Transform Your Professional Services Organization into an Intelligent Enterprise

Driving Business Innovation Together

Professional Services:
An Industry Facing Unprecedented Disruption

Professional services firms of the future will look very different. Never before have technological advances offered more innovation, transformation, and growth opportunities for the industry.

Intelligent technologies allow firms of all sizes and types to automate basic tasks, develop digital knowledge–based products, and access a network of nonemployee workers to grow revenue and manage accelerating change without increasing headcount.

Three key trends are driving change in the industry:

Digital delivery

Firms are rethinking their business models and delivering services digitally through subscription platforms that provide better client and employee experiences.

Rise of the virtual firm

Many companies are opting to make remote working permanent. While doing so, intelligent technologies are enabling them to improve productivity and increase workforce flexibility.

Disruptive market entrants

Technology-driven automation is lowering the cost of service delivery and transforming how services are consumed, removing many barriers to new market entrants.

140 million

knowledge workers could be replaced by automation1

US$2.7 trillion

could be added to global GDP by talent platforms by 20251

Three Strategic Priorities to Run as an Intelligent Enterprise

Professional services firms are often seen as the vanguard of the digital transformation of their clients. The professional services firms are experiencing this disruption themselves as major trends impact how they engage with clients, how they are structured, and who they compete against. Professional services firms must focus on three key strategic priorities to create and capture new business opportunities in a digital environment.

The traditional “time and materials” business model is being replaced as clients increasingly focus on the business outcome of an engagement rather than the effort involved. For professional services firms this means higher risk and the need for new pricing models. Key levers are adopting a superior bidding process and establishing tighter controls throughout delivery to identify, manage, and mitigate potential deviations from the plan.

The emergence of digital talent networks has made new business models possible by identifying, classifying, and attracting talent on an as-needed basis outside the boundaries of a firm. Firms can then integrate that talent into one team based on powerful virtual learning and collaboration platforms.

Professional services firms are realizing that they have valuable expertise and content that can benefit their customers beyond the typical face-to-face engagement model. Innovative services firms continue to productize their service lines, create knowledge “vaults,” and monetize their institutional expertise.

SAP S/4HANA® Cloud:
Cloud ERP for Every Business Need

SAP S/4HANA® Cloud can help you establish consistent leadership for the top line, the bottom line, and the green line.

  • Benefits for your top line: Consistently grow with new digital business models and fully automated processes.
  • Benefits for your bottom line: Consistently outperform with instant intelligence and actionable insights.
  • Benefits for your green line: Consistently elevate sustainability standards with new transparency.
Learn more

Example: Enabling outcome-based engagements

Clients are demanding new approaches based on tailored outcomes. These models transfer much of the project risk from the client to the service provider and require a more sophisticated pricing model based on a clear definition of outcomes and an assessment of value creation. SAP® solutions provide the modern capabilities needed in three key areas:

Current practice

Bids are created from scratch with manual, bottom-up estimates and multiple iterations, resulting in costly, inaccurate, and noncompetitive bids.

Next practice

Accurate, winning bids are created faster through the intelligent reuse of previous bids and estimates from previously completed projects.

Capabilities enabled

  • Ability to reuse previous bids to save time and effort
  • Detailed analysis and insights from previous projects
  • Automated project setup using agreed-on bid structure, quantities, and rates

Current practice

Traditional delivery management is often manual, disconnected, fragmented, and inefficient, leading to compromised outcomes and reduced project profitability.

Next practice

Profitable engagements and predictable outcomes are delivered through intelligent and proactive delivery management that is integrated, traceable, and predictable.

Capabilities enabled

  • Integrated project management tools
  • Activity-based time recording for real-time project management and accurate billing
  • Monitoring of project progress for on-time and on-budget delivery

Current practice

Manual billing and accounts receivable management processes are resource-intensive and error-prone, resulting in late, inaccurate billing and poor financial visibility and control.

Next practice

Project performance is improved and management costs are reduced through automated processes and integrated billing that support multiple business models.

Capabilities enabled

  • Highly automated project accounting, work-in-progress management, and simplified revenue recognition processing
  • Flexible and timely billing process for outcome-based services
  • Automated line-item matching to enhance accounts receivables

Outcomes

10%

higher win rate in sales pursuits2

1%

increase in resource utilization with large impact on overall firm profitability2

RISE with SAP: Driving Business Innovation Together

Every enterprise needs to develop new business models to prevent being disrupted, gain efficiencies in fund innovation, and transform mission-critical systems without business risk. The RISE with SAP offering is the solution.

RISE with SAP is a comprehensive package with:

  • Cloud ERP for every business need
  • Industry next practices and extensibility
  • Analytics and business process intelligence
  • Outcome-driven services from SAP and partners

Built to fit your needs

The RISE with SAP offering is designed to support your business needs – for your industry, region, and regulatory requirements. SAP takes over responsibility for the holistic service-level agreement, cloud operations, and technical support. It includes:

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Cloud ERP
SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Business process intelligence
Business process intelligence starter pack for RISE with SAP

Business platform and analytics
SAP Business Technology Platform (credits for CPEA)

Business networks
SAP Business Network Starter Pack

Outcome-driven services and tools
from partners

How Customers Are Achieving Value from SAP Solutions

Nagarro ES

Discover how consultants at IT services company Nagarro ES GmbH are now able to spend more time with customers as a result of implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Watch the video

Delaware Consulting

Using SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Delaware Consulting CV’s global tax and compliance solution integrates with its ERP system across the entire organization.

Watch the video

Learn More About Intelligent ERP From SAP

www.sap.com/products/s4hana-erp.html
www.sap.com/india/industries/professional-services.html

Sources

  1. James Manyika, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Richard Dobbs, Peter Bisson, and Alex Marrs, "Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy," McKinsey Global Institute, May 2013
  2. Benefits are based on the results from early adopters of SAP S/4HANA or are conservative outside-in estimates of the benefits of moving from a traditional ERP system to SAP S/4HANA enhanced with line-of-business and cloud capabilities.