Service Operations (or ServOps for short) is a new way to manage all of your client work in one place. It gives service companies — be it Digital Agencies, IT Consultants, or Architects — a central hub to run their entire operations including sales, projects, requests, ongoing success, and billing.
By combining cloud systems and automation, ServOps platforms (like Accelo) can answer “what happened today?”
Is this client partnership profitable?
Is my team fully utilized and doing good work?
Did the client email us back so we don’t miss our deadline?
These questions are critical to the success of professional service businesses where client relationships drive growth and profit.
Running a Service Business
Because no two clients are the same, service businesses have vastly different relationships with, and provide unique solutions to, each of their clients. With so much variability between clients, service business have found that designing a standard process is essential to delivering on expectations and ensuring profitability. But without a system, the opposing forces between bespoke services and streamlined operations can pull a business apart, even with the best efforts and hard work of individuals on the team.
That’s why ServOps exists — to provide a flexible, intelligent system that can mold to the varying business needs along the client journey. It captures client and team communication across all touchpoints and creates a shared workspace to lay down plans and expectations so that everyone is aligned on what needs to be done.
Additionally, professional service businesses must deliver quality work to different clients all while constrained by time, cost, and scope. Schedules and priorities shift constantly. Budgets often depend on how the project team is working with each other and the client. Scope can be hard to define with custom work because teams may not understand the solution well into the project.
ServOps creates a safety net of automation and notifications around those constraints so the team can focus on doing the work they love rather than constantly worry about time, costs, or scope on complex client work and requests.
What the new, Digital Service Business looks like
Service business are tackling more complex problems with more complex, automated, and cloud-based tools.
In the architecture field, clients, citizens, and city boards are demanding wholistic buildings that integrate energy best practices with a better occupant experience. So firms are using digital tools like Building Information Modeling, Grasshopper, and Virtual Reality to build the dwellings of the future.
Likewise, the Internet has made it possible for industries such as hospitality to connect with their guests across multiple channels, reserve a place online, check-in, and stay connected through and after their stay. Digital technology studios are using Amazon Web Services, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, eCommerce platforms, marketing automation, and SMS technology to design these new services and guest experiences.
The tools of the professional trade — like Grasshopper and Amazon Web Services —are getting more complex, faster, and better at solving problems by using cloud and automation.
Your service business tech stack.
Recently, the tools of the business that help next-gen digital service firms run their business are getting smarter and faster too. In sales and marketing, Hubspot and Salesforce have used automation and cloud technologies to drive client growth. Likewise, in accounting, Xero and Quickbooks Online have made it easier to ensure that there’s cashflow to make payroll next month.
The slowest area to adopt the new way of running a service business is services and operations: where the promises of marketing are made a reality through doing client work. And where your business can make or break relationships and profit.
And this is why we built Accelo.
It came out of our own tools of the business needs as a modern, digital service business, and now we’re sharing it with the rest of you to run a better business and to finally answer the simple (but challenging) questions like what happened today?
Written for and originally posted onAccelo's Blog