Unless you’re working for the glory (or in the public sector), every business owner knows that being profitable is the sine qua non for longevity… Even more than that, boosting profitability is crucial to stay ‘in the game’ in a growing market.
Intentions are good, but having a strategy to reach your goal is better.
So how do you improve the profitability of your consulting agency or ESN?
Here are 9 daily tips to put into practice:
Track the time spent by your employees.
We know it sounds obvious, but just in case, here’s a link to our previous article on how to effectively track your projects by time spent.
Measure the time spent on pre-sales.
Sometimes, pre-sales can be a bit of a catch-all where you put everything that doesn’t quite fit elsewhere. Or the competition where you end up spending €30K to win €10K… By the way, do you know how much your last pre-sale cost?
Create a profitability dashboard by client.
In a project, it’s normal to win or lose (ideally as little as possible), but if it becomes a consistent pattern across projects, it might be time to part ways with that client! Furious helps you see clearly so you can focus your efforts where it’s profitable!
Offer bonuses for project profitability.
If you involve your team in tracking these indicators, you’ll quickly see a healthy challenge to improve, and it’ll be a win-win for everyone! With Furious, it’s easy and even fun—give it a try!
Hold regular project debrief meetings.
Gather all project participants at the end of each unprofitable project. It’s important to pause and allow everyone to share their perspective on why the profitability was affected.
Allocate project expenses accurately.
Ask yourself: are you able to have a clear cost breakdown to assign expenses to each project? With an activity management tool like Furious, you can allocate expenses to multiple projects with a single click. Very handy for managing a freelancer working on 4 or 5 projects, for example!
Analyze projected profitability.
Too often (when it’s even done), you only find out if you made money at the end of a project. It’s useful for project historians but not for decision-making. Knowing the net profitability of a project in advance, accounting for factors like production costs or a potentially costly ERP migration, makes all the difference!
Furious lets you clearly view both projected gross and net profitability right from the quote stage, ultimately allowing you to see your company’s profitability too.
Standardize processes for your most common offerings.
In other words: do you have an efficient process for the projects you sell the most? For example, if you regularly sell press releases or landing pages, do you have a process that ensures that no matter who works on it, it takes the same amount of time? This is a must-have that will boost your profitability!
Furious helps its clients optimize and automate processes, effectively structuring all project phases.
Structure your management.
To ensure regular profitability checks are conducted, ideally on a weekly basis.
The goal is to quickly stop or reframe projects that are off course. Furious acts as the virtual assistant for managers, automatically alerting your team of potential project risks well in advance. Thanks to the forecasting engine, you’ll avoid the “Why isn’t my project profitable even though I’m giving it my all?” dilemma.
In short, you get it: no wind is favorable to those who don’t know where they’re going. Furious is your control tower that allows you to steer your production and profitability easily and proactively.
No more excuses not to boost your profits next year! 😉
