Changing how your business works and taking
full advantage of today’s technology can be chal-
lenging, but the result is a stronger organization
fully equipped for the future. In this ebook, we
will review trends driving the growth and trans-
formation of services industries, assess the lim-
itations of the current technology landscape, and
put forward the emerging model of an Operational
System of Record (OSR) that’s enabling today’s
progressive professional and marketing services
organizations to operate with greater agility, pre-
dictability, and precision.
In the digital age, technology is the central axis of
our world and applications allow us to do things that
were previously unimaginable. This era continues to
accelerate the pace of innovation at a blistering rate.
INTRODUCTION
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 1
The Problem with Today’s Tech Stacks
CHAPTER 1
2 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
The cloud has been incredibly
transformative in both our
personal lives and the way business
is conducted. It has allowed
organizations to be faster and more
flexible, leading to numerous new
models and practices. Businesses
in every industry are pursuing the
promise of digital transformation.
However, adoption of new technology alone does
not usher in necessary change. In the services
industry, it has actually hindered progress. A sea
of applications have been deployed in an attempt
to simplify, streamline, and propel business, and
in the process created many gaps in processes
and systems.
Therefore, to understand the opportunity for the
rapidly growing $15 trillion services sector in
adopting a modern technology environment, one
must first understand how technology has
underserved these industries to date.
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 3
The Promise of ERP
Even just a decade ago, Enterprise Resource
Management (ERP) solutions were acting as
the procedural backbone for most mid- to
large-sized enterprises. Names like Oracle and
SAP dominated the business software discus-
sion. Although known as complex, expensive,
and inflexible, ERP solutions were routinely
selected due to their broad capabilities.
ERP was initially designed for manufacturing
companies, which relied on producing and dis-
tributing products for revenue. As a result,
operational capabilities were designed to sup-
port a myriad of departments and functions
irrelevant to critical services operations; for
example, materials and inventory control, distri-
bution, order management, and production.
Services-centric organizations, on the other hand,
are often project-based and require complex
coordination of people. These businesses have
unique needs around facilitating collaboration,
project planning and execution, resource utiliza-
tion, and managing project costs—which ERP was
not designed to do.
The Emergence of PSA Solutions
To meet the needs of an increasingly ser-
vices-driven economy, some ERP vendors began
offering integrated services modules, also known
as Professional Services Automation (PSA) solu-
tions. Additionally, independent PSA solutions
began to emerge. These tools incorporate func-
tionality such as project and resource planning,
time tracking, expense management, and invoic-
ing. Service Performance Insight (SPI), a global
research, consulting and training organization
dedicated to helping professional service organi-
zations, found that using a PSA solution leads to
higher rates of on-time project delivery and more
accurate project estimates—illustrating that PSA
solutions have provided value beyond ERP.1
Yet, there have been significant limitations. PSA
solutions were designed primarily with top-down
planning and management in mind, and the reality
is that a majority of non-management workers in a
services organization access it only to enter time
and expenses on a weekly or infrequent basis. A
1 Urich, Jeanne. “2019 Best-of-the-Best Professional Services Organizations.” SPI Research. Service Performance Insight, 2019. February 2019.
4 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
Collaborative Work
Management (CWM) tools
bridge project management,
task management and
collaboration to enable
distributed teams and drive
business productivity.
“
majority of the actual work happening in a ser-
vices business—project management, task
management, communication, team collabo-
ration, and working with clients and subcon-
tractors—happens outside of the PSA solution.
The Introduction of
Collaborative Work
Management Tools
The most significant weakness with PSA solu-
tions is that they do not facilitate the collabora-
tion that is required today. Collaboration is key
across teams, and client collaboration is even
more important in services. To fill some of the
gaps and help with day-to-day operations,
workers have incorporated additional produc-
tivity tools, often referred to as Collaborative
Work Management software.
Collaborative Work Management (CWM) tools
bridge project management, task management
and collaboration to enable distributed teams
and drive business productivity. Now, compa-
nies are using both PSA as well as CWM solu-
tions, and continue to pile on more and more
applications to the technology infrastructure
one at a time. Today, the average worker uses
5-8 additional niche solutions that support the
major areas of communication and collabora-
tion needs across the business.2 Without the
adoption of these applications, services opera-
tions would come to a halt.
Collaborative Work Management (CWM) tools
bridge project management, task management
and collaboration to enable distributed teams
and drive business productivity.
2 “Cloud Adoption & Risk Report.” Skyhigh Networks. Gartner, 2016. Web. 20 June 2017.
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 5
CHAPTER 2
Realities of a Hairball Infrastructure
6 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
There is no doubt that
with the growth of
the services economy,
adoption of technology
to more effectively
run services-centric
businesses is on
the rise.3
Even with an abundance of innovative ERP, PSA, and other project
management, resource management, collaboration, and productivity
tools in place—or perhaps because of these—there are gaps that exist.
These gaps are often filled with manual procedures and spread-
sheets, creating significant operating challenges.
Running a business
with spreadsheets is limiting
Existing ERP solutions and PSA solutions do not have the breadth of
operational functionality required to effectively manage a services
business. As a result, services organizations have been forced to turn
to other systems to manage core parts of their business—namely
resource planning and management, collaboration, and project exe-
cution. Thus, the data that is actually driving the business lives in dis-
parate systems. In order to gain insights from this data, organizations
have the option to either: layer an intelligence system on top of multi-
ple, disparate systems (which gets tremendously complex and costly),
or to take the more common solution and resort to spreadsheets to
extract and tie data together.
Spreadsheet-based ‘solutions’ pose many critical problems. It takes
constant diligence and countless hours to cobble together the infor-
mation needed to grasp the levers and measures that are impacting
the business. They also only reveal what has occurred (e.g. historical
utilization), and by the time the information is consolidated and ana-
lyzed, it’s often too late to make a change that will improve the result
of an ongoing project. Therefore, the entire operation slows as it waits
for information to come together from the past in order to make
important decisions for the future.
Existing business systems
struggle with unique projects
Services businesses vary hugely in terms of what they deliver to their
customers and the scale on which they operate. The issue is that tra-
ditional business solutions have been specifically designed to create a
consistent, standard pace of production. In services industries, cli-
ents are constantly presenting new, unique, and challenging projects.
Existing tools are often not flexible enough to deliver on these custom
projects at the rate the business must move.
3 Leinwand, Allan. “What The Rise Of Cloud Computing Means For IT Pros.” Forbes. Forbes Media, 28 February 2017. 7 June 2017.
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 7
The plethora of stitched
together tools has created
chaos
By integrating resource planning with time and
expense tracking, PSA solutions were designed
to provide management visibility into resources
and financials. However, the reality is, these
applications offer shallow functionality and the
bulk of the organization is executing and man-
aging their work in other systems. Employees
have been forced to organically adopt cloud-
based tools to drive critical project manage-
ment, collaboration, and communication activ-
ities. When individual employees or
departments adopt their own tools out of
necessity without regard to a larger solution
strategy, they often remain unintegrated. This
leads to data silos, a lack of communication,
and more complications that arise out of what
should be solutions.
Each of these point solutions can serve a role.
However, too many of these systems in a stack
creates chaos. It’s now more challenging to
find and track critical correspondence, feed-
back, change orders, budgets, and more.
Furthermore, jumping in and out of all of these
systems is reducing productivity in the work-
4 Visitacion, Margo. “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Collaborative Work Management, Q4 2016.” Project Place. Forrester, 17 October 2016. 10 May 2017.
TIME TRACKING
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SOFTWARE
ACCOUNTING
PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
TEAM COLLABORATION
P S A
E R P
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Chat
Resource Planning
File Sharing Video Conferencing
Resource Scheduling
Spreadsheets
Resource Allocation
Job Costing
Expense Tracking
Reports
Task Managment
Subcontractor Management
Client Portal
Challenges of a Hairball Infrastructure
8 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
With the speed and complexity of work
today, it is increasingly challenging to
operate within fragmented business
environments.
The emerging issue that services teams face is that not all project
delivery-related data is tracked in a single “system of record.” Getting
out of siloed systems is critical: services organizations must move
beyond spreadsheets if they are to thrive in the fast-paced, hyper-
connected, hyper specialized world of the Service Level Economy.
place. Citing research from the American
Psychological Association, the Forrester Enterprise
Collaborative Work Management Wave Report
points out that the mental block created by this
constant switching from app to app is reducing
worker productivity by 40 percent.4
Poor adoption of PSA and time
tracking tools is costing money
Another result of the work being conducted out-
side of PSA solutions, or time tracking tools, is the
impact on accuracy and timelines of submitted
timesheets. Both issues are costing services orga-
nizations a lot of money. Because the time tracking
system is not where the work is happening,
employees will often bulk enter time at the end of
the week, or the end of the month. It’s almost
impossible to remember the particulars of where
time was spent on activities that far in the past. As
a result, employees are in the habit of entering
what was assigned, even if in reality they spent 20
percent more (or less) time on a billable project
than was allocated. Harvard Business Review
reported that inaccurate timesheets are costing
businesses billions of dollars every day.5
Resources are not being fully
utilized
The typical PSA user relies on outside time track-
ing procedures to record resource allocation,
hours, and project assignments. The lack of inte-
gration between resource management and proj-
ect planning makes it difficult to truly know who is
on the bench and who is available to be assigned to
work at any given time. Even sophisticated ser-
vices businesses often manage resource alloca-
tion via spreadsheets and homegrown solutions.
This disconnectedness has had a significant nega-
tive impact on utilization in services firms, which
hampers margins.
Project financials handled
separately from project execution
results in margin leakage
Housing project financials in one system, and proj-
ect tasks and execution details in another, poses
significant risks to the performance of any services
organization. When project management and task
management are managed in apps or systems
separate from the tracking of time, costs, and bill
rates, visibility is difficult. Adjustments that could
impact project financials are delayed or never
made, and as a result, margins suffer. Every single
project in a services business has the potential to
leak profits. Minimizing this leakage begins with
the identification of the problem at the project
level. When project work is disconnected from
project financials, it is often too late to rectify a
problem by the time it is identified. As a result,
margins suffer.
5 Gavvet, Gretchen. “Workers Are Bad at Filling Out Timesheets, and It Costs Billions a Day.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Publishing, 12 January 2015. 14 May 2017.
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 9
CHAPTER 3
The Digital Strategy for Modern Services
Organizations
10 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
Forward-thinking services
leaders are actively seeking
operating models that allow
them to better connect,
orchestrate, and optimize
their businesses and
resources.
As more systems are required to compete in today’s envi-
ronment, more data is being spread across siloed systems,
causing major challenges for service operations. It is becom-
ing a requirement for business leaders to understand the
implications of a disparate technology architecture. The first
place to start is in identifying the key systems of record. A
system of record can be understood as the authoritative
data source for an organization.
There are four key systems of record that enable a success-
ful services ecosystem: Operational System of Record,
Customer System of Record, Financial System of Record and
People System of Record. The following will focus on the
components that make up the Operational System of Record
first, and then take a deeper dive into the other systems that
make up the modern services tech stack.
There are four key systems of record that enable a
successful services ecosystem:
1 Operational System of Record
2 Customer System of Record
3 Financial System of Record
4 People System of Record
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 11
ResourceManagement
Project Accounting
TeamCollaboration
Project Management
BusinessIntelligence
Introducing the
Operational System of Record
the delivery team, including contractors and clients. CWM
allows the key communication around projects to exist on
one platform, creating a strategic hub for services opera-
tions. Integrating these tools into your OSR facilitates rapid
communication with contractors and clients, and allows
workers to have a one stop shop for all their collaborative
needs.
The Operational System of Record
Enables the Following Functionality:
• Resource Management
• Project Management
• Contextualized Collaboration
• Project Accounting
• Real-Time Business Intelligence
Undoubtedly, the single biggest systems opportunity for
services organizations today is to build their technology
environment around an Operational System of Record.
By bridging core planning, executional, project accounting,
and analysis systems in a single operating environment,
organizations are able to experience dramatically better vis-
ibility, predictability, and agility. This digital infrastructure
also becomes the heart of the organization, and can improve
processes by packaging up best practices into frameworks,
guidelines, analytics, and insights required to successfully
operate a fast-moving services firm today.
Another key component of this Operational System of
Record is that it incorporates Collaborative Work
Management (CWM) functionality, in addition to having tra-
ditional PSA solution components like resource planning,
time and expense tracking and project accounting. It is the
introduction of these collaborative tools that contextualizes
all the actual work and communication being done across
12 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
Percentage of Capabilities: Operational System of Record Vs. Professional Services Automation & Collaborative Work Management Tools
RESOURCE PLANNING
PROJECTMANAGEMENT
TEAMCOLLABORATION
PROJECT ACCOUNTING
BUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
100%
60%
80%
40%
20%
Services Automation ToolsWork Automation Tools
100%
System of Record
100%
60%
80%
40%
20%
Percentage of Capabilities: Operational System of Record Vs. Professional Services Automation & Collaborative Work Management Tools
RESOURCE PLANNING
PROJECTMANAGEMENT
TEAMCOLLABORATION
PROJECT ACCOUNTING
BUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
100%
60%
80%
40%
20%
Services Automation ToolsWork Automation Tools
100%
System of Record
100%
60%
80%
40%
20%
Percentage of Capabilities: Operational System of Record Vs. Professional Services Automation & Collaborative Work Management Tools
RESOURCE PLANNING
PROJECTMANAGEMENT
TEAMCOLLABORATION
PROJECT ACCOUNTING
BUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
100%
60%
80%
40%
20%
Services Automation ToolsWork Automation Tools
100%
System of Record
100%
60%
80%
40%
20%
Percentage of Capabilities: Operational System of Record Vs. Professional Services Automation & Collaborative Work Management Tools
RESOURCE PLANNING
PROJECTMANAGEMENT
TEAMCOLLABORATION
PROJECT ACCOUNTING
BUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
100%
60%
80%
40%
20%
Services Automation ToolsWork Automation Tools
100%
System of Record
100%
60%
80%
40%
20%
Resource Management
In services, it’s the people who make
or break the business. Profitability,
project success, and client satisfac-
tion all rely on effective management
and staffing of resources. It may
sound easy, but it’s actually the most
complicated component of any ser-
vices business.
The Operational System of Record
must provide real-time resource
availability to improve forecasting,
planning, and scheduling. The system
should include details about current
and future availability to better under-
stand who is available to take on proj-
ect work at the task level. It should
also track skills and proficiencies to
improve the matching of consultants
to projects and key financial data
related to resources (e.g. cost and bill
rates) that will impact the profitability
of projects. The primary benefit of
managing resources in the same sys-
tem that also tracks project tasks and
project accounting is that organiza-
tions can more nimbly react to the
challenges that surface during project
execution and swiftly address needs
to better execute and increase profit-
ability. This is the most critical factor
in creating more predictable project
outcomes.
Specific Functionality of the System Includes: Real-time information on resource availability, resource forecasting, skills management, scenario planning, role-based planning, and project- and task-level resource scheduling.
Limitations of Resource Management Systems Include: Inability to optimize resource utilization, as time tracking, tasks, and resource management may each be located in separate, unconnected solutions.
Incorrectly aligning available and appropriate resources with project schedules, which are often managed in separate solutions.
Difficulty in managing resource workload and sharing resources among departments, who may not have visibility into each other’s projects.
Project Management
Projects today are more complex than
ever. There are a lot of people involved
with specialized skills and a lot of
dependencies for getting work done.
An Operational System of Record
should enable project managers to
build detailed project plans within the
system. Critically, it must support a
multi-level work breakdown struc-
ture, so the project can be defined by
a series of granular tasks and sub-
tasks, with multiple levels between
Digital Strategy for Modern
Services Organizations
Current Capabilities: Professional Services Automation &
Collaborative Work Management Tools vs an ideal
Operational System of Record
Professional Services Automation
Collaborative Work Management
Operational System of Record
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 13
the top and the lowest level of the
project. Each task includes important
information such as burn rate, per-
cent complete, status, and other
information that rolls up to the parent
tasks, so it is quick and easy to see
where problems may be occurring. It
must also allow for dependencies
between tasks. Furthermore, one of
the benefits of the project manage-
ment system being a core part of the
OSR is that it serves as the central
hub for all critical resource and finan-
cial data at the project level. This
empowers and unifies the entire proj-
ect delivery team in a common execu-
tion environment.
Specific Functionality of the System Includes: Gantt chart-based project plan capabilities, schedule management, multi-level WBS, task assignment and scheduling, critical path and variance analysis.
Limitations of Project Management Systems Include: Lack of visibility into resource skills, preventing project managers from assigning the right team member to the task they are best equipped to execute.
The possibility that projects may go over budget when disconnected from project accounting, leading to slim margins impacting profitability for the business as a whole.
Team Collaboration
Today, employees are processing
more information than ever. They
need faster and more transparent
ways to see what other team mem-
bers are doing in order to keep pace
with the speed of business.
The core Operational System of
Record bridges project communica-
applied to make collaboration and communication channels effective across all departments.
Project Accounting
Best practice dictates that services
organizations run a margin-driven
business. Yet, many projects in a ser-
vices business are leaking profits. An
appropriate analogy is that project
work is like a leaky bucket. When a
project starts, the bucket is full of
water. As the project continues and
changes (for example, a task takes
longer than it should, or a client
changes the scope), water begins to
leak out. The goal is to plug as many of
the holes as early as possible to carry
the maximum amount of water over
the finish line.
To combat leaky margins, the core
Operational System of Record must
provide key project accounting
details, such as real-time utilization
and margins, at the project and even
task level. Now resources can plan,
track, and optimize work to produce
desired financial outcomes. In
essence, every project becomes its
own Profit and Loss (P&L) center. At a
glance, all stakeholders can see how
well the team is utilizing resources,
the burn down rate, project margins
at completion, etc. The team can also
immediately identify problems at the
project level, so they can in turn make
informed decisions and adjustments
on the fly that lead to predictable and
profitable project delivery. This is the
true foundation of business success
and growth.
tion and task management in a uni-
fied, cloud-based project workspace.
Also, it should enable contextualized
collaboration through project- and
task-specific activity feeds, around
project objects such as plans, time-
lines, budgets, files, proofs,
timesheets, expenses, change orders,
and more.
Furthermore, as service organizations
continue to expand their breadth of
services offerings and take on more
complex work, project teams increas-
ingly consist of internal talent, exter-
nal service providers, and specialists,
all who need access to a central col-
laboration and communication tool
around the work at hand. Services
organizations also require a collabo-
ration strategy to engage clients.
Sharing things including Gantt charts,
tasks, and milestones provides cli-
ents greater insight into how the bud-
get is being utilized, fostering trans-
parency and trust as both sides
collaborate. Therefore, the OSR must
enable subcontractor and client col-
laboration. This drives unprecedented
levels of connection and communica-
tion across business and geographic
boundaries.
Specific Functionality of the System Needs to Include: Cloud-based access, collaborative workspaces, project-specific activity feeds, project object collaboration, and public and private messages.
Limitations of Collaboration Systems Include: Communication between team members may take place outside of the project workspace, which can cause delays and misinformation.
Integration with project and resource management systems must be
14 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
It has become a requirement
for business leaders to
understand the implications of
their technology architecture.
“Specific Functionality of the System Includes: Time and expense tracking and approval, project costing, project and task budget management, real-time utilization and margin tracking, invoicing, rate cards, and robust integrations into back-end financial systems.
Limitations of Accounting Systems Include: Manual data import and analysis from other systems, creating excessive time spent in tracking project expenses.
Effective project accounting requires that all team members accurately track their time and expenses for a true assessment of all projects, ensuring accurate client billing and margin tracking, and helping businesses not leave money on the table.
Business Intelligence
Services organizations are incredibly
challenging to manage. There are
many dynamics to these businesses
that change daily. Projects are made
up of different shapes and sizes; and
with the coordination of people,
things rarely go exactly as planned.
Because the Operational System of
Record bridges key information about
resources, plans, projects, and proj-
ect financials in a single operating
environment, all the relevant data to
provide a complete view into the
health of projects and the business
also live in a single system. With a BI
layer in place, the OSR becomes the
central source of truth for the busi-
ness. It offers past, present, and
future intelligence on fees, margins,
utilization, time and expense,
resources, clients, projects, and
more. Now a services organization
can quickly answer critical questions
that are driving business perfor-
mance. For example: what are our
actual-to-date and estimate-at-com-
plete margins; what are our current
billable and nonbillable hours by role,
or by individual resource; what skills
are we using or in need of most; what
percentage of our work is billable;
what’s our unused capacity; who’s
available now; what are our current and
projected margins?
The extent to which a services business has
a strategy and tools to help them answer
these questions in real-time will impact the
success of the company.
Specific Functionality of the System Needs to Include: Built-in reports and dashboards on fees, margins, utilization, time and expense, resources and more, custom reporting, trend analysis, data visualization, data integration with other systems.
Limitations of Business Intelligence Systems Include: Business Intelligence inherently needs to be integrated with other systems to be effective, emphasizing the need for a successful integration strategy.
Effective use of a Business Intelligence solution requires that the data it is analyzing is accurate, and solutions must be trustworthy and consistently used by all team members to generate good data.
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 15
CHAP TER 4
Benefits of the Operational System
of Record
16 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
The quickest way to digitize a services business and increase
its strategic impact is to modernize day-to-day operations. The
emerging model enabling today’s professional and marketing
services organizations to operate with greater agility,
predictability, and precision, is to unify all critical functions of
services delivery into a core Operational System of Record.
Better Operational
Execution
The Operational System of Record
provides a platform to execute the
entire project lifecycle, from
forecasting to invoicing. With all the
work in a single system, real-time
data is now available to empower
every person in the organization— not
just management—to make informed
decisions that will improve the
outcome of their work. For example, a
project manager can see if a project’s
budget is running over and has options
on how to course correct: they can
play out different resourcing scenarios
to see if that will improve project
margins, or put in a change order for
the client to approve for additional
scope that has crept in. This agility is
empowering and impossible to
achieve without a core Operational
System of Record that couples
detailed project planning, execution,
and project financials.
Improved
Responsiveness/
Connectivity
A cloud-based Operational System of
Record ensures that every person has
access to the same information
(dependent on permissions), from
anywhere in the world. This dramati-
cally improves alignment and collab-
oration with remote employees, sub-
contractors, and clients. Now the
organization can go anywhere.
Elevated Financial
Performance
With every project being managed as
a P&L (profit and loss statement) and
project financial information available
in real-time, an immediate result is
elevated financial performance:
higher margins, optimized utilization
rates, and sharpened forecasting.
There are numerous benefits to a strategy that employs an OSR:
Improved Client
Satisfaction and
Retention
An Operational System of Record
improves on-time, on-budget delivery
of projects, which is what clients want
most. Some clients will naturally
gravitate towards providers they see
adopting this new, more transparent,
more explicit approach, given the
trust it helps establish. Furthermore,
inviting clients to engage in this core
system also increases client engage-
ment, alignment, and accountability
in the overall success of a projects.
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 17
CHAP TER 5
Key Tech in the Stack
18 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
OperationalSystem of Record
ResourceManagement
Project Accounting
TeamCollaboration
Project Management
BusinessIntelligence
PeopleSystem of Record
CustomerSystem of Record
FinancialSystem of Record
Add to extendthe system
Add to extendthe system
A technology strategy
consists of more than using
specific applications to
support various business
needs— it must present
a logical plan to ensure
the right information is
seamlessly delivered through
every part of the business.
While different people in an organization may primarily live
in different systems, it is crucial that they are all viewing and
utilizing the same data.
Therefore, it’s critical to think about the tech stack of a mod-
ern services organization as a holistic platform that is facili-
tating a process. As any IT consultant will say, process first.
In addition to adopting a core Operational System of Record
that facilitates advanced project collaboration needs and
insights, services organizations will need to rely on other key
software applications to digitize all aspects of the business.
Integration of these essential business applications
provides the visibility, transparency, and control required to
effectively manage the business. A well-designed
integration will help businesses create more accurate data
that is pulled from multiple sources, which can be used
across an organization.
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 19
CustomerSystem of Record
BusinessIntelligence
ResourceManagement
ProjectManagement
ProjectAccounting
PeopleSystem of Record
TeamCollaboration
OperationalSystem of Record
FinacialSystem of Record
There are four key
systems of record that
enable a successful
services ecosystem:
1
2
Operational System
of Record
The Operational System of Record
is at the core of the modern ser-
vices tech stack. Other systems
orbit and connect through this
core system. Functionally, it must
serve all critical day-to-day opera-
tions for the majority of work that
happens in a services business,
including robust project manage-
ment, contextualized collabora-
tion, project accounting, long-
and short-term resource manage-
ment capabilities, and real-time
Business Intelligence.
Customer System
of Record
This is often referred to
as the Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) system. It is
designed to help businesses man-
age and analyze customer interac-
tions and data throughout the cus-
tomer lifecycle. By integrating with
the OSR, organizations can better
align sales and delivery teams.
Now, the services team can plan
before a deal is won, accelerate
project kick off, and the organiza-
tion as a whole can more accu-
rately forecast revenue and
resource needs.20 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
Financial System
of Record
The technology used in the Financial
System of Record manages back-end
accounting and finance processes. By
connecting the Operational System of
Record with the Financial System of
Record, the finance team gets
necessary visibility into project
details and status to accurately
manage business accounting. The
delivery team also benefits by getting
details at the project level about
invoice status to help with managing
every aspect of the client relationship.
People System
of Record
This technology is often referred to as
the Human Capital Management
(HCM) system. Core administrative
functions include benefits adminis-
tration, payroll, recruiting, a portal for
employees to request time off, etc.
Integrating with the Operational
System of Record shares key data
between the two systems. For exam-
ple, employees’ cost rates (which
impact pricing on projects), planned
time off for staffing purposes, and
things like skills and geographic
locations.
Other Applications in the Stack
Services firms vary widely in types of services they deliver. As such, there
are an infinite number of non-core systems and applications that may still
be integral to a specific firm’s delivery strategy. In essence, there are
different tiers of applications extending from the Operational System of
Record that form different strategic perimeters. Examples include agile
development tools such as Jira, communication tools such as Slack,
document sharing apps such as Google Drive or Dropbox, expense
management apps such as Concur or Expensify, and the list goes on. These
may be considered ancillary because there are fewer people in the
organization that need to live in these systems or because they serve a
more niche purpose. A technology strategy therefore includes analysis of
how to integrate the core systems with the Operational System of Record,
as well as these ancillary applications
3
4
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 21
CHAP TER 6
Integration: Critical Layer in a Cloud
Connected World
22 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
CustomerSystem of Record
PeopleSystem of Record
FinancialSystem of Record
The primary benefit of a well-designed
tech stack is that it allows businesses
to leverage specific applications to help
drive improved performance in every
functional area of an organization.
However, this also creates a prolifera-
tion of information silos, and data may
be coming from all directions.
Critical to the success of a best-in-
class solution model is that these
systems talk to each other. For that
reason, most cloud systems today are
designed for interoperability and
access.
To avoid a hairball tech stack, it's
crucial that there is a thoughtful
approach to system integrations.
There needs to be a core Operational
System of Record where the majority
of work and transactions for a
business reside. From there, it
requires a clear understanding of the
role of integration in facilitating
desired process and intelligence
throughout the organization.
As noted by Accenture, businesses
need to adopt this business-centric
approach to an integration strategy
and think about integrations from
more than merely a data perspective.
“If you only think about integrations
as a way to pass data, then you’ll
likely end up with multiple, redundant
point-to-point integrations. On the
other hand, if you think about the
business processes that your integra-
tions need to support, you can likely
simplify your requirements.”
TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK 23
Operational Platform for the Modern Services OrganizationIn a new world where connectedness, transparency,
and performance matter more than ever,
Mavenlink helps you deliver.
24 TRANSFORMING THE SERVICES-CENTRIC TECH STACK
Mavenlink has increased visibility
across our global organization. The
connection between Salesforce and
Mavenlink has made a major impact
on how we run our business.
MIMI MOORE, VICE PRESIDENT OF RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT, HUGE, LLC
“
mavenlink.com • info@mavenlink.com • (800) 860-9544
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