HarmonyPSA, a Professional Services Automation product, is sold to companies that primarily make money by selling their employees’ time. In order to address this problem fully, Harmony delivers a holistic business management platform that underpins your business from lead to cash, covering your entire business lifecycle.
While the key objective of professional services companies is always to leverage their expertise in a range of topics to the benefit of their customers, the manner in which this service is contracted and delivered varies dramatically across a range of company types, industries and operating models.
A full service PSA solution like Harmony therefore has to be able to model multiple complex billing contract types AND support the tracking of effort to deliver those services, whether through contract or project management. This is underpinned by a strong service desk offering able to support both incident and job management paradigms.
This is the key differentiator Harmony delivers. Its product and contract-centric architecture allows you to develop (essentially) unlimited professional services offerings, while ensuring and maintaining clear views of delivery and profitability.
To help you navigate the jargon and terminology that various professional service automation offering use, we have developed a series of solutions pages by business type definition. These pages highlight the benefits of Harmony‘s functionality as it relates to the needs of each type.
The definitions below will help you identify which solution page is the best fit for you company.
In doing this, we acknowledge that many businesses, in particular in the technology services space, offer a range of services that cover more than one of these type definitions.
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Cloud Solution Providers |
The emergence of cloud computing has driven the development of specialist companies to advise, design, deliver and maintain cloud computing environments for SMEs. In many ways, these companies are the natural evolution from the old managed services provider model |
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Software Product Vendors |
Companies that used to be called ISVs (independent software vendors). These companies sell business software along with implementation and support services |
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Software Development Consultants |
Firms that produce bespoke software solutions, often as a result of technical consulting assignments. ERP implementation and business performance consultants sit in this category. While much of their revenue is pure consulting services, they will also deliver, license and support software and integration solutions |
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Managed Services Providers |
The industry that began in the 1980s supporting the computing needs of SMEs continues to evolve in response to cloud computing, increasing commoditisation of computing devices and cyber security threats. Differentiation is key to survival in this competitive space |
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General Consulting Practices |
A wide range of firms simply sell expertise to many specialist industries and the government. Hard to define as a sector, they nevertheless have specific needs that range far beyond simple timesheet to billing software |
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Specialist Certification Consultants |
Increasing regulation and globalisation has driven the growth in companies that specialise in assisting manufacturers to obtain certification for their product in domestic and overseas markets. The PSA market has been slow to recognise the niche needs of these businesses |
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Cybersecurity Consultants |
While cybersecurity used to be the remit of MSPs, the increasing sophistication of attacks makes successful defence so specialised that it now forms a major and growing sector in its own right |
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Planning and Environmental Consultants |
The threat to humanity from pollution and climate change has given rise to a growing consulting niche in companies specialising in reviews, reports, inspections and solutions design aimed at tackling these threats |
This is by no means an exhaustive list of professional services business types. However, it hopefully provides enough context for you to align your needs as a business with the range of functionality Harmony offers.
Depending on which type of professional services company you operate, the functionality you need can vary significantly. To help you assess Harmony vs other solutions on the market, we have created a solutions grid to help you focus your review and selection process. This is colour coded by functional area of the solution illustrating the significance to each type of business.
The colour key has the following meaning:
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These areas that allow you to create significant service differentiation. They are the ones you will tailor specifically to your needs and so demand more investigation when deciding which solution to purchase |
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| Functionality that you will make extensive use of and so correct configuration and matching to your processes is key to making the most of your PSA tool. You need to ensure that these areas are workable and fully suit you needs | |
| Areas that are less important, tertiary in nature to your business where any missing functionality can probably be worked around without major loss of productivity | |
| Areas that you will probably not need given the scope and purpose of your business |
| Cloud Solutions Providers | Software Product Vendors | Software Development Consultants | Managed Services Providers | General Consulting Practices | Specialist Certification Consultants | Cybersecurity Consultants | Planning and Environmental Consultants | |
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| Customisable Usability Features | ||||||||
| Lead and Opportunity | ||||||||
| Quote and Order Management | ||||||||
| Contract Management | ||||||||
| Service Desk | ||||||||
| Job Management (Service Desk) | ||||||||
| Asset Management | ||||||||
| Project Management | ||||||||
| Resource Management | ||||||||
| Procurement Management | ||||||||
| Time and Expenses | ||||||||
| Invoicing and Payments | ||||||||
| Balance Sheet Accounting |
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