Maturing Professional Services: Selling Services

Professional Services is broken down into 6 key components: Time Management, Project Management, Selling Services, Resource Management, Skills Management and Services Billing. In this blog, we address the maturity curve of Selling Services. The maturity curve consists of: Initial, Repeatable, Controlled, Optimized, and Continuous Improvement. Selling Services is a critical component of services organizations whether your services packages are Fixed Fee, T&E, Milestone or hybrid structures. We provide both process and Certinia PSA product focus areas for identification and improvement. Let’s dive right in!

Maturity Level 1: Initial

1. Characteristics: Undefined Sales Process. Focus on Creating Resource demand

2. Primary Output: High Level Resource Demand

3. Process Focus Areas:

   • Forecasting resource demand (roles and hours) on an Opportunity for select projects

   • Establishing visibility for delivery teams to plan for resource demand

   • Creating Projects when Opportunity is won

4. Product Focus Areas:

   • Creating Resource Requests on Opportunity 

   • Reports: Resource Requests from Opportunities

   • Advanced Analytics: Capacity & Demand

   • Create Project from Opportunity at Closure

   • Forecast resource demand in Hours (Opportunity Demand)

Maturity Level 2: Repeatable

1. Characteristics: Sharpening demand & leveraging data for revenue forecasting

2. Primary Output: Services Revenue Forecasting with Opportunities

3. Process Focus Areas:

   • Defined Sales Process (Stage definitions, Probability weightings)

   • Aligning Opportunities with delivery Templates

   • Detailed Resource Requests including RPG, Skills, dates

   • Delivery team soft-booking resources during sales cycle

   • Forecasting demand with accuracy

4. Product Focus Areas:

   • Auto-create Project from Opportunity (from Template) 

   • ‘Hold’ Resource Requests

   • Services Revenue Forecasting

   • Advanced Analytics: Skills Capacity & Demand

Maturity Level 3: Controlled

1. Characteristics: Managing detailed Estimates on Opportunities

2. Primary Output: Analysis of Estimates Financials including predicted Margin

3. Process Focus Areas:

   • Controlled Sales Process

   • Standard estimation methodology with templates to use for Estimating

   • Discounting Methodology

   • Capturing Estimated resources, time, expenses, and margin consistently

   • Estimate Approvals

   • Measure Actual time by service type against Estimates

4. Product Focus Areas:

   • Services Estimator (Additional Purchase)

     • Create Estimates from Templates or from Previous

     • Estimate Products

     • Skills on Role Requests

     • Global Discounting (Estimate-level)

     • Multiple Estimates for variations

     • Estimate Approvals

Maturity Level 4: Optimized

1. Characteristics: Introducing guided scoping & complex pricing calculations

2. Primary Output: Dynamic estimation with full connectivity between Estimate, RRs, Milestones, etc

3. Process Focus Areas:

   • Controlled Process

   • Estimation leveraging Guided Scoping

   • Contingency calculations & management

   • Advanced Discounting methodologies & management 

   • Detailed schedule estimations 

   • Creating Project from Estimate to connect ‘Bid vs Did’ data

4. Product Focus Areas:

   • Services Estimator: 

     • Contingency

     • Hours Breakdown (schedule contouring)

     • Advanced Discounting (line-level)

     • Guided Scoping

     • Integration with Salesforce CPQ 

     • Create Project from Estimate 

     • Collaborative Estimation with SMEs

Maturity Level 5: Continuous Improvement

1. Characteristics: Ongoing Trend Analysis and feedback loop through ‘Bid vs Did’ analysis

2. Primary Output: Ability to engineer positive outcomes through intelligent analysis of historical data

3. Process Focus Areas:

   • Regular analysis of ‘Bid vs Did’

   • Root cause analysis of Project overrun

   • Factoring historical data intro real-time active Estimates

   • Full SOW generated from Estimate

   • Leveraging AI to drive win rates

4. Product Focus Areas:

   • Core Analytics: Estimate Manager

   • Document Generation 

   • AI

We all strive for continuous improvement. However, identifying current and ideal maturity is critical to achieving continuous improvement. Enjoy this blog, check out the other 5 professional services maturity blogs. Ready to dive into your professional services maturity journey? Take the next right step and reach out to our team!