Can You Take The Deal? Using Data To Forecast Capacity For New Work
When a new RFP lands in your inbox, your primary thought is, “How do we win this business?” After all, new business is the lifeblood of any growing consulting firm, and there is no growth without new business.
However, the work in that new RFP might include an important risk that needs to be accounted for: Are the right resources available for this work?
Asking your senior team members will usually get you a response like “we’re busy, but we can make it work”. No one wants to be the one to say “no” to a new deal, but “we’ll make it work” is not a plan; it is wishful thinking that can lead to consultant burnout and project failure. When consultants are spread too thin, deadlines slip, quality drops, and margins decrease.
The Risk Of Saying “Yes” To A New Deal
The problem isn’t lack of skills or work ethic; it's a lack of forward visibility, made worse when your firm uses spreadsheets to track timesheets and resource availability. The data in your spreadsheets only tells you what happened in the past, and at best, what is happening this week. There is no connection to future booked work, and nothing that can help you forecast future scenarios. Without a clear view of your future resource availability, you are putting your staff morale, profitability and professional reputation at risk.
Using PSA Software To See The Future
Modern PSA software not only enables your consultants to track their time in a centralized platform, it integrates with your sales pipeline to give you a forward-looking view of your future availability. When you bid on an RFP, you can create a provisional project and instantly see your resource availability if you win the deal, giving you the confidence to move forward with your best pitch, and enabling you to make resource adjustments well ahead of time. If you are short of resources with a specific skill, you can decide, based on accurate data, if it is worth hiring a new resource, shuffling existing resources to meet the demands of the new work, or even declining the RFP because it will hurt your firm’s profitability and reputation if the project fails.
Maximizing Profitability While Minimizing Burnout
In consulting, not all new work is equal – some can actually damage your team’s morale and your firm’s profitability. PSA software like Projectworks enables you to plan your resource allocation with accurate data, ensuring that the work you are bidding on will be profitable and the project will be successful before it starts. You can start your forward-looking resource planning today by signing up for a free trial of Projectworks, or let us demo Projectworks for you.
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Your Best Proposal Content? It's Hiding
Most professional services firms have more good content than they realise. The problem isn't that it doesn't exist, it’s that it lives in different, unconnected places and no one has full visibility over it. When a new RFP lands, you feel the pain immediately. Someone opens the last similar proposal and starts copying from it. Someone else messages a colleague for the right case study. By the time the first draft is circulating, the team has spent their most focused hours on logistics that should have been solved before the bid started.
