By Neil Davidson, Regional Vice President, EMEA and APAC at Deltek

Adaptability is now a fundamental in business. Recent global issues, such as economic uncertainty, a growing international focus on sustainability, and shifts in how we work have challenged businesses of all shapes and sizes to assess their resilience. For the businesses who choose to leverage the challenges to evolve, there are great opportunities to diversify and build flexibility in tandem. In today’s climate, a resilient mind set is non-negotiable. Businesses need to be leveraging their low-cost assets to continue to thrive.

Challenges present opportunities and as such, strong business leaders have emerged through ongoing uncertainty. From Board Directors to family-run SMEs, business leaders have been forced to make difficult business decisions to keep their company afloat. However, it’s important to remember that one individual (or even a whole taskforce) can’t and shouldn’t have to undertake such a feat alone. Difficult business decisions should be made leveraging facts and predictive modelling. Decisions based on data.

Turn 243 hours of admin into opportunities

76.6% of consulting firms face finding it challenging to deliver projects on time, simple efficiency tweaks hold great opportunities. Professional services firms can improve productivity which in turn, increases capacity, at a time when budgets are tight. To identify these efficiencies, businesses must first address their disconnected data.

When data is disconnected, all analysis and insight gathering is a manual task, which takes hours to reconcile. A client or manager requests the data, the team look through multiple disorganised spreadsheets, speak to wider team members to gather data from their spreadsheets and then collate the data (often in another spreadsheet) to make the required analysis. Say this process take 30-minutes instead of a potential 10, with requests being made twice a day, that’s 40-minutes of unnecessary admin. Apply that 40-minutes of wasted employee time over a year and 243 hours, or 30 working days, is wasted on a simple admin task.

Data for decisions

Every business collects and stores a huge quantity of data. Data about everything from business profit and loss, through to employee and customer data. The problem is, all the various data sets are often, siloed. Every department across the business stores its own data, in its own spreadsheet, in its own file. As the business continues to grow, data disconnections grow, and vital business insights are lost.

For teams to unlock productivity, data needs to be brought together. For teams, connected data enables enhanced time management and provides a clear insight into the wider company’s overall project success. Project managers benefit from being able to accurately forecast revenue, manage profits and losses, working capital and non-billable time. Team leaders get actionable insights which can be used to make team wide efficiencies. For decision makers, insights are provided that will enable more informed decision making. Vital insights as costs continue to rise – providing a clear route to resilience based on fact, not feelings.

It’s time to address disconnected data distractions.

From spreadsheets to software

While a great solution for start-up and small businesses, to bring data together in a meaningful way, growing enterprises need more than a simple spreadsheet. Authorised team members need to be able to access real-time data insights at the click of a button. The data needs to be usable, provide meaningful insights which are simple to analyse and be intuitive in line with the interfaces employees use daily.

For professional services businesses, such as consultancies or architecture and engineering firms, a project management solution, with embedded data capabilities is the perfect solution. The technology supports employees in their everyday tasks, providing greater control and oversight into projects – while in tandem giving the leadership team overarching business insight and intelligence. Whether the business has a globally distributed workforce or is full-time based in the office, accurate, real-time data is collected, providing insights to be actioned.

19% of A&E firms say that operating profit is one of their biggest challenges, and with financial margins still feeling the squeeze, accuracy of project data is vital. One of the advantages of Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is, the cost of ownership is significantly lower with single subscription, training and maintenance.

Live data input and collection empowers the whole team, from executives to the CEO, to create live reports showing the latest insights into the position of a project. Businesses benefit from a boost in timeliness, shortening all business processes rather than waiting for synchronisation. Whether a crisis or an opportunity arises, the company is perfectly positioned to react accordingly using real-time data across its project portfolio.

Say inflation increases, companies can analyse the profit margins across each job to estimate the impact on the business’ bottom line. Operational changes can be made on individual projects, and wider business, to instantly address problems. Or say the demand for the companies’ services skyrockets because of the economic climate. If the business’ capacity is met with demand overtaking bult-in growth flexibility, leadership teams can analyse staff capacity to identify where recruitment needs to facilitate growing demand.

As business challenges continue to arise, making informed decisions will continue to be essential for professional service businesses. By understanding where the business stands, business leaders can plan the future direction. Flexibility and instinct have always been vital business tools. As price rises continue to hit businesses, leveraging data can be an asset to managing disruption.