A Business System Platform for Professional Services Firms and Project-based Businesses

Professional services firms and project-based businesses invest in technology to improve employee productivity, streamline operations, improve sales, marketing, and customer engagement. Additionally, these firms invest in order to get better insights into their businesses to drive continued improvements. Over time, most organizations have invested in a number of stand-alone point solutions addressing different areas of need. However, the largest and most successful companies, go beyond point solutions by creating a unified solution, either through an extensive integration of best-of-breed technologies, or standardization on a technology platform such as Oracle or SAP.

Until recently, the cost and complexity of implementing such a comprehensive solution was beyond the reach of all but the largest global organizations. That is no longer the case! With the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365 — joining Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Office 365 — any size professional services firm or project-based business can deploy a truly unified platform solution providing robust functionality for every business function and employee role.

Traditionally, enterprises achieved technology automation through the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). ERP is generally defined as an expanded effort to standardize record keeping to permit information sharing among different areas of an organization in an effort to manage the business more effectively and efficiently. A successful ERP implementation formalizes and integrates business processes across the organization, leveraging a single, integrated information system platform.

In the manufacturing sector, ERP has been the primary focus of business technology investment. However, professional services firms and project-based businesses have significant technology needs beyond the back office. The customer focus of services firms and the fluid, dynamic nature of services businesses has made Customer Relationship Management (CRM) an equally important part of the technology equation. CRM assists the sales, marketing and customer services departments in your firm by focusing their efforts on bringing the customer the best value possible.

Ideally, a firm’s ERP and CRM system would work hand-in-hand – creating a unified system. ERP puts the product at the center of the interaction while CRM focuses on the customer and their needs. With Microsoft Dynamics 365, professional services firms and project-based businesses can have both ERP and CRM in one unified platform. Even better, Dynamics 365 is built in the Microsoft Cloud giving users access to the data they need anywhere, at any time and costs less than deploying an on-premises ERP and CRM solution.