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Professional Services Automation
WHITE PAPER
www.deltek.com
info@deltek.com
800.456.2009
Professional Services
Automation
A New Approach to Business and Knowledge Management for
Professional Services Firms
ExEcutivE Summary
the Professional Services Firm
The Professional Services Firm operates through
projects, i.e., through discrete engagements for
external or internal clients, delivered according
to an agreed-upon scope, schedule, fee, and set
of deliverables. Some specific examples of
project-based organizations include IT services
businesses, architectural and engineering firms,
design and planning firms, management
consulting firms, systems integrators,
accounting firms, research organizations, and
government contractors.
In the supply chain of a services organization,
people and time are the most important
resources when delivering on a project or
engagement is paramount. Professional services
firms must manage information and work to
achieve success, in spite of project
complications.
The term Professional Services Automation
(PSA) has been coined by industry analysts to
describe the functions and activities that
professional services firms must engage in to be
successful. As the leading provider of PSA
solutions to project-based businesses, Deltek
views PSA as a comprehensive, universal,
transparent, collaborative and knowledge-
enhancing approach to managing information
and work in professional services firms.
Success Factors for
Professional Services Firms
There are certain time-honored success factors
that can make or break a professional services
firm. Short-term success comes with bringing
projects in the door, having the resources and
capacity to execute them, keeping tight reins on
projects, and knowing how to evaluate and
manage underlying drivers of financial
performance. In the long term, successful
project-based firms concentrate on external
factors (relationships, reputation, and a market-
sector focus) and on internal factors
(communication, staffing, and knowledge
management).
In addition, professional services firms are
currently faced with powerful changes in their
industries. These changes include a robust
market environment and its associated pains,
hopes and fears surrounding the impact of the
Internet and ecommerce, historic shortages of
key professionals, industry consolidation and
spin-offs from mergers and acquisitions, and
increasingly sophisticated clients.
table of contents
Executive Summary ...........1
The Professional
Services Firm ........................5
Success Factors for
Professional Services
Firms .....................................7
Current Practices and
Existing Business
Systems in Professional
Services Firms ......................9
Key Components of
Professional Services
Automation ....................... 12
Key Features of
Professional Services
Automation ....................... 18
Comparing and
Contrasting Professional
Services Automation
with ERP, CRM, Project
Management and
Project Collaboration
Systems ............................. 19
Professional Services
Automation in Action
using Deltek Vision
®
........ 21
Return on Investment
from Professional
Services Automation ...... 26
Delteks Conclusions........ 28 

WHITE PAPER:
ProFESSional SErvicES automation
At the same time, the issue of technology has
risen to the boardroom. Top executives are
increasingly aware of technology as a basic
requirement for doing business, as well as a
market differentiator and competitive
advantage, and they worry about the costs of
falling behind the curve.
current Practices and Existing Business
Systems in Professional Services Firms
Automation of professional services firms has
progressed steadily over the last 30 years,
beginning with production and accounting
systems, then expanding into project
management, marketing, and, more recently,
communication and collaboration. Yet, for all
their progress, firms have stopped curiously
short of fully automating and integrating their
key business processes. This section reviews the
current state of affairs in most professional
services firms and identifies important issues to
be addressed.
Many project-based businesses have
implemented an industry-standard solution for
accounting, timekeeping and, in some cases,
project management. Yet the picture that
emerges is of many islands of automation,
but no integrated enterprise-wide automation.
Even an organization that has adopted all
industry best practices and few have gotten
this far would still have significant holes in
the system. These holes include an enterprise-
wide client relationship management system, a
robust project resource planning tool,
automation in the identification of project
resources, and a collaboration solution for client
interaction. Also, many of the solutions that
firms implement are available only in a single
location, for a single or limited group of users.
Their greatest weaknesses are the lack of
integration and a coherent interface to shared
knowledge. This results in redundant data entry
of information and in inconsistent or inaccurate
data. This fosters inefficiency and drives up
costs while reducing effectiveness. It places the
burden of integrating information for different
sources on the professional. The organization
also fails to capitalize on opportunities, learn
from mistakes, or make effective reuse of ideas
and information.
Key components of
Professional Services automation
In contrast to these prevailing practices in
project-based businesses, Deltek promotes an
enterprise-wide system that ties together all
business functions. It is a system that uses an
intranet and the Internet to provide people
inside and outside the organization with a
single, manageable window into all relevant
data surrounding projects, clients, employees,
sub-consultants, opportunities, recruits and any
other key business entities.
This section outlines the specific components
that Deltek supports, including data
management and business process automation
that cover each of the following processes:
Opportunity and lead tracking
Proposal automation
Resource planning and forecasting
Recruiting and partnering
Client relationship management
Project planning, budgeting and
management
Employee time and expense entry and
processing
Project and financial accounting
Billing and receivables
Human resource management
Document and knowledge management
Business intelligence and practice
management
Project websites (e-business)
After examining each of these areas in detail, it
becomes clear that PSA needs to be
comprehensive in its automation of the
professional services firm, touching on every
aspect of a firms operations. At the same time,
PSA must be universally adopted in the
organization in order to succeed, since so many
of its capabilities depend on providing a









It enables ideas,
best practices,
and intelligence to
spread more quickly
up, down, and across
the organization 

WHITE PAPER:
ProFESSional SErvicES automation
complete and correct view of all business activity.
To be widely adopted, it must be transparent
that is, it must overlay easily into each business
process, without creating a bulk of additional
work for users, even enabling them to do their
jobs more efficiently. The user interface to a PSA
solution must be user friendly and designed to
support and encourage collaboration. Finally, it
should be knowledge-enhancing meaning
that the system enables ideas, best practices,
and intelligence to spread more quickly up, down,
and across the organization and to be preserved
for a longer time.
comparing and contrasting Professional
Services automation with Enterprise
resource Planning, client relationship
management, Project management and
collaboration Systems
As comprehensive a solution as Professional
Services Automation is, many will wonder how it
relates to other types of enterprise and project-
based systems, including Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP), Client Relationship Management
(CRM), project management tools, and project
collaboration/project Websites. In this section,
we explore how PSA fits into this landscape.
We conclude that it encompasses some features
of an ERP solution; but is more appropriately
scaled to the typical professional services firm,
while extending an ERP-like functionality into
the hands of a broader community in a more
useful context. And while it includes CRM
capabilities, its far more powerful for project-
based businesses than stand-alone CRM
ap