Successful Enterprise Service Delivery in a Fixed-Fee World

Background

Your projects are structured, staffed and delivered differently now. Time-and-materials proposals and lengthy SOWs have evolved to compete with the simplicity and speed of fixed-fee business. However, a fixed-fee model will only benefit your embedded services organization (ESO) if you can avoid costly overages and unpredicted expenses to deliver on outcomes for your customers. In order to maintain profitability while delivering a fixed-fee pricing model for your services engagements, you need a better way to get comprehensive visibility into every project, allocate resources efficiency and forecast capacity against expected demand. In summary, you need a project management solution that can ensure you are delivering projects on time to bill the same amount and remain in the black.

Features

• A Skills Database:
  • Staffing must use a single, central skills database - not one in opaque silos or on disparate spreadsheets.
• Optimized Resource Utilization
  • You can't protect margins when you've got little-to-no transparency for up-to-the-minute utilization.
• Real-Time Status:
  • You can't adapt to innovative project entries to support business strategy or ensure timely talent recruitment without accurate status reporting.
• Mobile T&E:
  • Projects get put on the back burner until you can command a better, bigger picture for your resources and which skills match your needs for new opportunities.

Protect Your Profit Goals by Capturing ESO Data in One Place

Under the fixed-fee model, and while using KeyedIn, you will be able to identify which projects allow you to deliver on-time and to-spec and deliver repeatable success for customers. Ensure your services projects are more predictable and successful so you can estimate and deliver with minimal variance to confidently transition to a fixed bid pricing model. Create templated implementations to become more predictable, reduce variance, and increase profitability. Aligning to fixed fee, outcomes-based deliverables and timelines allows better alignment between work teams and customers. You can share dashboards with clients and vendors to better communicate and collaborate.

• Knowledge Management:
  • Use KeyedIn Projects automation to create a consistent way to measure the profitability/performance of your former and current projects. Generate reports to make fixed-fee projects more effective. Align visibly and consistently with customer expectations more of the time with collaborative dashboards.
• New, Fixed-Fee Contract Structure
  • A skills database in KeyedIn lets you build stakeholder trust over time with clearly defined scope and deliverables that are cost-effective per billable hour. They’re easy to manage and obtain sign-off on. Internally, you can allocate resources more efficiently, saving time and creating more accurate contracts.

"When the customer is no longer buying time, your interest become directly aligned and it makes all the difference."
Cannon Kuch on moving from hourly billing to fixed-bid

"In professional services, the customer expects a certain amount of success or they won't renew. But you also have to make a profit. KeyedIn has helped us do both."
Cannon Kuch
VP of Professional Services, Ivanti Software

To download the datasheet, click here.