Go Vertical with Stratos Cloud Alliance

To begin to answer the question of why it is important to go vertical, we need to first understand what that means. “Going vertical” refers to businesses specializing in a niche by offering services and products that cater to and fulfill the requirements of a particular industry. So, why go vertical? Because of the opportunity.  Different industries have significant operational differences and priorities. As a business applications partner with specialization in a particular industry you can quickly establish credibility through vertical insight and specialized services, improve your close ratio, and significantly grow your practice.

So, let’s break it down, using a real-life scenario, to showcase how going vertical can drive growth for the Microsoft partner community. One of the industries Stratos Cloud is helping our partners target is Professional Services.

According to IBISWorld, an increase in US GDP over the next five years is expected to drive demand for a range of services provided by the professional services sector. Businesses are also expected to continue to modernize their technologies to streamline efficiencies and to safeguard proprietary information and client privacy. These continued technological advancements are likely to prompt further demand for professional services. The professional services industry is growing and our Stratos Cloud team is helping partners capitalize on this opportunity and grow alongside of it.

The priorities of the Professional Services industry have changed in the last 18 months. Companies are focused on protecting their people and customers, stabilizing a virtual workforce, rethinking their tools and infrastructure, along with making everyday adjustments to maintain business. We’ve taken these challenges and identified some of the reasons of these challenges and have placed them into buckets in order to better answer this question:

What are the main business challenges that professional services prospects face?

• It is complex to figure out profitability ahead of time.
• Lack of insight into all the costs and the inability to track them to a project.
• Lack of communication between sales and delivery teams.
• Implementing new technology is hard.

With Progressus Advanced Projects for Dynamics 365 Business Central businesses can:

Take the guesswork out of budgeting

Professional services are expected to grow at a faster rate through 2025. Business Central with Advanced Projects can help your Proserv customers prepare for this growth by taking the guesswork out of budgeting. With Advanced Projects they can create budgets for resources, resource groups, items and expenses, and easily track and update budgets with unlimited revisions to manage budgets more profitably. They can increase estimating accuracy by comparing budget details with actuals down to the task level to fine tune future bids. And you can gain insight to projects with the 13 project-analysis dashboards preloaded.

Shine a light on hidden costs

What does this mean? If projects are consistently losing money, are over-budget or under-performing, then business cannot be successful. With Advanced Projects for Business Central, you can gain control over costs and track, view, and analyze costs for projects that are currently in progress, with the ability to see information in real-time with extensive data views and income analysis. Track as you go with instant expense visibility before the end of the accounting period and track labor and employee expenses on a project-by-project basis will full drill down to detail.

Breakdown Sales and delivery silos

According to an Aberdeen Group study, 74% of best-in-class organizations have strong marketing and sales alignments. ​Profitability can’t happen if there isn’t early and deliberate collaboration between the sales and delivery teams. A single, cloud-based solution that serves as one-source of truth will help accomplish this goal. Advanced Projects for Business Central simplifies and standardizes processes with a single system for sales, PMO, and accounting. You can build on successes by using activity templates to easily create new project plans. You can plan for profitability from the start by initiating the project before a customer commits by creating quotes and budgets for internal review. Using Outlook and familiar Microsoft 365 tools like Excel to manage processes will help streamline quotes to cash.

An integrated business solution on one reliable platform – Microsoft

Deloitte says 23% of spreadsheets contain errors. If you are struggling to enable remote workers, currently rely on manual processes and spreadsheets, or are using multiple solutions for accounting, time & expense, and project management, it’s time to consider a change. With Advanced Projects for Business Central you have one cloud-based solution to manage accounting, sales, and project planning. With Microsoft Cloud, enable your remote workforce so that they can work from anywhere via smartphones, tablets, or laptops. We understand what it takes to put profitability first.

With Advanced Projects – plan and strategize for profitability, meet the challenges of today, and position yourself for the future as well as start to focus on what’s next for your business. Learn more about Advanced Projects for Dynamics 365 Business Central in our next blog where we’ll share some of the capabilities that will support you in winning in the ProServ Industry.