Mobility is a must-have strategy for professional services firms. Turns out, always-on-the-go consultants are already at the forefront of mobile device adoption and use. Right now, the technology exists – from really smart smartphones to everywhere Wi-Fi access – to support true mobility in professional services organizations. But how can you make sure that mobile technology brings the greatest value to your firm?
Criteria for Applying Mobility For Professional Services
With so many use case possibilities, you’ll want to quickly narrow in on those that will drive the biggest impact and value. You need to look for opportunities to turn unproductive time, such as downtime at an airport, into productive time, such as completing an expense report. You also want to look for opportunities to increase productivity of already productive time.
One way to approach this is to developed some simple guidelines for identifying processes ripe for improvement using mobile applications. First, the workflow must be complex; you won’t get the same level of ROI on a simple process. Second, the process must be time sensitive; one of the greatest strengths of mobile apps is speeding up the time it takes to make a decision. Third, mobile applications can offer significant benefits to processes that involve multiple people. The net? Mobility can speed decision time and accelerate activities in a time-sensitive, complex process that requires information, analysis, or approval from multiple employees.
Taking the above factors into account, let’s review three high-impact use cases in more detail.
Mobility for Executives
Partners and executives always need to be on top of the business and to accelerate time to action. With mobile applications, they can get instant insight – in the form of key performance indicators on revenue, profitability, days sales outstanding, and resource utilization – into all areas of the business. They can review sales, the business development pipeline, and the status on project and engagement delivery. Mobile features give executives the ability to make more educated decisions based on real-time data and analytic functionality, which ultimately speed response time.
Mobility for Sales and Business Development
With key information at their fingertips, your sales and business development executives can use mobile applications to accelerate sales cycles and decisions. They need access to all necessary information – such as client and contact information, bids and proposals, and project information – to better manage opportunities and execute deals. Consider these valuable mobile use cases for sales and business development:
- Lead management
- Opportunity management
- Collateral access
- Bid approval routing
- “Noncustomer conflict” checks for audit companies
Mobility for Project and Engagement Delivery
Project managers and other support team members need rapid access to project information, such as tasks, schedules, availability, and contact information. For example, the ability to perform ad hoc searches for subject matter experts accelerates the speed with which a resource can be identified and staffed on a project. Mobile applications can also enable collaboration with project peers and clients. Project teams can capture project delivery status – such as task completion, project issues, time sheets, and travel expenses – to enable up-to-the-minute and more accurate project tracking and profitability analysis. High-impact mobile use cases for service delivery include:
- Project staffing and verification of availability
- Time recording
- Project status reporting
- Activity management and issue resolution
- Assignment of tasks to and feedback from field service
- Collaboration on projects across company boundaries
The Bottom Line
Understanding where to apply mobility – to time-sensitive, complex processes requiring input from multiple people – can help ensure maximum impact and effectiveness and speed ROI of enterprise mobility initiatives.
What mobile use case is driving value and impact in your Professional Services firm?
