Concerns of automation taking away the available jobs for the workforce have prevailed for over 50 years. While automation can be a substitute for labor, David Autor declares, “Automation also complements labor, raises output in ways that lead to higher demand for labor, and interacts with adjustments in labor supply.”
Automation can be invaluable for industries that provide professional services. They have to balance the delivery of services and excellent customer relations in addition to managing their typical business processes. Professional services automation helps businesses do exactly that.
What is professional services automation (PSA)?
Professional services automation is software dedicated to managing central business processes. It handles the repetitive procedures and resource management across different client projects by combining them all into one application. Professional services automation allows organizations to focus more on the actual delivery of services to their customers rather than repetitive tasks.
Who uses professional services automation?
Professional services automation is used by a wide array of professionals, such as accounting firms, digital marketing agencies, software companies, technology consultants, and more. Basically, any business that provides “professional services” of any kind can benefit from using this software.
When it comes to managed IT services, MSPs use PSA software as a core tool to manage and run a profitable business.
Core features of professional services automation
Professional services automation software provides a central hub for you to track and manage major business operations. A few core features of professional services automation include:
Customer relationship management (CRM)
A CRM system enables you to keep track of your customer relationships through contact management, marketing and sales management, and more.
Resource utilization
PSA gives you better visibility into current customer projects and the resources you have. You can make sure that resource management is optimized and that you have the right resources for the right projects.
Billing and invoicing
Proper billing is critical, especially for MSPs. Use PSA to streamline this important process so you guarantee that correct invoices are generated.
Ticketing
Create and view tickets within PSA software. It gives you a central location for all your tickets where you can easily manage, track, and respond to them.
Documentation
PSA software can store and provide technicians access to essential documentation of standardized procedures, checklists, and references to informative articles to help them perform their jobs efficiently.
Security and compliance
Make sure customer data is secure and you have reliable operations. PSA provides centralized access to data and allows technicians to access that information using proper credentials.
Other marketing or sales tools
Within PSA software, you can manage and automate your entire customer lifecycle using paired tools.
Benefits of professional services automation software
1. Maximize resource utilization
Within any organization there are typically many resources that are available, whether it’s software or employees. Because of this, it can be difficult to track whether or not you’re effectively using all your resources. Resource utilization measures, simply, how much you’re using the available resources.
For MSPs, PSA software enables them to match the workload demand with sufficient resources by ensuring there’s just enough technicians assigned to the right positions.
2. Automate reporting
Professional services automation can automate many tasks, just like the name describes, but one of the key benefits is automated reporting. Because it centralizes all your organization’s service processes, it can easily generate a report and provide real-time data that give you insight into how well these processes are working.
3. Increase client satisfaction
Using PSA software can assist you in direct communication with your clients to ensure that their needs are being met through your business. Professional services automation helps keep you organized and on track to deliver quality service to your customers.
4. Decrease administrative tasks
Many administrative tasks are repetitive and tedious, and they can be really big time consumers. Professional services automation solves this problem by automating simple admin tasks, which leaves more time for you to address more complex tasks and get more done overall.
5. Better visibility
There are many processes and operations needed to run a successful professional services business, and it can be challenging to remember and keep track of them all. Professional services automation brings all these together in a central location and is an easy solution to feeling spread thin. It also gives you increased visibility into all the workings of your business so you can see, in real-time, these operations at work together.
Integrate RMM & professional services automation software
Integrating your RMM software with your PSA software can save you from having to do the same work twice. If you don’t integrate them, then all the work you’re doing in your RMM you have to manually transcribe into your PSA. Some other main advantages of integrating the two solutions include:
- Helpful for time tracking
- Provides automatic ticket creation
- Assists with incident identification
- Allows for proactive management
NinjaOne integrates with PSA solutions
NinjaOne is a unified IT management solution that helps MSPs effectively monitor and manage IT environments. By creating tight integrations with leading PSA software solutions, it forms a central console that can serve as the source of truth for both IT and business operations. Reach out to NinjaOne and start with a free trial.
