PSA Software: A Complete Guide For Understanding, Evaluating And Implementing Professional Services Automation Software

Professional services automation is a platform that improves business operations through the seamless automation of multiple business activities.

Tracing it back to its origin, professional services automation originally surfaced as a small piece of project accounting software. From there, PSA has become a fundamental fragment of project-based engineering and other professional services.

Although businesses today are already well-acquainted with other software categories such as customer relationship management and financial management, professional services automation is comparatively new and unfamiliar, but imperative. 

This article will introduce you to features of PSA and how you can approach its enablement for your business. 

Features of PSA Software

Professional services automation is a platform that improves business operations through the seamless automation of multiple business activities. It is essentially a predominant alternative for your multi-vendor solutions for project management, employee management, time tracking, billing, etc. 

It is obvious that the PSA tool works on the efficient idea of having a single, strong, and valuable foundation (read: aspects automation) instead of multiple disoriented systems. 

PSA software is specifically beneficial for organizations that deliver managed or billable services such as engineering services companies. Simply put, the primary customer of PSA is an organization that provides chargeable assignments as their principal source of income.

Considering this, let’s analyze the key features that PSA can offer to a managed or billable services organization. 

Project Management

PSA contains a bracket of modules for advanced project lifecycle management. Here’s how you can realize project margins and cost with PSA:

  • Proposals during the sales cycle for reduced errors improved project plan and decreased probability of any delay.
  • Configuration of contract terms to ensure adherence to policies. This includes systematic adherence to purchase order policy, experience reimbursement, and other rules related to client approvals.
  • Efficient project governance for risk tracking and early mitigation of issues
  • Management and tracking of changed orders after analyzing the comprehensive impact of financials and timelines

Employee Management

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PSA tools are equipped to match the project demands with the right available resources. With PSA by your side, you can achieve the following:

  • Allocation of resources based on skill-set
  • Allocation of resources after considering cross-project requirements
  • User-based permissions

It helps in proactive planning – leaving no room for last-minute challenges. 

Expense Management

If you wish to track assigned tasks, analyze performance forecasts, and record recurring expenses, PSA is your destination. Most of the PSA tools support on-site or online data entry for regular entry of expenses. This helps in the predictive forecast of expenses on a category basis. 

The categorization further empowers approvals for expense claims, which are immediately updated for the approver and submitter without delay. 

Client Billables Management

The PSA application is frequently integrated with the core accounting software of the organization, and as a result, it offers specific features such as profitability analysis and billing. Additionally, PSA efficiently tracks invoices of customers to mitigate revenue leakage. 

These invoices are often created through a batch automated process and dispatched to the client with relevant information. Of course, the user has the power to configure invoice formats such as local tax policies, language-specific changes, etc. 

Project Cash Flow Management

As discussed above, due to PSA’s in-built capabilities of automating bills and invoicing, cash flow automatically improves. Factors that contribute to this are:

  • Timely invoicing and billing
  • Reduced customer disputes
  • Improved accuracy of billing

Together these factors contribute to the cash flow of the organization. 

Reporting and Analysis

When you are dealing with services, it is not possible to quantify the service units sold. You can’t put a number to this statistic. Hence, performance management becomes complicated.

This is why the PSA software is pre-equipped with reporting potentials. Utilizing industry-specific KPIs and metrics, it is possible to gauge the performance of the business. 

Conclusion

Since you have gained significant knowledge of the professional services automation features, it is the right time to start implementation. We at Juntrax can help you in your PSA implementation journey by understanding the basic requirements of your SME or startup and then move forward. From there, we can help you deploy and utilize the PSA software. Schedule a demo right away.

3 thoughts on “PSA Software: A Complete Guide For Understanding, Evaluating And Implementing Professional Services Automation Software”

  1. You actually make it appear really easy with your presentation however I in finding
    this matter to be really something which I think I would never
    understand. It sort of feels too complicated and very extensive for me.
    I am taking a look forward for your next post, I will try to get the cling of it!

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