Collaboration is key for professional services firms to drive growth and succeed in today's competitive landscape. Modern collaboration tools and integrated ERP systems can raise efficiencies within a firm by 20-25% by reducing search time and enhancing knowledge sharing. These technologies also allow firms to deliver full-service offerings by enabling partnerships and joint ventures. To take advantage of new opportunities and market conditions, firms need real-time data access across locations to make informed decisions and quickly adapt. As firms expand globally, collaboration becomes even more important to secure value in new markets and ensure everyone has access to the same accurate information.

1. Collaboration:
The key to connecting your Professional Services firm
for growth and global success
» deltek.com

2. Leaders within today’s Professional Services industry are taking advantage of collaborative
efforts in order to not just survive the current and future market conditions, but to ensure long
term growth. That’s because today there are new and dynamic opportunities that have never
been seen before.
Yet, collaboration from within an organization or across multiple firms may struggle to occur
organically. Instead, savvy firms are putting their focus on key tools that enhance and nurture
modern collaboration techniques. Today, specifically-designed project collaboration tools
and comprehensive web-based ERP solutions exist to enhance and nurture connectivity in
Professional Services firms’ changing workforce—and the firms most poised and hungry for
success are capitalizing on them.
Collaboration should be a priority that is universal across all Professional Services organizations.
For example, Architecture and Engineering firms are now, more than ever, engaging in joint
ventures with other firms in order to build structures that meet all of their client’s design needs. In
Marketing and Communications, firms are working together to expand their service lines to their
customers. And in other Professional Services firms, there is now a need for enhanced interaction
with the client in order to maintain customer satisfaction and gain repeat business. In all these
cases, collaboration is needed to get the job done.
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Collaboration: The key to connecting your Professional
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3. Why integrated ERP systems
will lead to success
» Click here to learn more
So what exactly can collaboration do for your firm? Other than promoting a congenial atmosphere,
strong collaboration actually has tangible benefits that can equate to money in your firm’s pocket.
Even simple collaborative efforts can raise efficiencies within your firm up to 25%, by saving your
employees time and energy. Similarly, today’s competitive Professional Services landscape and
changing expectations for today’s modern workforce show that collaboration isn’t really even
optional anymore—without collaborative processes and the visibility provided by connected
systems, your firm is destined to get left behind. When all this is combined with today’s new teaming
opportunities, one thing is for sure: collaboration is imperative to a firm’s agility, growth and survival.
On the other side of things, when a firm is already positioned to expand, collaboration plays a vital
role in the process of globalization. Besides helping organizations overcome the challenges of
securing new markets, collaborative tools and integrated ERP systems provide one version of the
truth which is indispensable when working across international borders. Ultimately, collaborative
tools give organizations the boost to outperform in any market condition.
In this comprehensive e-book, Deltek takes you through the reasons for improving collaboration
with performance-driving ERP and social tools. Split into two parts discussing how enhanced
connectivity can drive growth and the role of globalization, this e-book provides all the information
that is key to your firm’s success in current and future Professional Services’ markets.
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4. Put simply, collaboration is the surest way to deliver margin and drive growth from within your firm.
Think of it this way: each of your individual employees may have a specific talent or knowledgebase, but they can’t grow your company as a whole if their talents are isolated from others.
That’s why success-driven firms like yours need to put an emphasis on getting your team to work
together. Something as simple as creating a more collaborative workforce ensures that your entire
organization’s talents, skills and ideas are focused towards a single goal—driving achievement across
your enterprise.
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5. Contents:
Part I: Collaborating
to Innovate and
Drive Growth
1. Raise Efficiencies by 20-25%: Put Your Focus
Back on Profit-driving Tasks
2. The Art of Competition: Reach More
Customers and Get Richer Insight
3. Your Changing Business and Workforce:
The Right Tools are No Longer Just “Nice
to Have”
4. Clients Should be Your Number One
Priority: Deliver Full-service Offerings by
Teaming Up
5. Agility through Real-time Data:
The Source for Successfully Taking on
New Opportunities and Improving
Profitability
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Collaboration: The key to connecting your Professional
Services firm for growth and global success
Part II:
Thinking
Global
1. The Challenge of Securing Value:
Adding Organizational Visibility to
Achieve Growth
2. Success Requires One Version of the
Truth: The Result is Better, More
Informed Decision-making
3. The Need for Accurate KPI
Identification: Improving Your Core
Business Processes on a Continual
Basis
4. Be the ‘Best of the Best’: Gain the
Ability to Outperform
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6. Part I. Collaborating to Innovate and Drive Growth
Raise Efficiencies by 20-25%:
Put Your Focus Back on Profit-driving Tasks
“The social economy: Unlocking
value and productivity through
social technologies”
Report, McKinsey Global Institute,
July 2012
» Click to learn more
According to a July, 2012 report issued by the McKinsey Global Institute, the improved
communication and interaction that comes as a result of utilizing social technologies could raise
efficiencies throughout an entire organization—regardless of the firm’s size or employee locations.
“The McKinsey Global Institute finds that twice as much potential value lies in using social tools
to enhance communication, knowledge sharing and collaboration within and across enterprises,”
the report states. “By fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to
raise the productivity of interaction workers—high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and
professionals—by 20 to 25%.”
The report continues, “The average interaction worker spends an estimated 28% of the workweek
managing email, and nearly 20% looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who
can help with specific tasks. But when companies use social media internally, messages become
content; a searchable record of knowledge can reduce, by as much as 35%, the time employees
spend searching for company information.”
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7. Part I. Collaborating to Innovate and Drive Growth
The Art of Competition:
Reach More Customers and Get
Richer Insight
Trends in Social Collaboration
Watch the interview with Michael
Fauscette, Group VP, IDC
» Click to view
Trends in Social Collaboration
Watch the interview with China
Martens, Analyst, Forrester Research
True, organizations around the globe are adapting social interaction and collaborative tools to
coincide with the increasing opportunities of social media. But to what extent?
In the same 2012 McKinsey report, experts state that an estimated 75% of enterprise-level
organizations will adopt a social collaboration platform in 2013. With the majority of firms realizing
that social collaboration tools are a requirement for successful performance in today’s global
markets, it’s imperative that your firm stay in line—or better yet, ahead—of the competition.
“In a few short years, social technologies have given social interactions the speed and the scale
of the Internet,” the report says. “Companies use them in new ways to reach consumers in new
ways too; by tapping into the conversations, organizations can generate richer insights and create
precisely targeted messages and offers.”
» Click to view
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8. Part I. Collaborating to Innovate and Drive Growth
Your Changing Business and Workforce:
The Right Tools are No Longer Just “Nice to Have”
Read how ECOM improved its
team collaboration through KONA
» Click to learn more
As personal lives become more social, inevitably, so does business. And in fact, employees
themselves are demanding more collaborative social platforms that can help them become more
efficient in their jobs. Similar to the previous point, as business processes advance to the speed of
the internet, so should your communication and collaboration.
Likewise, within the Professional Services industry especially, the changing workforce means more
employees than ever before are working remotely. With a large portion of your staff spread out
between locations, a higher level of collaboration can no longer be viewed as just a ‘nice thing to
have’. Now, it’s a ‘must have’ for any successful enterprise.
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9. Part I. Collaborating to Innovate and Drive Growth
Clients Should be Your Number One Priority: Deliver
Full-service Offerings by Teaming Up
Collaboration in the PR industry
» Click here to read the blog
With an uncertain economy and increased competition on the horizon, top customer service
and responsiveness is the most certain way to acquire and retain clients. Yet, putting your clients
at the center of your plans can only be accomplished by recognizing what your clients want and
expect from your firm. One example of this comes from the Marketing and Communications
sector, where it is now common for agencies to deliver ‘full-service’ offerings—i.e., providing Public
Relations, digital and design services from under a single, umbrella offering. Likewise, Architecture
and Engineering firms are moving beyond providing one or two specialties to offering their clients a
full host of engineering, design and tactical consulting services. This attracts potential clients who
don’t want—or can’t afford to—hire a number of AE consultancies for a single job. However, it’s not
always possible for a single Professional Serices firm to directly deliver these specialist, highly-skilled
services from within their existing employee base; instead, savvy firms in this sector are increasingly
partnering with other firms to deliver additional value to their clients.
Oddly enough, in today’s business landscape, this can also mean collaborating with a competitor
to service a client need. Given that improving customer satisfaction is high on the list of top
opportunities for today’s Professional Services firms, partnering with a competitor can ensure that
your firm is delivering the best job for your clients—offering a win-win to all.
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10. Part I. Collaborating to Innovate and Drive Growth
However, to achieve this partnership, your firm has to first establish the right collaborative tools
and ERP that can help you succeed. With the right system in place, Professional Services firms gain
synergy on all levels and business processes become easy: you can budget, resource and report
accordingly on team efforts. Moreover, with visibility-enhancing ERP, projects and clients can be
planned and analyzed in ways that ensure maximum profitability for all parties involved.
Collaboration in the
Engineering sector
» Click to read the blog
Put it all together, and you have a recipe that ultimately strengthens your firm’s service to its clients.
By collaborating with other firms with like-minded customer focus, your firm can then package a
whole new offering that is more competitive and attractive to buyers in the market.
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11. Part I. Collaborating to Innovate and Drive Growth
Agility through Real-time Data:
The Source for Successfully Taking on
New Opportunities and Improving Profitability
In today’s Professional Services marketplace, having ‘agility’ is tantamount to being profitable.
However, the idea of agility means to be able to adjust quickly to changing conditions, which can’t
be done without solutions that empower collaboration.
Let’s put this into a real-world example. If you need to call on expertise from employee data taken in
London when you’re in Germany, what’s the one thing that can ensure you’re working with accurate,
applicable information? The answer, is that the data is all delivered in real-time—something that
can’t occur without a unifying ERP system.
Firms that can quickly respond to opportunities and react to change gain a number of benefits: they
grow revenue, create happy clients and adapt to challenges that could threaten profitability. But
again, the right software is key to this position.
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12. Part I. Collaborating to Innovate and Drive Growth
Look at this second example. Agile firms can quickly identify relevant past client work to serve as
an insight for new proposals, while making sure their pricing is still competitive. However, today’s
Professional Services firms don’t have time for long, complicated data-mining—after all, your
resources are needed for billable tasks.
Social collaboration tool KONA
Watch Deltek’s Jeff Eckerle,
Senior Director of Product
Management talk about KONA
» Click to view
Modern tools can easily and instantly transform all of a firm’s past and current work into meaningful,
on-demand knowledge. It can even check to make sure the right resources are available for
your client needs. Imagine the advantage a firm has if it can quickly respond to a new business
opportunity with an immediate proposal—one that commits to both resources and timeline. Putting
yourself in the client’s shoes, which firm would you choose?
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13. Part II: Thinking Global
“Globalising your ERP”
» Click to learn more
Without a doubt, the globalization of the economy is also driving collaboration
efforts. That’s why paying attention to smart, social collaboration tools shouldn’t
end once you’ve begun your path to growth. Once your firm has expanded—be it through
organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, or from joint ventures and partnerships—collaborative
technologies become even more critical. In this section, we have itemized four major globalization
factors that should encourage your Professional Services firm to ‘think collaboration’ in today’s
international markets.
“Going Global with Your ERP”
» Click to learn more
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14. Part II. Thinking Global
The Challenge of Securing Value:
Adding Organizational Visibility to
Achieve Growth
Ready to grow from here?
With Deltek it’s in hand.
» Click to view
If you’re already a globalized Professional Services firm, or have plans for growth in the future,
it’s important to remember: adding new geographies does not necessarily improve business
performance. In fact, the biggest globalization challenge for PS firms is securing that added value as
the company moves into new territories.
No matter which way you look at it, setting up in a new territory is a costly and risky exercise—
not to mention, one that needs to be the result of informed decisions and an identified market
opportunity. What’s more, any venture of this nature should be scalable, meaning you shouldn’t
jump in headfirst and sink all your cash in setting up.
Collaboration can undoubtedly ease this start-up burden. For one thing, it changes the way you
make use of your pre-existing team in established territories. Additionally, establishing how you
work with others can help in those first few steps. Collaborating can assist in covering the ‘ground
work’ of a new territory until you can tangibly see the early success needed to warrant further
investment.
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15. Part II. Thinking Global
The Hunt for Profitability:
How the Marcom Industry Strives
to Increase Profits
» Click to learn more
When it comes to a challenge of this scale, Professional Services firms can often find it daunting to
pinpoint an answer. However, securing value throughout your firm and into new markets is as simple
as unifying your organization. Deltek’s white paper The Hunt for Profitability: How the Marcom
Industry Strives to Increase Profits, researches this exact topic. In doing so, the report concludes
that a Professional Services firm’s growth and success stems from its people, work, time and
financial results being unified in a way that provides visibility across the entire organization.
Moreover, internal collaboration—i.e., sharing resources, reporting and analysis data—not only saves
time for your firm, but also makes the collective effort more reliable. This allows better decisions
to be made from an executive level. With this in mind, you can see that a major component of
securing value in the Professional Services’ landscape—even in new markets—is deploying the right
technology and collaborative tools to drive your firm to global success.
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16. Part II. Thinking Global
Success Requires One Version of the Truth:
The Result is Better, More Informed Decision-making
“Project-Based ERP For Service
Delivery Professionals”
» Click to read the Forrester
Market Overview
Overcoming the main challenge of a globalized business is simple, yet takes the right tools and
processes to deliver results. The answer lies in being able to operate your entire business under one
version of the truth.
This means enabling everyone in your workforce to see and utilize the same data. Put into specific
terms, it comes down to consolidating your business systems so that all staff members have a roleappropriate view of all entities, projects and teams.
In a January 2012 report entitled Market Overview: Project-Based ERP For Service Delivery
Professionals, Forrester analyst China Martens confirms that disparate data systems are still a
struggle for today’s Professional Services firms.
“Unfortunately, many service delivery organizations face the challenge that the [applications] they
use to manage external projects aren’t tightly integrated with each other,” says Martens. “Different
pieces of important project information reside in individual applications, such as customer
relationship management, human capital management and financials. Organizations then face
challenges with poor or little communication—flow of information back and forth—between those
disparate systems.”
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17. Part II. Thinking Global
Despite the frequency of this occurrence, Martens also states that it’s not enough for service delivery
professionals to merely expand—they also need to “think and act globally” in order to succeed.
“As service delivery organizations expand, they have more need to be able to run project
management software across a variety of regions and be able to view their entire operation—
potentially involving a variety of subsidiaries—as a single, global entity with shared customers,
projects and employees.”
The only way to achieve this is by implementing an ERP with true, multi-language, multi-currency
capabilities, so that everyone in the organization is reporting from one system. The result is not only
improved collaboration, but greater visibility, increased executive overview and transparency and
more informed decision-making for your organization as a whole.
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18. Part II. Thinking Global
The Need for Accurate KPI Identification: Improving
Your Core Business Processes on a Continual Basis
As a globalized Professional Services firm looking to succeed, delivering true operational excellence
can only happen with the right solution in place. Social tools and collaboration-driving ERP systems
can do this by helping you identify the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your firm—be it
profit, scale, new technologies or revenue.
What’s more, by implementing a robust, globally-supportive ERP, you can provide the visibility into
those specific metrics to actively manage your firm’s most unique and critical processes. The most
common processes that are positively impacted by taking advantage of the right tools are ones
surrounding resource management, project selection and execution, life cycle management and
all financial transactions. Summed up, all the things that make a Professional Services firm function
and operate competitively.
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19. Part II. Thinking Global
Be the ‘Best of the Best’:
Gain the Ability to Outperform
“Successfully Managing
a Consulting Business in
Challenging Economic Times”
» Click here to read the IDC report
With the current economic outlook, the firms with a strong understanding and management of their
KPIs will continue to outperform the market. In short, these are the firms that will solidify their status
as the best of the best.
At IDC, the world’s premier global market intelligence firm, this statement translates to
‘performance is the focus.’ In the Successfully Managing a Consulting Business in Challenging
Economic Times report issued by Michael Fauscette, Group Vice President for the firm’s Software
Business Solutions business unit, a consistent focus on performance outweighs flashy trends on
any day.
“Competitive advantage can come from a superior strategy like having a novel, go-to market
approach,” Fauscette states. “But most often it comes from operational excellence.”
To ensure that your firm is consistently optimizing performance, collaborative efforts and solutions
that streamline operations are vital. Without these tools and processes in place, your globalized
competitors will continue to outperform you in the market—instead of the other way around.
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Conclusion
As firms look to the next year and beyond to plan their strategies in the fight to remain competitive,
one thing is clear. Those who collaborate on today’s advanced level of heightened communication
and pay attention to the impacts of globalization will no doubt succeed where others might fail. For
your firm, investing in the right technologies to drive that ‘next level’ of collaboration will result in
delivering improved, long-term profit margins and growth. Whether it’s to connect your increasingly
mobile workforce, meet the ever-demanding needs of your clients or unify your global enterprise,
collaboration is the key to successfully profiting in today’s changing Professional Services
marketplace.
Deltek is the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for professional services firms and government contractors. For decades,
we have delivered actionable insight that empowers our customers to unlock their business potential. 16,000 organizations and 2 million users in over 80
countries around the world rely on Deltek to research and identify opportunities, win new business, optimize resources, streamline operations, and deliver more
profitable projects. Deltek – Know more. Do more.® deltek.com
© 2013 Deltek, Inc. All rights reserved. All referenced trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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