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Professional services include a range of different occupations (for example: business. Accountants, management consultants and lawyers); which provide support to businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. People working in professional services provide specialist advice to their clients. This includes things like providing tax advice, supporting a company with accounting or providing business advice. The kinds of services provided mean that the professional services sector helps to improve productivity and growth across the economy. Professional services support businesses of all sizes and in a wide range of industries.

Professional services are critical to the success of the UK economy, representing 15% of UK GDP, 14% of employment and 14% of exports. However; Professional services industry usually deals with a massive competition between service providers; than any other industry types. In order for the professional services companies to survive in long term; focus should be given to below five factors.

Finding their USP

Companies need to find something that sets them apart from their competition. ‘Client service’ is one of the few areas where they need to differentiate and use it as their USP.

Price

There are very few industries where the price is so hidden. Unique time and effort ought to be put into creating different packages for different scenarios and transparent fees must be communicated to the clients, at the beginning..

Information Technology

Information Technology has not been adopted well in Professional Services industry; as in comparison to other industries. At the same time; because of the size and nature of the companies; there are not many professional services industry specific IT solutions around, either.

Marketing

Due to size and nature of the businesses; no dedicated resources are allocated either internally or externally for marketing function/activities on a regular basis.  Marketing is used on a need basis, rather than using it as a business process. Internal resources are usually under staffed or even qualified to manage marketing function.

Selling

Sales is not about finding a customer but also about selling right services, quantity of service and recurrence of such service. It’s about knowing the customer/their requirement well and servicing the customer accordingly. Sales are possibly the toughest challenge that professionals face. To get to the sales stage, the marketing has perhaps worked, the prospective client had made an enquiry. Its about closing the deal to the satisfaction of both the parties.

Five main areas where technology is transforming Professional Services industry include: Business Development, Project/Managed Services, Talent Supply Chain, Finance & Procurement support function. The technology footprint leading this transformation is impacting many stages of the service chain; from back office and enterprise systems, to many customer-facing functions such as payments, loyalty programs and customer services.

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CPI Consulting Associates; specializes in SAP solutions which connect processes for a variety of industry value chains by integrating horizontal lines of business with industry-specific solutions on premise, in the cloud, and through mobile devices.

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