PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION CA Clarity PPM for Professional Services Automation CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION (PSA) HELPS STREAMLINE THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES PROCESS FROM MANAGING OPPORTUNITIES AND DELIVERING ON ENGAGEMENTS TO FACILITATING BILLING. IT PROVIDES YOU A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF ALL PIPELINE OPPORTUNITIES, COUPLED WITH DEEP RESOURCE, ENGAGEMENT AND TIME-TRACKING CAPABILITIES THAT LEAD TO MORE CONTROLLED AND PREDICTABLE DELIVERY. Overview Benefits The CA Advantage Pressured to deliver promptly and efficiently on engagements, servicesoriented organizations are struggling to optimize their operations to meet this demand. Regardless of the enterprise, obstacles to improving service delivery time remain similar a lack of integrated processes that efficiently capture, staff and monitor engagements. By automating the professional services process, CA Clarity PPM for PSA improves your efficiency and responsiveness of servicesoriented organizations, enabling you to improve the quality of delivered services, reduce operational costs, enhance decision making and instill the best practices necessary to maximize profitability. CA Clarity PPM for PSA provides the most complete, integrated and proven PPM solution in the industry today. CA Clarity PPM for PSA offers a real-time view into opportunities, resources and financials that allows you to deliver on service engagements in a controlled and predictable manner.
Inefficient Operational Processes Limit Revenue Many services-oriented organizations struggle to manage business performance due to inefficient processes. These shortcomings have a direct impact on the ability to promptly react to issues and manage costs associated with engagements. Some specific challenges facing services-based organizations include: LACK OF PIPELINE VISIBILITY Many enterprises do not have any formalized process to anticipate opportunities, which results in reactive planning. SUBOPTIMAL RESOURCE UTILIZATION Services-oriented organizations rely on their people. Many, however, still wrestle with assigning resources to engagements that do not suit their skill set, which negatively impacts service results and customer satisfaction levels. POOR ENGAGEMENT MANAGEMENT Most lack the tools to help track the performance of their engagements. But without a clear, fact-based understanding of how well they are executing (or not executing), the ability to effectively manage current engagements and ensure timely delivery is severely limited. BURDENSOME TIME TRACKING Timesheet entry is often complex and viewed as a chore, which leads to inaccurate and inconsistent time entry resulting in billing delays. NON-INTEGRATED SYSTEMS Most enterprises deal with multiple systems to track resources, schedules, engagements and timesheets, which require multiple logins and contributes to excessive time spent on non-billable activities. 2 PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION
Automating Professional Services The CA Clarity PPM for PSA solution provides you with real-time visibility and control into every aspect of the professional services lifecycle process improving the overall efficiency and quality of the services delivered. FIGURE A CA Clarity PPM for PSA streamlines the professional services lifecycle process from managing opportunities to managing billing and finances. PROFESSIONAL SERVICES LIFECYCLE PROCESS Opportunity Delivery Billing CA Clarity PPM for PSA Manage Opportunities Manage Portfolio Manage Resources Manage Engagements Manage Timesheets Manage Finances CRM Integration ERP Integration The ability to optimize your operations within each stage of the professional services process is essential to engagement and bottom-line performance. To meet this demand, CA Clarity PPM for PSA supports the following areas: Opportunity Management Delivery Management Billing Management Opportunity Management This capability ensures that services-oriented organizations have visibility into the opportunity pipeline, facilitating more efficient planning. Specifically, CA Clarity PPM for PSA helps you: Capture and evaluate pipeline opportunities that have a high probability of closing Recognize potential capacity or engagement overloads before they occur PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION 3
Delivery Management Finding the right mix of people and skill sets for each project, while making informed, fact-based decisions throughout the lifecycle, helps boost operational efficiency, cut costs and increase the likelihood of engagement success. To that aim, CA Clarity PPM for PSA helps you to: Locate and schedule resources with the appropriate skills and experience for a specific project Leverage best practices through workflows and configurable processes Proactively monitor engagement progress in real-time through portlets and dashboards Effectively communicate, share knowledge, manage documents and resolve issues Billing Management This capability ensures that services-oriented organizations obtain payments more quickly through easy and accurate resource time tracking and full integration with third-party financial applications. CA Clarity PPM for PSA allows you to: Capture billable hours through timesheets that automatically route to designated approvers Support multiple billing and cost rate matrices, plus multiple currencies for defining, processing, invoicing and analyzing transactions Integrate with any ERP system Built-in Functionality for Optimum Performance The CA Clarity PPM for PSA solution is rich with features applicable to every stage within professional services process. Collectively, these functions are designed to improve service delivery time, integrate processes, offer visibility to all team members and efficiently capture, staff and monitor engagements. These tools and capabilities include: Evaluate Pipeline Opportunities Optimize Resource Planning Effectively Staff Engagements Increase Completion Rates Extract Real-Time Engagement Data Capture More Billable Time Leverage Best-of-Breed Systems 4 PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION
Evaluate Pipeline Opportunities CA Clarity PPM for PSA provides real-time visibility into what the work pipeline looks like, allowing you to properly plan for potential opportunities. This functionality is critical in preparing strategic sourcing plans that leverage the expertise of full-time employees and, when necessary, augment it with contract resources to obtain the highest margins for opportunities most likely to close. FIGURE B Visibility into all pipeline opportunities enables organizations to improve longterm resource planning. PIPELINE VISIBILITY PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION 5
Optimize Resource Planning Proper resource management begins with understanding current resource utilizations and available skills at the organizational level. CA Clarity PPM for PSA consolidates all engagements into a single repository, so to help, services-oriented organizations determine if current and planned resources are adequate for achieving engagement objectives. In addition, you can quickly identify resource surpluses or shortages to formulate redistribution plans that maximize utilization and minimize bench time. FIGURE C Resource capacity planning ensures that the right resources are available for current and future engagements. RESOURCE CAPACITY PLANNING 6 PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION
Effectively Staff Engagements CA Clarity PPM for PSA provides the tools to enhance the staffing process. Organizations can perform a quick skills and availability search, and drill down to specific information about each person, including an individual s previous engagement experience. With instant visibility into the resource pool, you can reduce the time to find available, qualified personnel and staff engagement teams. FIGURE D Powerful and flexible search capabilities enable managers to quickly locate resources with the appropriate skills and availability. RESOURCE SEARCH PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION 7
Increase Completion Rates The workflow capabilities of CA Clarity PPM for PSA automate many tasks, including timesheet notifications and approvals, action item assignments and resource allocations, as well as document routing and approval. Using the graphical workflow status indicator, you can easily track where an item is in the process, remove bottlenecks and reduce service delivery times for faster completion rates. In addition, you can easily create custom workflows and processes to further automate core business functions and enforce internal best practices. FIGURE E Powerful process and workflow management tools automate existing organization best practices. BEST PRACTICES WORKFLOW PO/SOW Signed Business Process Design Software Implementation Manage Opportunity T&M Create Opportunity Fixed Bid Review by Delivery Manager Approved Resource Manager Review Best Practices Consulting Engagement Website Design 8 PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION
Extract Real-Time Engagement Data CA Clarity PPM for PSA provides portlets and dashboards that provide engagement team members with an at-a-glance view of each service engagement. With it, stakeholders have access to real-time data into initiative status, risks, issues, key deliverables and milestones to aid them in more timely decision making and action plans. In addition, you can easily create environments, so teams can search for information in one location, instead of searching through multiple sources or systems. Using the collaboration services of CA Clarity PPM for PSA, users can establish discussion threads to post questions or tap into existing organizational knowledge to locate forms, templates, best practices and reports. The result is a reduction in non-billable work, while still preserving high margins. FIGURE F Configurable dashboards provide the ability to track all engagements and improve management efficiency. ENGAGEMENT MONITORING PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION 9
Capture More Billable Time CA Clarity PPM for PSA provides a simple and quick means for professional services staff to enter their billable time and detailed notes for each designated task. Once the timesheet is submitted, managers with time approval rights can review it for accuracy before approving it. By automating this process, you reduce missed billing opportunities while shortening invoice cycle time. FIGURE G Easy to use timesheets helps eliminate leaked billable time. TIME TRACKING Leverage Best-of-Breed Systems CA Clarity PPM for PSA includes open standards-based interfaces to enable professional services organizations the ability to leverage investments in existing applications. Using CA Clarity PPM APIs, critical information, such as time tracking, can be easily exchanged with financial applications to eliminate double entry and reduce billing lags. 10 PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION
Optimize Service Delivery to Maximize Profitability By streamlining and automating the professional services process, CA Clarity PPM for PSA improves the efficiency and responsiveness of services-oriented organizations. This delivers a variety of high-level benefits including: IMPROVED SERVICES The overall quality of a service-oriented organization boils down to its ability to implement, deliver and properly execute best practices. CA Clarity PPM for PSA increases organizational efficiency and customer satisfaction by infusing and automating these standards and offering you a complete suite of features and functionality applicable to every stage of the professional services lifecycle. OPTIMIZED OPERATIONS CA Clarity PPM for PSA offers you the ability to implement automated best practices in a convenient, fully-integrated system that makes information from every aspect of an engagement tracking, scheduling, staffing and billing easily accessible. ENHANCED DECISION MAKING Real-time data in the form of customized portlets and dashboards generated by CA Clarity PPM for PSA allows you to analyze engagements and make swift and accurate decisions resulting in faster completion rates and higher profit margins. REDUCED OPERATIONAL COSTS CA Clarity PPM for PSA decreases costs and increases profitability through efficiencies within its features set. From anticipating opportunities and proactive planning to facilitate effective staffing engagements and real-time data analysis, these efficiencies help you streamline project completion rates improving the bottom line. The CA Advantage CA offers the most complete, integrated and proven PPM solution in the industry today. With a real-time view into opportunities, resources and financials, organizations can deliver on service engagements in a controlled and predictable manner. CA also has an experienced, global services and support organization to help you realize your rapid value with your CA Clarity PPM deployment. As part of CA s comprehensive Enterprise IT Management (EITM) solution, the CA Clarity PPM for PSA solution provides an enterprise-wide view of governance and management information that is well beyond the traditional project portfolio. CA s overall approach is to optimize the performance, reliability and efficiency of enterprise IT environments by tightly integrating the control and management of distinct functions, such as storage and security and operations and service management. This EITM vision provides the foundation for developing a truly business-centric IT organization. PRODUCT BRIEF: CA CLARITY PPM FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION 11
Next Steps In the struggle for service-oriented organizations to meet service delivery expectations and demands, many are searching for an easily implemented solution that offers automated best practices, a comprehensive view of all pipeline opportunities and deep resource, engagement and time tracking capabilities. The CA Clarity PPM for PSA solution provides that functionality and helps you better control and predict delivery of services. Take a look at the CA Clarity PPM for PSA solution. It s the most comprehensive solution for managing the opportunities, resources and financials of service engagements. For more information on how the CA Clarity PPM for PSA solution can help with virtually every aspect of the professional services process, visit us at ca.com/solutions. To learn more, and see how CA software solutions enable other organizations to unify and simplify IT management for better business results, visit ca.com/customers. Copyright 2008 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document As Is without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised of the possibility of such damages. 33009 Learn more about how CA can help you transform your business at ca.com