INDUSTRIES
Professional Services / Service Providers
The Professional Services Industry needs IT Solutions that are tailored to the exact standards, processes, and challenges that are crucial to meeting the very specific needs of their customers.
Professional Services organizations face a number of challenges:
- Continued globalization- As the world becomes a smaller place; new competitors enter the market with access to different resource pools and cost bases. As a result, services organizations need to be both protective in their core market and aggressive into new markets. Customers are increasingly global, demanding their services organizations to offer a reach that matches their own.
- Resource constraints- Attracting, retaining and developing personnel are all key to any services organization. Resources are increasingly mobile and more demanding, requiring services organizations to be flexible and proactive in the way they address their needs. Furthermore, services organizations need to match demand and supply with the right resources at the right place at the right time at the right cost.
- Margin pressures- As the economic cycle goes around and access to low cost offshore resources increases, services organizations are being required to do more with less. This requires a tight focus on operating costs, driving the demand to remove all non-essential back office costs out of the business.
- Complex commercial arrangements with increased transference of risk- As customers have become more experienced in the procurement of services, the level of risk they are seeking to transfer to the services organization is increasing. Furthermore, customers are moving towards contracting for outcomes, rather than individual services. This increased transference of risk demands tight management controls over all aspects of the engagement, from proposal through to delivery.