Boosting Workflow Efficiencies Helps Consulting Firms Create Raving Customers

When consulting firms start out, they usually deploy foundational applications such as PSA and Accounting. As the firm grows, they typically implement additional applications: CRM to manage sales & quoting processes; HR to manage Resources; Robust Analytics solution. The firm might also tap into external data sources to track and forecast customer and industry trends.

When that rapid growth continues, and the application stack expands further, it’s easy for data silos to emerge. Moving data from one application to another requires manual rekeying or uploads that might happen once a week or once a month. As data changes, conflicts occur between systems with differing data values.

Without unified data access, it’s difficult for users to find the data to make decisions on managing projects and interacting with customers. Even if users do get access, they lack real-time visibility driving them to be reactive rather than proactive. They may have to make decisions based on data a week or a month old.

Yes, the booming business keeps everyone busy. But margins keep shrinking and profitability decreases. The firm may also lose out on new revenue opportunities. To keep growing, greater workflow efficiencies are required.

The Importance of Integrating Financial and Non-Financial Data

While growing professional services teams need to implement multiple applications, it’s difficult to complete tasks and make decisions efficiently. No single application addresses every business need.

A key process in a Consulting firm is referred to as the Quote-to-Cash (QtC) process.

Just because you have best-of-breed solutions in place does not mean that the overall solution is efficient. The key is to integrate all these applications. Non-financial activities need to consume financial information from a variety of sources. Financial information helps with decision-making, which in turn drives operational activities.

Sharing Master Data Enables a Data-First Strategy

As consulting firms introduce new applications, it’s important to take a data-first strategy as to how to manage data and share it across applications. Ideally, each application touches data once—during the input stage.

The data then flows into a data warehouse where every application can access the “single source of truth.” The data warehouse can then aggregate and harmonize each of the data sets from the multiple sources. From there, the management team can run reports to analyze the data and drive decision-making.

The integration efforts must encompass not only internal applications but also external applications. Many consulting firms outsource payroll processing and benefits administration. Most of these providers offer web portals for employees to interact with. As employees input information, you want the data to flow automatically into other applications as well as your data warehouse.

For example, when you hire employees, you onboard them through your human resources service where they enroll in payroll and benefits programs. That data is then needed for your ERP and operational applications to execute user activities relating to time entry, customer billing, resource management, project management, and support services.

Watch: Boosting Efficiency Across Your Consulting Firm

It’s critical for all these applications to share data—rather than each system storing an isolated data set. Information needs to automatically flow into the central database, where each app can tap into the data, whether managing customers, vendors, or resources. By sharing information, the applications can work together more efficiently and speed up workflows for end-users.

Enhanced Integration Across the Microsoft Technology Stack

To take on the data integration challenge, many consulting firms have turned to the Microsoft technology stack. The integration capabilities begin with the Microsoft Power Platform, which enables connections between Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Office productivity solutions as well as Microsoft reporting solutions and third-party applications.

Serving as the foundational layer, the Power Platform assists with the integration of Dynamics 365 ERP solutions with Dynamics 365 Project Operations—offering a fully integrated QtC process. All these solutions write their data to the Microsoft Dataverse, which allows them to easily share data.

Consulting firms can streamline integrations using the Microsoft technology stack, which covers most of the functionality professional services firms need. Microsoft technology is also extremely friendly with most third-party applications.

This includes Microsoft data analytical software solutions, such as Microsoft Fabric and Power BI, which integrate with a variety of data sources. Fabric provides the analytics engine while Power BI delivers the data visualization requirements.

In addition, Microsoft offers hundreds of pre-built connectors—not just for third-party enterprise apps, but also social media platforms, e-commerce platforms, and various business applications. With pre-built connectors, you can integrate your current apps and your data warehouse with data sources quickly—without custom development.

The connectors also allow for customization when necessary. This is key because business change is constant. As businesses change, so too do their data requirements—which means integrations among apps and the data warehouse may need to change.

A Customer Integration Success Story

IMS Legal Strategies, a professional services firm, partners with law firms and corporation around the globe to elevate their legal strategies. The firm needed to add efficiencies and automate manual processes for conducting mock trials and focus groups and analyzing the results. By leveraging the Microsoft Power Apps platform to integrate Microsoft Power BI with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, the firm stores all matters and research data in one place. In addition, lawyers have effective formats for consuming and analyzing juror data, which gives them a deeper understanding of cases. Lawyers can also efficiently evaluate witness credibility and get quick at-a-glace views of mock juror damage awards.

The Big Payoff of Improved Efficiencies

For consulting firms taking on the challenges of managing, sharing, and reporting on data, the data-first strategy is easier when launching an implementation and you have a fresh slate. However, firms that have invested heavily in their existing applications don’t want to rip and replace everything.

The key is to get the applications to talk with each other for transactional purposes and with the data warehouse for reporting purposes. Success in this quest takes time. The most important thing is to understand from the beginning what your end-game is. What do you want the data to look like?

Once you make those decisions, you can work backward into how those applications should perform and how that data should move around and get consumed. By improving your workflow efficiencies, you will increase your ability to nurture raving and referenceable customers.

At Velosio, we identify raving customers by assessing their sentiment on how well projects go through CSAT (customer satisfaction scores). We survey customers periodically during projects and combine that info with the financial health of the project to create a composite satisfaction score.

While efficiency, profitability, and growth are important, non-financial metrics like customer satisfaction are just vital. It’s not all about the dollars and cents. Raving customers are the big payoff.

To learn more about how to implement a data visibility solution to help your consulting firm produce desired business outcomes—ranging from enhancing sales processes to optimizing resource management, higher client satisfaction, and increased profitability—contact Velosio today.

Related Articles

• Paying Attention to Questions Paves the Way for Professional Services Firms to Gain Key Insights
• Optimizing Rate Structures and Utilization for Professional Services Firms
• Warning Signs for Consulting Firms: What to Watch Out For and How to Resolve