Tie to Professional Service Automation tools (PSA) to forecast labor hours and future hiring needs

Description

Tying Corporate Performance Management (CPM) systems to Professional Service Automation tools (PSA) can be valuable for project based businesses where labor is the primary driver of profitability and expenses. This involves taking existing or planning projects from a PSA and incorporating them into financial plans and scenarios.

Example Use Case

Scenario: A large consultancy employing thousands of consultants globally uses a CPM system for managing its performance data, and separately, a PSA tool to manage its consulting projects. The company wants to better forecast its labor hours required for its future projects and understand future hiring needs to match the anticipated business growth.

Solution: By implementing an integration between the CPM and PSA systems, the company can analyze its past and present project data, coupled with its financial performance data to produce reliable workforce forecasts. It means that labor hours required for each project are tracked and linked to the financial data from the CPM system. This cooperative data allows the company to forecast future labor needs as well as identify potential skills gaps for future hiring.

Considerations

There are only a handful of PSA systems on the market, and most of them are a bit long in the tooth. Make sure that whatever system you have includes an API that can send data to the CPM tool you're looking at, or at least can export data in a consumable form.

Some PSA tools include forecasting features centered around hours, roles, and utilization. They're not connected to a project P&L in most cases. This makes the use of a CPM tool in this process even more important.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Integration Potential: How well does your CPM system integrate with existing PSA tools? Does it do so live, or are we going to do manual import and export processes?
• Workflow: Which parts of the forecasting process would we do in the PSA, and what would happen in the CPM?
• Prior Experience: Do you have experience blending PSA and CPM data with other customers? If so, what was the use case?