Technology Services

In service environments, efficiency is the primary objective. Time (and service) is money. Businesses are challenged with selling an intangible product. Creating strong customer relationships which provide repeat business is a critical success factor in today's competitive services environment. A service considered a commodity by a consumer can be shopped to a competitor. To drive revenue, not only is efficiency critical, but the execution (and the supporting infrastructure) is vital.

Companies need a platform which supports the organization for growth and the ability to achieve efficiency.

One key business issue is the billing cycle. Data required to invoice customers needs to be captured easily and fed directly into the billing system as well as being tied to the appropriate project so that revenues and costs can be properly recognized. If inventory or assets are utilized in the sale of services, any billable parts need to be available so the overall billing cycle time is reduced and profitability can be readily measured.

Another key issue is support. How does an organization track the time spent on an individual customer to satisfy its demands and ensure recurring revenue? Does an organization bill for this service? What customer relationship management tools are in place to log the interactions with each individual customer? These types of questions are addressed by a Microsoft Business Solution.

Among the features available with a Microsoft Business Solution:

• Recurring custom billing cycles based on monthly charges set-up by job and by customer
• Customer relationship management to log on-going interactions
• Inventory used on a project or job integrated for billing purposes
• Fixed assets used on a job can be traced to its base components for costing purposes
• Immediate profitability reporting by job and by customer

The Microsoft platform allows small and medium sized service organizations to assemble a complete, integrated set of leading edge business applications. For more information contact The Rand Group at sales@randgrp.com