Unified delivery approach |
- Legal contracts
- Payment
- The delivered work
In order to create this simple type of transaction, several systems are required to support the process (but I can't find one system that does it all for some reason):
- Track leads, accounts and opportunities - CRM (SalesForce, Sugar CRM, Sales Force)
- Estimate and track work - Project Management (MS Project)
- Invoice and track accounts receivable - Accounting (QuickBooks)
It shouldn't sound to this point that professional services delivery is complicated but for some reason it is. I have not yet found an integrated system that supports the basic functions highlighted above. This means that managers are left to procure many of these systems individually and then *somehow* integrate them.
It's the integration part that's the hard part, I think. There's some interesting thinking out there like in Master Data Management (MDM) and the like for doing this in an automated way...but this might be the bleeding/cutting edge.
I'm going to start putting together the pieces -- for myself, my companies, and for resale--the systems required to support and automate the process of delivering professional services.
Please let me know if you know of good-working, all up system integration.
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