In professional service organizations, efficiency is a primary concern. Businesses are challenged with selling an intangible product that is ever-changing and difficult to quantify. Profitability requires that projects are estimated correctly, are completed on time, and meet customer requirements.

To succeed, professional service companies must adopt strategic and comprehensive financial, project, and resource management practices. Expanding the use of information technology (IT) is the best way to add greater value while supporting more cost-effective operations. Bottom line, an affordable computing infrastructure can help your company and your people share data, work together, and make effective decisions more easily.

Microsoft Dynamics offers a set of strong solutions to help professional service organizations manage every aspect of their company, from customer relationships and projects to business process outsourcing and financials. These solutions can help you streamline operations while increasing value, improve interactions with customers, and make faster, smarter decisions.

Microsoft Dynamics can help your company:

Keep the customer front and center. Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions can help you manage and track all customer-facing activities from the initial point of contact. A guided sales process provides automated routing, notifications, approvals, and escalations. A flexible IT infrastructure facilitates customer interactions with electronic document capabilities and protects deliverables with version control for approval workflows, document-profiling, and publishing. Web-based access and robust security features promote safe interactions while protecting business-critical data.

Smoothly manage projects. Project management and CRM solutions help you deliver detailed, multidimensional project information for more complete initial project estimates and future quotes. Improve visibility for key decision-makers by configuring workflow-driven approval processes, critical path schedules, and exception-driven alerts. Use IT resources for accurate critical path-scheduling and effective allocation of internal resources.

Operate more efficiently. From Web-based time and expense entry systems to automated billing and customized invoicing, business tools can help make operations healthy and profitable. By monitoring daily and monthly metrics, you can make incremental, company-wide improvements such as boosting productivity, rewarding employees through automatic incentive systems, and modifying salary structures to reflect the current market. Automated payment systems protect cash flow, track outstanding liabilities, and make payments contingent on deliverables.

The following products can be used to help build solutions in the professional services industry:

1. Microsoft Dynamics GP for professional services
2. Microsoft Dynamics SL for professional services