home
>
industries
>
professional-services
Professional Services
As a professional services business itself, Crestwood Associates understands the challenges facing those companies which primarily sell services in the form of hourly labor contracted to the customer.
The services provided to the customers must be properly planned for and managed and internal resources must be scheduled and utilized effectively to service the customer and support the business. In addition, projects need to be mutually monitored and managed with the customer.
Microsoft Dynamics can help facilitate communication between the resource performing the work, the management and support people monitoring the project, and the customer approving the results.
Resources and project types are setup to schedule resources and capture costs. Projects can be defined and implemented quickly using templates and standardized processes. Sub tasks can be created and monitored for more accurate control. Employees, teams, equipment and other resources can be assigned to projects and tasks based upon their skills. In addition, they can be scheduled to the projects and provided the information they need about the customer, project requirements, and best practices to facilitate a successful engagement.
Employees and other resources enter their time and expenses to be applied to the project. Automated alerts can be sent to prompt the submission of timesheet entries, authorizations and approvals. All the activities related to a project can be quickly and easily entered and assigned to the correct project management cost centers. All other documentation related to the project, from general knowledge based supporting information to specific work tasks performed, can be captured, recorded and retrieved.
Contracts can be utilized to standardize the services included in the agreement, which can help to accurately define the scope of the project and the expectations of the customer. Budgets can used to implement more comprehensive financial controls and they can be used to forecast and plan for expected resource requirements.
Integrated and flexible transaction management makes routine accounting tasks simple and efficient. Invoices can be compiled and scheduled according to the customer's preferences including fixed fee, activity milestone, reoccurring, and time and material billing. Costs can be applied to the project for detailed project cost and profitably analysis.
Finally, detailed operational and financial reports can be generated through standard and modified Dynamics reports, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SRS), and/or Excel. Reports can be made conveniently accessible, automatically refreshed and graphically enhanced to provide the most accurate, timely and actionable information possible. Management can track project progress and outcomes to make better decisions and learn for future opportunities.
|
