ERPx for professional services – take control of technology to create better people experiences

Many businesses in the professional service industry – a broad category encompassing any companies that sell services delivered by people - are often some of the earliest adopters of new technology. And they’re also among the first to embrace many new technologies at scale. It’s easy to see why – businesses that rely on expertise rely on the ability to utilise their people and make individual projects profitable. Any technology that can give them an edge in both of these areas boosts their competitive advantage and ability to thrive.

But many are now encountering one of the downsides of rapid tech adoption. An overly complex ecosystem built from multiple systems and data sources making the day to day workings for users much more cumbersome. The average PSO now has between 100-250 different applications across their digital ecosystem. Effectively meaning that the systems they’ve invested in to save and safeguard their time are doing the exact opposite.

If this sounds familiar, the time has come for a change. Especially as innovations occur more rapidly than ever before and the way in which we all work is being continuously reshaped by current events.

Projects are increasing in complexity at a faster and faster rate as we all become adapted to working remotely – sometimes across jurisdictions. You need a system that can simplify this complexity for your users while helping you keep pace with innovations and increasing demands from your clients.

Finance, HR and project planning processes often require data from multiple sources. This results in compromised accuracy and slower service to your stakeholders and clients. To combat this, you need a solution that can unify data and automate their processes to be able to produce the right reports for stakeholders or accurate billing for clients.

Moreover, the demand for more and more accurate forecasts necessitates a more sophisticated approach to data management. If your data is scattered across multiple systems, it will likely be outdated by the time you can gather it as the input for forecasts. Your teams need a solution that allows them to easily access and leverage real-time and historical data to create forecasts and scenario plans that can win the confidence of the whole business and paint a clear picture of the way forward.

And on top of all this, remote working not only increases complexity, but also adds the need for businesses to actively track wellbeing and engagement in entirely new ways. And to ensure that this data can be integrated with data around project timelines and needs in order to safeguard and promote success.

Enter ERPx

The next evolution of ERP for professional services, ERPx, delivers the agility your business needs to manage increasing complexity and a people experience that enables you to continue to deliver the best possible service to your clients. It enables you to:

Simplify digital systems and processes in the cloud

ERPx gives you the power to integrate multiple digital systems into a single and flexible ‘mesh’ to unify data and streamline work for users in a low-code environment. This removes the need for costly customization and integration projects and puts your people more fully in control of the tech they use, without making their jobs harder.

Smart automation reduces errors and enable faster and more accurate client billing – removing much of the burden of manual administration from your teams and giving them more time back for billable and high-value work.

Integrated time & expense management on web and mobile allows you to accurately track time and resources spent on projects to ensure better profitability.

Real-time visibility into all aspects of your business worldwide, ensures consistent and compliant management both locally and globally – ensuring all your people and resources are working in the best way possible to satisfy your client demands and align to regulatory requirements.

Enhance integration for forecasting, planning and delivering successful projects

ERPx’s deep integration with other applications can boost your forecasting and planning from a strategic and an individual project perspective. Here’s just a taste of what it can do:

Integrate day-to-day finance data with FP&A for increased insight via scenario planning and predictive analytics, creating up-to-the-minute financial pictures from a single source of truth.

ERPx integrates seamlessly with your CRM for automated project set-up when a prospect hits a certain threshold, allowing your team to spend less time on admin and get projects up and running faster for a shorter bill cycle.

The solution can also automate resource planning – making sure the right people are assigned to projects from the get-go, staff aren’t over- or under-utilized, and additional resource needs in different teams are flagged proactively.

Ensure wellbeing and engagement across teams

ERPx allows your team leaders and project managers to easily align skills to project requirements to ensure talent is leveraged fully – without placing any burden on engagement levels and ensuring all your people are properly utilized.

It also allows you to track employee engagement on both team and project levels, actively monitoring changes to how everyone in the company feels through regular engagement pulses. With clear breakdowns to demonstrate stronger areas of engagement and potential root cases to help with remediation.

And to help your projects excel even further, ERPx can automatically create new comms channels for each new project in familiar systems such as Teams and Slack to help foster collaboration and create dedicated spaces for project planning and execution. To discover more about how ERPx can help professional services organizations more effectively manage their technology, create better integrated working environments, and enhance their people experience, check out our dedicated product page here.

Learn how ERPx can help you create the future of your business

ERPx is Unit4’s next-generation ERP solution. It’s fully cloud native, built around a modular microservices architecture that allows you and your users full control over functionality and user environment, and integrates seamlessly across your entire ecosystem to create efficiencies and help you drive innovation.

To discover more about how ERPx can help professional services organizations more effectively manage their technology, create better integrated working environments, and enhance their people experience, check out our dedicated product page here.