• How can I keep on top of new releases for features that meet my needs?

    Your system administrators know your business and the PSA Tool. They are the best resources to use to review releases of PSA Tool features against your business needs. TOP Step can help you establish a central help desk involving your system administrator, or we handle system administration for you and interact with the vendor on your behalf.

    Release management is a natural system administrator task meant to ensure that you keep your system deployment up to date while benefiting from new features and enhancements.   Find out more about how TOP Step can help you keep up with new releases.

  • How can TOP Step Consulting help make my company more efficient?

    Implementing a Professional Services Automation (PSA) system allows for operational insight by management into everything ranging from detailed, daily activities of your billable resources to quarterly forecasting of backlog. With the flexible reporting features and data capture of your PSA system configured to your business model needs, there is no limit to how you can review your data to make critical business decisions.

    TOP Step’s consultants know your business and have in-depth knowledge of the features of your PSA tool. By combining these two, we can help your business to better leverage your existing PSA software to achieve greater operational efficiency and reporting accuracy and enhanced access to new and expanded features.

    Unsure of how your use of the PSA Tool fits within your organization? TOP Step can walk you through a Business Efficiency Assessment to review all areas of your business model and make recommendations for configuration changes and additional use of your system.

  • How can a PSA Tool or Business Process review make my job easier?

    If you are a department or operations manager, you are keeping an eye on your business’ operational story including staffing needs, utilization, backlog forecasting, sales pipeline, skillset requirements, and so forth. Today you may be getting this information but from a variety of sources: Human Resources, project managers, sales, finance, accounting and others.

    Each of these sources is most likely using their own system.  You then have to make decisions based on disparate, manually compiled data.  A PSA Tool provides a centralized system focused on the specific needs of an operational manager, and enables system and process integration to get the latest information from various departments and systems.  TOP Step can review your business model and system usage and recommend ways to be more efficient.

  • We are using a PSA Tool but think we could use it better — now what?

    PSA Tools are continually evolving systems.  With regular releases, new features and system enhancements are available based on the requests of the end user community and the product roadmap.  Have you limited module usage in your system due to limited availability of features that you need? Now may be the time to review the most recently released features available for your PSA tool.

    A short business process workshop reviewing your business model against unused or limited features and functionality may give you new insight into how to expand use of your PSA tool and replace other systems or possibly integrate to other systems.  Find out more about how TOP Step provides this service.

    Has your company grown? Your initial configuration of your PSA Tool may have included some manual processes that are now becoming cumbersome. A Business Efficiency Workshop will review how you’re using your system and where you can implement additional features or streamline reporting, project management, or invoicing tasks.

  • We need a PSA Tool— now what?

    Making the decision to select, purchase and implement a PSA Tool is no small task. Deployment of the tool leverages the criteria used for system selection along with your full business model and needs. TOP Step recommends you fully prepare for your deployment by focusing on the following areas:

    1. What do you need to get out of the system (reports and operational decisions)? This drives how the system is configured.
    2. What is your project management methodology? If you have not decided on one, deployment isn’t hindered, but project tracking still needs to occur.
    3. Have you coordinated with your finance or business management organization? Their data may have been used prior to the PSA Tool selection for your operational reports,  and it includes specific considerations of accounting practices.

    Obviously, there are many more steps to properly implementing a PSA solution, but the areas above should help you begin.  TOP Step is experienced in PSA Tool deployment matching your business operational needs to system configuration options, processes, reports and training.  Find out more about how TOP Step provides professional guidance for your PSA selection and deployment.

  • What is a PSA tool and why do I need one?

    Are you growing out of tracking your business using spreadsheets and e-mail? A PSA Tool is a scalable solution starting with a simple configuration, which allows for expanding the feature usage as your company grows. The customer base for PSA solutions ranges from small startups (less than 10 billable resources) to large multi-national corporations. All can use the same system, configured to meet their needs, to run their businesses efficiently.

    Are you standardizing your Professional Services methodology? PSA Tools have key project management features to help you build out and complement your methodology, giving you the ability to enforce processes such as timesheet review workflows and project reporting. TOP Step has deep experience and offers best practices in implementing standard project management methodologies using a combination of PSA Tools and operational processes.  Find out how TOP Step Consulting provides solutions to help you with building business efficiency.