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PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Research Publication

2018 Professional
Services Technology
Stack
Automation Is Critical to
Boosting Productivity,
Revenue, and Margins

www.tsia.com
Bo Di Muccio, Vice President Research, Professional Services
©2018 Technology Services Industry Association | 17065 Camino San Bernardo, Ste. 200 | San Diego, CA 92127 | Tel. 1.858.674.5491
James Cho, Director Research, Professional Services and Operational Best Practices
John Ragsdale, Vice President Research, Technology and Social
 2 Technology Insight

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES | Research Publication

TSIA-03678
January 21, 2018

2018 Professional Services

Technology Stack
Automation Is Critical to Boosting Productivity,
Revenue, and Margins
By Bo Di Muccio, James Cho, and John Ragsdale

Executive Overview

Technology is incredibly important to the success of professional services. Various platforms and ap-
plications are required to identify projects to be delivered, track consulting engagements in progress,
and to correctly bill for services when projects are complete. TSIA has identified 10 separate applica-
tions categories recommended for highly productive, scalable PS teams, including core infrastructure
technology, productivity tools, and tools to understand and track customer behavior and sentiment. In
this report, TSIA Research defines the recommended technology stack for professional services and
lists the top installed vendors in each technology category. A new section has been added to the re-
port about how technology can be leveraged for “extreme automation,” making dramatic improvements
to productivity, service quality, or revenue through the use of innovative technology. Professional ser-
vices executives should understand which enabling technology components are already well adopted,
as well as emerging tools that may provide a boost to operational and financial metrics.

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Technology a Critical Component for Professional Services

The cloud economy is forcing technology firms to rethink their approach to professional services. As
product revenues fall, there is more pressure than ever to improve project margins. Formerly on-prem-
ise technology companies are making dramatic overhauls to service offers to meet the needs of on-
demand customer engagements.

The pressure that we have been seeing on PS financial performance is not receding. However, there
is strong evidence that PS managers are, in essence, figuring it out. Whereas data from last year’s
TSIA Professional Services Benchmark showed notable declines in average PS revenue growth, mar-
ket rates, and consultant utilization relative to the previous year, the same trends for 2017 compared
to 2016 reveal stabilization around those key metrics.

To continue to demonstrate even such modest success, TSIA members need to identify Pacesetter
practices across all phases of people, process, and technology. Our benchmarking program and other
survey projects provide the data necessary to identify employee performance goals and establish
best-in-class practices. This report focuses on the technology component.

In order to take the next step in boosting project margins and productivity, technology can be a great
enabler. Not only can basic processes like project staffing and utilization tracking be automated, but
analytics can give you new insight into your business, including real-time project dashboards and re-
source forecasting tools. This report will define the various technology components that TSIA recom-
mends that companies evaluate. Some are standard infrastructure products practically everyone has,
others are newer, more innovative solutions that may help provide you with a competitive edge.

Technology Categories Relevant to Professional Services

TSIA tracks adoption, satisfaction, and planned spending for technology specific to service operations.
In the 2017 Global Technology Survey, the following technology categories were identified as relevant
to professional services.

• Communities/Enterprise Collaboration. Online customer communities and enterprise

collaboration for employees are designed to enable peer-to-peer support and share
information internally and externally. This includes discussion forums, expertise tracking,
reputation models, moderation, etc.

• Consumption Monitoring/Analytics. Consumption monitoring/analytics are tools used to

measure and monitor customer consumption of technology, gauging how quickly customers
are adopting new tools, common process flows, top-used features, number of users, and
length of session time. Consumption monitoring is a key piece of shifting toward outcome-
based services.

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• CRM/Incident Management. Enterprise CRM is an enterprise deployment of CRM (customer

relationship management) across sales, marketing, and service. This platform tracks leads,
opportunities, campaigns, accounts, and contact history. Incident management, also known as
case management, service requests (SRs), or trouble tickets, is used to track an occurrence
of a customer question or problem through to resolution.

• Customer Experience Analytics. Customer experience analytics, also known as customer

journey analytics, includes survey and reporting tools used to track transactional, periodic, and
project customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Scores, and Customer Effort Scores. In addition to
customer survey tools, customer experience analytics includes quality monitoring for agent
performance, as well as voice and text analysis of assisted and unassisted support and social
interactions, and any marketing, sales, or service interactions.

• Intelligent/Enterprise Search. This linguistics-based search platform includes analytics for

sophisticated reporting. It also allows content in any format or location to be indexed and
searched.

• Knowledge/Content Management. Knowledge management, or content management,

technology is used to capture, maintain, and reuse knowledge.

• Mobility/Video. Mobility and video in service are tools for improving productivity and accuracy
by leveraging mobile and video technology. This includes tools to mobilize field services
technicians, professional services consultants, and other service employees, giving them
access to corporate content, collaboration, and workflow from anywhere, including video
knowledge or training content.

• Professional Services Automation/PSA. Professional services automation, or PSA, is a

platform to automate professional services engagements and includes resource management,
scheduling, project management, and accounting modules.

• Reporting/Analytic Platforms. Reporting/analytic platforms are analytic-based reporting

platforms used to do sophisticated trend reports and create reporting portals, such as a
services dashboard.

• Web Collaboration/Desktop Sharing. Web collaboration/desktop sharing is a collection of

web-based tools used to enable collaboration between employees and customers. This can
include screen sharing, online meetings and training, and webcasts.

Figure 1 shows each of these technology categories as part of the professional services technology
stack, categorized by customer-facing tools, productivity tools, and infrastructure. For each technol-
ogy, the top installed solutions by TSIA members are listed.

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Figure 1: Professional Services Technology Stack

CUSTOMER-FACING LAYER

Consumption Monitoring/Analytics Customer Experience Analytics

Top Installed Solutions: Top Installed Solutions:
Bolstra, Clarabridge, Gainsight, Glassbeam, Pendo, PTC Axeda, GetFeedback, Marketii, MindTouch, Qualtrics, Satmetrix, Service 800,
ServiceSource, SolarWinds, Splunk, Totango SurveyGizmo, SurveyMonkey, Walker Information

PRODUCTIVITY LAYER

Enterprise Intelligent Search Knowledge Mobility/Video Web Collaboration

Collaboration/ Top Installed Solutions: Management Top Installed Solutions: Top Installed Solutions:
Communities Apache Solr, Autonomy- Top Installed Solutions: Skype, Adobe, LogMeIn BlueJeans, Bomgar, Cisco
Top Installed Solutions: HP, Baynote, Coveo, ANCILE uPerform, Aptean Rescue Lens, SAP Afaria, Webex, Google+
Atlassian Confluence, Get Domo, eGain, Knova, Atlassian Oracle, BlueJeans, Hangouts, LogMeIn/Citrix,
Satisfaction, Jabber, Jive, ElasticSearch, Google, Confluence, Drupal, eGain, ClickService, ServiceMax, Microsoft Live Meeting,
Lithium, Microsoft, IDOL, IFS, Inbenta, EMC Documentum, Ventyx, WalkMe, Vidyard ON24, SAP, Skype,
Oracle, Salesforce, LogMeIn Nanorep, Inbenta, Lionbridge TeamViewer,
ServiceNow, Slack, Microsoft, Oracle, GeoFLuent, LogMeIn UberConference, Zoom
Yammer ServiceNow Nanorep, Lotus Notes,
Microsoft Sharepoint,
MindTouch, Moxie
Software, Oracle,
Salesforce, SAP, Upland

INFRASTRUCTURE LAYER

CRM PSA Reporting/Analytics Platform

Top Installed Solutions: Top Installed Solutions: Top Installed Solutions:
Aptean, BMC Remedy, Epicor, Jira, Microsoft Atlassian JIRA, Changepoint, ConnectWise, Adobe Omniture, ChartMogul, IBM,
Dynamics, Oracle/NetSuite, Salesforce, Doculus, FinancialForce, Kimble, Mavenlink, Information Builders, InsightSquared,
SalesLogix, SAP, ServiceMax, ServiceNow, Microsoft, Oracle/NetSuite, Projector PSA, SAP, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, Oracle, QlikView,
Zendesk, Zoho Upland Tenrox, Workday, Zimit SAP, SAS Institute, Tableau, Teradata, TIBCO

Source: TSIA 2017 Global Technology Survey.

For more information on technology adoption, satisfaction, and planned spending for professional ser-
vices, see the “2017 Technology Adoption and Spending: Professional Services” report.

Extreme Automation in Professional Services

Professional services teams are becoming increasingly reliant on technology as a way of boosting
productivity, visibility, and ultimately, project margins. Over the last decade, professional services au-
tomation (PSA) platforms have gone from a Pacesetter practice to a common practice, with the major-
ity of companies now embracing some level of PS automation. The focus shifts now from automating

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core processes—resource management, project management, and project accounting—to more inno-
vative uses of technology. When considering areas in which additional technology investments can
have dramatic impacts, consider these extreme automation possibilities:

• Machine learning and analytics. Adding intelligence to existing tools and processes can
revolutionize operational processes. As an example, deep analysis of project plans, sales
pipeline, project margins, and customer feedback can identify hiring profiles, as well as longer-
term resource plans, and even recommend the type of projects with the highest likelihood of
positive margins and customer success so sales can be trained to better position these
projects moving forward.

• Automated proposal generation. Currently offered by a select group of PSA providers,

these capabilities can automatically generate project proposals using predefined templates
with customizable variables, so multiple proposals for a project can be created with a click of a
button. This eliminates hundreds of hours of manual work and improves proposal accuracy, as
well as shifting the remaining effort to administrative resources, not management.

• Collaboration/knowledge sharing. As project profiles move away from the traditional time-
and-materials approach toward more predefined, repeatable projects, the expense of project
delays for consultants to research problems can’t be passed along to customers anymore and
begins to eat into project margins. Embracing real-time collaboration tools allows consultants
to instantly reach out to their project team, all consultants, or even experts across the
enterprise when help is needed with a product or implementation problem. This allows best
practices, lessons learned, and even customization libraries to be shared, creating a
searchable repository consultants can use to streamline project execution.

Each of these extreme automation opportunities can have a significant impact on PS operations, deliv-
ering a higher-quality service to customers, with fewer resources required. Leveraging technologies
such as machine learning, automatic proposal generation, and real-time collaboration will allow a pro-
fessional services organization to more rapidly scale their operation without adding headcount.

TSIA Recommends
With the increased complexity of today’s products and pressure to improve project delivery, invest-
ments in technology are a primary avenue to meet and exceed customer and executive expectations
for utilization rates and project margins. But knowing where to start is difficult, with many different
products offering a similar ROI story. When deciding where to make incremental investments, TSIA
Research recommends:

• Benchmark your technology footprint against other members. If you are missing multiple
technology categories recommended by TSIA, maybe it is time to revisit how that technology
can assist you in meeting your quality, optimization, and revenue-generation goals. Also, be

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©2018 Technology Services Industry Association | 17065 Camino San Bernardo, Ste. 200 | San Diego, CA 92127 | Tel. 1.858.674.5491
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sure to evaluate what best-of-breed technology offers today compared to homegrown

systems, particularly for PSA and knowledge management.

• Include integrations in Phase 1 of the project. Automating quote-to-cash should be a goal

for any technology firm, and for professional services this means integrating CRM, PSA, and
ERP to allow an end-to-end flow for data, projects, and billing. When implementing new
technology, identify key integration points and push to include these integrations in the initial
phase of the project. Too often, critical integrations are pushed to Phase 2, which never
happens.

• When in doubt, ask. TSIA Research is here to help. Members can submit an inquiry on any
topic, and we will do our best to answer within 48 hours. To submit an inquiry, send an email
to your membership development director, or send an email to support@tsia.com and one of
our service representatives will respond to your inquiry as quickly as possible.

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©2017 Technology Services Industry Association | 17065 Camino San Bernardo, Ste. 200 | San Diego, CA 92127 | Tel. 1.858.674.5491