NetSuite Helps Professional Services Group Triple Profit Margins with Process
Automation
Company
Backstop Solutions Group
Location
Chicago, IL
Industry
Financial Software
Applications Replaced
Home grown software and spreadsheets
Solutions
NetSuite OpenAir
“NetSuite helped us to triple our margin by accurately capturing time
and forecasting demand. We've also improved the accuracy of our estimates and reduced the amount
of time spent on invoicing.” Backstop Solutions Group
Customer Success
Backstop's professional services profit margins have tripled, since bringing in NetSuite
OpenAir.
Billable time per consultant has increased by an average of 100 hours per quarter over the
past two years.
Project managers' monthly invoicing processes now take around 1.5 hours, compared to two
days previously.
Budget reports for complex, multi-client projects now take just minutes, compared to up to
two hours before NetSuite OpenAir.
The professional services group has changed from monthly to weekly timesheet production, so
Practice Managers can now forecast the month's billings.
Client satisfaction has greatly improved, because project managers are now able to address
budget questions on the spot, rather than hours later.
Challenges
Manual project management processes hindered Backstop's professional services efforts to
take on larger and more complex consulting projects.
Lack of real-time visibility into billable time and expenses made it difficult to forecast
profitability.
Lack of project history made estimating new work difficult.
Reconciling monthly timesheets with client budgets took several days per month for project
managers, wasting time and risking errors.
Lack of up-to-date information caused slowdowns in handling customer project-status
inquiries.
Solution
Backstop Solution's professional services group replaced its homegrown, XPTracker-based
system and Excel spreadsheets with NetSuite OpenAir.
Managers are now able to differentiate between productive non-billable time, such as
activities that improve customer retention, and non-productive time. This helps managers
pinpoint where process automation can be used to increase consultant efficiency.
NetSuite OpenAir backlog reports let managers analyze and prioritize suspended or waiting
projects to maximize profitability and optimize resource utilization.
NetSuite OpenAir billing rules help BSG negotiate complex projects, such as those where
several clients share a project with multiple billing rates.
Learn How the #1 Cloud ERP Can Transform Your Business