News

An independent research firm named TOP Step Consulting in the elite top 10 group of Best-of-the-Best Professional Services organizations

South Riding, VA – March 15, 2013

TOP Step Consulting, the leading provider of professional services business operations efficiency solutions, has been recognized as one of the top providers of professional services worldwide, in a benchmark survey conducted by independent research firm Service Performance Insight (SPI).

In its 2013 Professional Service Maturity™ Benchmark report, SPI Research published findings based on an analysis of 234 participating service organizations. Of those TOP Step Consulting ranked in the top 5% by significantly outperforming the benchmark average in five service performance dimensions: Leadership, Client Relationships, Human Capital Alignment, Service Execution and Finance and Operations.

TOP Step Consulting President and CEO Jodi Cicci says “This benchmark report provides a great value to professional services organizations in the technology sector who are looking to understand what their peers are doing and how to improve. The information provided in the report is audited by SPI research and supported by major industry players such as Microsoft, SAP, and NetSuite.”

“We are thrilled to be recognized as a top performer again in the 2013 report”, says Cicci. “We have a simple philosophy focused on delivering exceptional service. Our customers are other professional services organizations who are looking to improve their business efficiency and profitability, so it is vital that we are seen as an expert and leader in our field. The benchmarking process and report findings validate what we are doing right and help us identify areas of improvement.”

The Top 10 firms outperformed their peers and the benchmark average with significantly higher profit, year over year revenue growth, more satisfied clients, and more projects delivered on time.

Best-of-the-Best PSO Comparison

For the past four years, Service Performance Insight has conducted in-depth analysis of the top 5% of PS Maturity benchmark participants to uncover the reasons for their superlative performance. Each year, the top 5% have been named the “Best-of-the-Best” based on superior PS Maturity™ benchmark scores.

About TOP Step Consulting
TOP Step Consulting improves business efficiency and productivity for Professional Services businesses. TOP Step Consulting is a leading expert in professional services automation with extensive experience in PS business operations specializing in complex global operations. They provide advisory, implementation and outsourced administration services to world-class professional services organizations of all sizes. Their goal is to streamline operations, helping clients achieve their profitability goals so they can focus on growing their business.

SuiteWorld 2013 is set to be the largest ever gathering of NetSuite Customers, Partners and Developers

South Riding, VA – March 08, 2013

TOP Step Consulting announced that it will be a Gold sponsor at NetSuite’s SuiteWorld 2013. The conference will be held at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California, May 13–16. TOP Step Consulting will be in booth 608 in the Expo.

TOP Step Consulting will present the benefits of integrating NetSuite OpenAir with NetSuite and ERP. They will also be offering one to one sessions where customers can get advice on how they can advance their usage of the OpenAir system. “Throughout the conference, we will be showcasing how-to tips and best practices, helping OpenAir users connect with each other, and sharing with customers and our partners where to go for educational information enabling them to take advantage of system capabilities to meet their business goals” says Jodi Cicci, President and CEO of Top Step Consulting.

SuiteWorld 2013 will bring together NetSuite solution providers, ISV partners and representatives of the more than 16,000 companies and subsidiaries using the NetSuite cloud business management suite. This year’s conference features 200 dedicated and interactive sessions—twice as many as SuiteWorld 2012—over an expanded lineup of 15 tracks to offer attendees even more opportunities to learn best practices and real-world customer success stories and unleash the transformative power of cloud computing for game-changing innovation and business growth. SuiteWorld provides cloud innovators with the opportunity to learn from experts and their peers, share insights, network face-to-face and contribute to the global growth of cloud ERP.

“We are proud to be a gold sponsor again this year. It is a great opportunity to network, learn, and share information across the community and interact face-to-face with our customers. SuiteWorld provides the venue for several intense days where we can come together to share experiences and grow a stronger community”. says Cicci.

For registration and additional details, please visit http://www.netsuite.com/suiteworld. To join the SuiteWorld conversation on Twitter, please use #NSW13.

The fast growing professional services consulting company strengthens resources to meet demand for their expertise in delivering professional services automation solutions.

South Riding, VA – February 28, 2013

TOP Step Consulting announced today that Gwyn Reich has joined the company to further develop their growing portfolio of national and global customers. Gwyn Reich comes with a wealth of experience within the Industry, having spent the last 20 years in progressive roles in technology enterprises spanning all areas of business from Professional Services, Sales and Marketing, Finance, Human Resources and Business Operations. Most recently, Gwyn was the Director of Worldwide Professional Services Operations for Avid Technology headquartered in Massachusetts and was responsible for the development, implementation and adoption of Avid’s Professional Services Automation platform, OpenAir by NetSuite. Joining TOP Step Consulting, a young and rapidly growing company, will continue her success.

Gwyn joins TOP Step Consulting as Director Business Development to contribute to TOP Step Consulting’s recent success providing professional services automation consulting and implementation services to many of the top companies both in the United States as well as globally. Gwyn comments, “The opportunity to join TOP Step Consulting and work with such a talented group of professionals is so exciting! I am thrilled to have found a role that can have an impact across many organizations in their pursuit of business operations excellence.”

Jodi Cicci, President and CEO of TOP Step Consulting said “Gwyn’s wealth of experience and industry knowledge has already made her a key addition to the TOP Step Consulting family. We view her appointment as a sign of our commitment to being the leading consulting company in our industry. The increasing demand from our customers led us to look for an addition to our team who brings real world experience in growing and managing a services based business and just as importantly one who will fit in with our commitment to quality and exceptional service. It is very fortunate that we were able to find someone of Gwyn’s caliber to fulfill this role. I’m confident that Gwyn will play a key role in providing and implementing high quality solutions for our clients.”

About TOP Step Consulting
TOP Step Consulting improves business efficiency and productivity for Professional Services business operations. TOP Step Consulting is a leading expert in professional services automation with extensive experience in PS business operations specializing in complex global operations. They provide advisory, implementation and outsourced administration services to world-class professional services organizations of all sizes. Their goal is to streamline operations, helping clients achieve their profitability goals so they can focus on growing their business. To learn more please visit http://www.topstepconsulting.com

An independent research firm has named TOP Step Consulting the “Best-of-the-Best” for a third consecutive year. According to the 2012 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark TOP Step Consulting outperformed their peers by excelling in 5 service performance dimensions.

South Riding, VA – April 04, 2012
TOP in the company’s name means ‘Tools, Operations, and Process’. It is now taking on a new dimension as being known as a ‘top’ performer.

TOP Step Consulting, the leading provider of professional services business efficiency solutions, has been recognized as the top ranking professional services provider nationwide, in a benchmark survey conducted by independent research firm Service Performance Insight (SPI).

According to Service Performance Insight’s “The 2012 Professional Services Maturity™ Benchmark” out of 216 participating organizations, eleven firms (5%) significantly outperformed the benchmark average by excelling in all five service performance dimensions – Leadership, Client Relationships, Human Capital Alignment, Service Execution and Finance and Operations.

SPI identified in their research the Best-of-the-Best PSO Comparison has the top 11 firms outperforming their peers and the benchmark average with double the net profit and year over year revenue growth.

For the past three years, Service Performance Insight has conducted in-depth analysis of the top 5% of PS Maturity benchmark participants to uncover the reasons for their superlative performance. Each year, the top 5% have been named the “Best-of-the-Best” after a careful audit of their survey responses.

TOP Step Consulting is not only one of the 5%, but also ranked #1 among the service organizations that distinguish themselves as the ‘Best of the Best’. This is the third consecutive year that TOP Step Consulting has been recognized in this elite group by SPI Research.

Jodi Cicci, President and CEO of TOP Step Consulting LLC, is thrilled to have achieved the #1 ranking position as a top performer. “We worked very hard this past year to continue toward improving how we are doing our business and the SPI Research 2012 Professional Services Maturity Model Benchmark results proves we have been focusing on the right things. Our primary goal is to deliver exceptional service” says Cicci. “We believe in today’s competitive and still challenging economic climate, delivering exceptional service is the most important factor. If you are able to deliver your service with the ‘best of the best’ attitude, everything else falls into place.“

The 2012 PS Maturity Model Benchmark provides prescriptive advice so organizations can pinpoint current levels of maturity and visualize the steps required to advance to the next level. Service Performance Insight (SPI) Research first introduced the ‘New Professional Services Maturity Model’ benchmark report in January 2008. Since that time more than 5,000 PS organizations have adopted it to chart their course to service excellence:

• Analysis derived from 216 Professional Service Organizations
• Five year trend analysis for 177 key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Base and variable compensation for 11 job titles
• Eight PS vertical markets: Advertising/Marketing, Architecture/Engineering, IT Consulting, Management Consulting, PS within Hardware, PS within SaaS and Software companies
• Detailed income statements

About TOP Step Consulting
TOP Step Consulting improves business efficiency and productivity for Professional Services businesses. TOP Step Consulting is a leading expert in professional services automation with extensive experience in PS business operations specializing in complex global operations. They provide advisory, implementation and outsourced administration services to world-class professional services organizations of all sizes. Their goal is to streamline operations, helping clients achieve their profitability goals so they can focus on growing their business.

March 7, 2012 – “Cetan” is the Native-American word for ‘hawk’ and embodies the thought and spirit of speed, dedication, and vision. Cetan Corp, a Native American and Veteran owned small business, was founded upon the same concepts and its swift rise to prominence as an award winning IT software and solutions provider has come through building its business relationships and by the visionary foresight of Honesty, Accountability, Wisdom, and Knowledge.

Cetan Corp’s keys to success are:

• Envision who you want to be in 10 years – then act accordingly
• Create a culture where accountability and reward is shared
• Invest in your most valuable resource – your people
• Be trust worthy and deliver on your promise
• Develop meaningful business partner relationships

Read the full Case Study to learn more about how they have achieved tremendous success and a position in the 2011 Inc. 500 list.

December 16, 2011 — When they crossed the sixtieth client mark at the beginning of 2011, they were named one of the “Top Twelve” service organizations that distinguished themselves as the “Best of the Best” by SPI Research. It was the second straight year they had been included in this elite group. But now, only ten months later, they are serving more than one hundred clients, and bringing onboard two new Senior Business Consultants, Robin Garrison and Stephanie Picardi. Not bad for a company that has only been in operation for four years. Read the full press release.

July 18, 2011 – Progress Software Corporation is a global enterprise software company that enables organizations to achieve higher levels of business performance by improving operational responsiveness. Operational responsiveness is the ability of business processes and systems to respond to changing business conditions and customer interactions as they occur. TOP Step Consulting partnered with Progress to implement the baseline NetSuite OpenAir system, then continued on to 3 additional projects to align standards and processes globally, including:

• Expansion of the initial Professional Services Automation project to align global processes and reflect these in the OpenAir system. The development of a consistent standard would enable the visibility needed to manage the growing operations. Challenging issues included resource management, revenue recognition, organizational responsibilities, and increasing system adoption.
• Implementation of a global Project Management Office (PMO) methodology. This focused not only on consistent usage of PM methods, tools and templates, and knowledge management, but also on the processes for setting up, tracking and monitoring projects within the new PSA system.
• Implementation of a Service Definition Framework (SDF) to define service offerings enabling consistency, repeatability, and high-quality delivery. A framework was needed for defining and developing a service offering. The core offering that was developed would later be a part of the Progress RPM™ solution.

Read the full Case Study

TOP Step Consulting adds new employee in response to demand for business operations and automation services

June 20, 2011 – For a fourth consecutive year, TOP Step Consulting has seen an increase in demand for its services by assisting these companies with Professional Services Automation services and expertise in improving business operations. TOP Step helps other project based service providers streamline their business operations, better manage their projects, resources, and financial health of their organization. With the addition of Glenn Gargan, the TOP Step Consulting practice will improve their capacity to meet this demand. Read more…

TOP Step Consulting was named one of the “Top Twelve” service organizations that distinguished themselves as the “Best of the Best”. This is the second consecutive year that TOP Step Consulting has been recognized in this elite group by SPI Research. Read the full press release.

TOP Step Consulting Announces A New Service To Gain Insight Into Business Operations Quickly And More Efficiently

11.02.2010– TOP Step Consulting LLC announced the release of the Reporting Foundation Package for OpenAir that will provide a quicker more effective approach to creating critical and commonly used OpenAir reports for Professional Services business operations.

TOP Step Consulting provides services to global and industry leading businesses who run their project based business using OpenAir. Their extensive experience has led to the accumulation of a knowledge library for critical and commonly used OpenAir reports which provide information to manage and improve business operations.

The Reporting Foundation Package for OpenAir provides the accumulated knowledge and experience to customers by providing customized setup and user guides for each report within the report library. TOP Step Consulting delivers the report library together with a day of consulting to review the reports, answer questions, and customize the guidebooks to align with the unique operational needs of the business. The library of reports includes Financial Reports, Project Delivery Reports and Resource Management Reports.

By implementing the Report Foundation Package for OpenAir clients can more quickly create and begin using reports and dashboards to get insight into their critical business operations to better manage their businesses. “We are very excited to be providing this new service to our customers. With our new service offering we are now able to offer clients the benefit of our accumulated knowledge to more quickly gain the return on investment of automating their business operations with tools like OpenAir.” says Jodi Cicci, President and CEO of TOP Step. “It’s all about providing greater value to our customers. We are continually reviewing the services we provide to our customers and ways we can pass our experience onto our clients to help them be more successful.”

See online news release here

June 11, 2010 marks the 3 year anniversary for TOP Step Consulting.   “It has been a very exciting 3 years for us.  We have met our targets for growth each year, and have grown our customer base significantly” said Jodi Cicci, CEO and Founder of TOP Step.  “With this new growth we have also expanded our team by bringing in 2 very talented consultants as well as Marketing and Administrative assistance.   This has allowed us to expand our services to be more comprehensive including services for implementing project management offices and now beginning to look at how we are packaging and marketing our services to be of greatest value to our customers”.

South Riding, Virginia, May 26, 2010 (PitchEngine) – From the viewpoint of TOP Step Consulting, the services industry is continuing to show signs of economic improvement.  With the addition of Paul Rees to the TOP Step Consulting team, they have doubled their staff over the last year.   TOP Step Consulting continues to see more and more services based businesses investing in improvements to manage profitability.   TOP Step Consulting is a leading expert in professional services automation with extensive experience in PS business operations specializing in complex national and global operations. They provide advisory, implementation and outsourced administration services to world class professional services organizations of all sizes.  Their goal is to streamline operations, helping clients achieve their profitability goals so they can focus on growing their business.

“We are very excited to have Paul Rees as a part of our team” says Jodi Cicci, CEO of TOP Step Consulting.   “Paul brings with him practical professional services operations experience critical to assessing how PSA tools can be used to meet the specific needs of professional services organizations.  This is critical to the value and level of service we bring to our customers”.

Paul Rees has over nine years of experience in professional services. His experience spans several areas including operations management, financial forecasting, resource management, recruitment and retention, and account management.
Prior to joining TOP Step Consulting, Paul was the Director of Operations at SmartDog Services, an Oracle software services firm based in Austin Texas. While there, he was responsible for all G&A activities and system administration for OpenAir and Salesforce.com.

“I am excited about the opportunity with TOP Step Consulting” says Paul Rees.  “I’ve been in the trenches, and I understand the challenges faced in professional services. I’m looking forward taking what I’ve learned to help others.”

South Riding, VA (PRWEB) March 1, 2010  According to SPI Research’s “The 2010 Professional Services Maturity Model Benchmark” report out of 225 participating organizations, eleven firms significantly outperformed the benchmark average by excelling in all five service performance dimensions – Vision, Finance and Operations, Human Capital Alignment and Client Relationships. The benchmark covers six professional service segments: hardware and networking, software and software as a service, systems integration, managed services, and management consulting.

Jodi Cicci, President and CEO of TOP Step Consulting LLC is thrilled to be listed in the top 11 performers.  Read the full story…

From the viewpoint of TOP Step Consulting, the services industry is showing signs of economic improvement. The expansion of TOP Step Consulting team, with the addition of Casey Conner, is a positive indicator of this growth.  More and more services based businesses are investing in improvements to manage growth and profitability.  TOP Step Consulting is a leading expert in professional services automation with extensive experience in PS business operations specializing in complex global operations.  They provide advisory, implementation and outsourced administration services to world class professional services organizations of all sizes. Their goal is to streamline operations, helping clients achieve their profitability goals so they can focus on growing their business.

“We are very excited to have Casey Conner as a part of our team” says Jodi Cicci, CEO of TOP Step Consulting. “Casey brings with him business consulting skills and background that are important to the quality brand of TOP Step Consulting”.

Casey Conner has nearly 15 years of professional services experience. He holds a Masters in Finance and has developed an expertise in technology strategy development and deployment. Casey has a proven track record of successful IT, project, change, and consulting practice management experience with businesses ranging from Big 4 firms to boutique operations.

“I am excited about the opportunity with TOP Step Consulting” says Casey Conner. “This is both an exciting time and a challenging time for the services industry. The current challenges in both achieving growth and maintaining profit margins are creating an even greater demand for professional services organizations to be efficient and productive. TOP Step Consulting has proven their value in providing sound advice and guidance to services organizations, and I am thrilled about being a part of the team.”