Delivering consistent service excellence — learn from the best and compare with the rest
The top five percent of professional services organizations (PSOs) credit their service success to a reliance on business software, according to a new benchmarking report.
The 2020 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark report (PSMB) concludes that 2019 was “a year of smooth sailing” for the industry, with improvement in “most major metrics,” as the market continues to grow. The report’s author, Service Performance Insight (SPI), predicts further smooth sailing for 2020.
Executives from the leading PSOs from around the world told the report’s authors that they “rely on” a commercial professional services automation (PSA) application.
High levels of quality, productivity, and profitability
“Because every leader relies on a PSA application they can build and reinforce project delivery standards which result in precision execution and high levels of quality, productivity, and profitability,” says the SPI report, which compares service execution metrics between the top five percent (The Best) and The Rest.
“They credit their PSA with improving resource, project management, time and expense capture and billing, leading to higher levels of billable utilization and on- time project completion.”
Committed to standardized methodologies
It adds that this year’s Best were “uniform” in their commitment to developing standardized methodologies which results in more projects delivered on-time, fewer project overruns and fewer project cancellations.
Four fifths (80.4 percent) of The Best used a standardized delivery methodology, compared to just over two thirds (66.6 percent) of The Rest. The Best delivered more than nine out of ten (92.2 percent) projects on-time compared to 78.5 percent for The Rest, with an average project overrun of only 7.4 percent for The Best versus 9.2 percent for The Rest.
The Best also achieved a much higher project margin for time and materials projects (45.6 percent) and for fixed price projects (44 percent), compared to The Rest, which achieved 35 and 34.7 percent project margins respectively.
“They make a lot more money on both time and materials and fixed price projects; but they also excel in the judicious use of subcontractors, only using the best outside resources while ensuring they make margin on them,” says the report.
High-quality service execution is what really sets top-performing PSOs apart. They tend to be highly disciplined in all facets of service execution.
The Best also focused on measuring quality and client satisfaction, says SPI, with most estimates, proposals and changes going through a rigorous evaluation to ensure proper risk management and margin analysis.
“Because the Best firms deploy the best consultants and effectively use a PSA application to exceed client expectations, every facet of their projects are more profitable.”
Learn from The Best and compare with The Rest
SPI’s report is an objective, fact-based strategic planning and management framework for performance improvement. It is used by more than 35,000 service and project-oriented organizations to chart a course to service excellence.
To learn from The Best and compare with The Rest, download the report.
