Professional Services: The Definitive Guide

In this definitive guide, we’ll walk you through some of the most important aspects of professional services

Welcome to our Professional Services Guide

Building and running a professional business service or professional service organization can be overwhelming with so many aspects to worry about. From attracting and managing clients, project management, and even billing your clients.

While there are a lot of challenges professional services face, modern technology has enabled businesses to grow far beyond what was possible in previous years. In fact, professional services have shown annual revenue growth of more than eight percent since 2013.

A large part of this growth is due to the adoption of automation among all kinds of professional services. From corporate financial management and accountants to IT management, marketing management, and even healthcare—automation is helping businesses thrive.

In this beginner’s guide, we’ll walk you through some of the most important aspects of running a professional services business, including:

What is professional services?
What challenges do professional services face?
How to manage and retain clients in professional services
Defining projects, building contracts, and setting scopes
How to plan the resources for your client projects
Managing capacity for your client projects
Using professional service automation for project visibility
Billing your client and managing profitability

What’s in our Professional Services Guide

What is professional services?

In this beginner’s guide, we’ll walk you through some of the most important aspects of running a professional service business,

What challenges do professional services teams face?

Since not all professional services are in the same vertical, some businesses face unique challenges compared to others.

How to manage and retain clients in professional services

The backbone of profitability in any professional service business is client management and retention.

Defining projects, building contracts, and setting scopes

When you get a new client, there are a few steps you need to take before a project begins

How to plan resources for your client projects

When it comes to managing resources for various client projects, you find the most success when you have a skilled project manager with the ability to plan ahead well.

Managing capacity for your client projects

Running your business alongside dealing with individual client projects is a common struggle.

Using professional service automation for project visibility

Project visibility is about how and when important information is shared between all organizations or entities involved with a project.

Billing your clients and managing profitability

Setting up project accounting, billing, and invoicing clients is one of the most important parts of running a professional service business

Cloud Coach professional services automation

With Cloud Coach, you have everything you need to run a professional service business at scale.

FAQs

Many common questions have been answered in the beginner’s professional service business guide. However, here are some simplified answers.

What is professional services?

Professional services automation Independent professional services In-house professional services

What challenges do professional services teams face?

Drowning in admin Resource management Project planning Productivity and monitoring

How to manage and retain clients in professional services

Why is strong client management important? What do good client management and retention look like? Tips for better client management and retention

Defining projects, building contracts, and setting scopes

Project definition and why it’s important Building a Professional Services Agreement Setting the project scope

How to plan resources for your client projects

Why is resource planning important? How to build a resource plan

Managing capacity for your client projects

What is capacity planning and management? Different types of capacity management Capacity planning and management best practices

Using professional service automation for project visibility

What is project visibility in professional services? Benefits of project visibility How to achieve better project visibility using automation

Billing your clients and managing profitability

What are the main billing models? What are billable and non-billable hours? Invoicing clients and what to expect How to manage and measure project profitability

Cloud Coach professional services automation

FAQs

Want to see Cloud Coach in action?

Cloud Coach is secure and customisable platform for successfully delivering customer projects of all shapes and sizes.