Professional Services
I) Challenges Faced By Professional Services
#1. Social Media Adoption
For engaging with clients online, marketing services and monitoring competitors, professional services firms have started using social media. For social media marketing campaigns that grow your business practice, SOPs or standard operating procedures are absolutely essential. Enhanced social media presence helps professional services providers to increase the client base, boost customer satisfaction, deepening client relationships and improving brand awareness. Rapidly increasing use of social media makes it imperative for professional services providers to harness the power of these platforms to achieve overall goal and vision.
#2. The Rise of Virtual Firms & An Omni-Channel Approach
The accelerating pace of new technologies, increased pressure to lower costs and increase use of smartphones is making omnichannel presence extremely attractive. More professionals are going virtual and have few brick-and-mortar offices. By hiring contract employees, utilizing less physical infrastructure, using cloud services and building a presence online, professional services firms can lower costs and raise revenue. Professional services firms need to adapt to technology challenges. A business management consultant can help your business to maximize growth.
#3. Value Oriented Revenue Models
Conventionally, professional services firms have been charging clients on an hourly basis. In line with rapid pressure to bring down costs and increase waging, professional firms are making the transition to value-oriented billing. This type of revenue model is easy to apply in the professional services industry. The value in terms of tax savings (for accountancy clients), damage awards (legal services) or ad placement (marketing consultancies) or other outcomes decides who gets paid how much in such a revenue model.
More professional services firms shift to value-linked pricing as they work towards providing advisory services. Professional service firms are increasingly shifting to value-based pricing models to boost profitability and revenues. For making the shift, professional services firms need the solutions offered by a premier business process consultant.
#4. Emergence of Modularization
Professional services are now being split into individual components and separately sold, rather than being bundled together. A lot of clients prefer to choose and pick service elements that can be executed in-house and allocate the rest to specific service providers. The modular nature of services take place, and single service firms may use this services model to handle large, complex projects. Clients need to break down the project into several components. For specialized firms attempting to meet their needs, an SOP analyst can help.
#5. Automation of Back-End Services
Back-end services are becoming increasingly automated as paper-oriented processes are being eliminated. Professional service companies such as legal and accounting experts are automating back-end processes to match front-end services. Companies are shifting to electronic records from paper checks which needed to be scanned and filed. For this reason, SOPs are critical for business success. Automation helps companies to reduce operational costs and time-to-service customer requests. McKinsey found that a bank automated about 900 of its back-end operations to relieve about fifty percent of its full-time employees for back-end tasks. Automation adds to the overall growth of the information technology market forecast to reach 1.2 trillion by 2020. Professional service companies should consider automating back-end operations to reduce customer requests service time and operational costs. Professional services are changing, with the emergence of new technologies for communicating with clients, growing brand awareness, engaging virtual teams and implementing a value-oriented revenue model. In such a scenario, consulting services for a professional can really help
#6. Increased Competition
A rapid increase in competition is expected, as fresh players enter market or alternative business models are being used. There’s growing importance of competitors from emerging markets, chiefly in the US and UK firms. Large firms from emerging markets mean business and an increasing trend of deregulation reduces restriction on different aspects of ownership of service providers and the way services are offered. With increased rivalry, customer demands are also changing. Clients now expect better quality, more value and faster delivery of services and solutions. Clients can also ask for accountability and transparency in terms of work delivered. For ensuring effective delivery of services, business process consulting services can help.
#7. Choosing the Right Workforce
Every business is competing for quality professionals who can build a strong skill set and fit into company culture. The professional services industry needs to have SOPs in place for effective recruitment and selection. Job postings need to reflect business needs and requirements.
#8. Aligning Business Goals with Service Objectives
Projects fail due to lack of clarity and the professional services industry is beset by the increased customer demand for customization. Further, communication breakdowns like implementing the planning without formal goals in place, or lack of clearly defined objectives or milestones is a real problem.
#9. Low Utilization Rates of Employees
Maximizing the billable hours can be challenging. One way to meet this issue is to ensure employees are logging activities and time through the day. SOPs for software that effectively manage and analyze data is a must. Project management SOPs can help in understanding employee skills and deploy them across projects efficiently.
II) How YRC Helps Your Professional Services Firm?
YRC/ Your Retail Coach remains at the forefront of innovation and cutting-edge SOPs that help your professional services firm to retain its competitive edge. YRC is skilled at creating standard operating procedures that can streamline the way your firm works and utilizes its human capital. Contact YRC specialists today to give your professional services firm the winning edge it needs to thrive and surge ahead of competitors.
III) About Professional Services
The professional services market is rapidly growing, according to the Professional Services Market Global Report 2017 by Business Research. The market is forecast to register a growth rate of 5.4% from 2016 to 2021, reaching an impressive target of USD 5 trillion. The key sectors growing are design, research, promotional and consulting services constituting around 71% of the growth. Legal services constituted 17% of the growth while accounting stood at 12%. Though accounting is the smallest segment, it records a high growth rate and is forecast to grow by 6.2% from 2018 to 2020. There is increased demand for tax filings, financial statements audting, payroll processing and other accounting services. In the professional services market, America accounts for 40% of the market. There’s a high demand for services in developed as well as emerging economies though. The industry’s product for sale is expertise and knowledge. To stay competitive and up to date, professionals in the industry need to be aware of key market trends and challenges and, for this, business consulting services for doctors, law firms, CA firms and other professionals, can really help.
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